Zero Country — Bruce W. Perry

Zero Country is a Yellowstone-based dystopian thriller and the #3 installment in the To The North series. Caldera was also published in 2022.Zero Country returns to Yellowstone in 2028, two and a half years following its devastating supereruption. The region is now called the Greater Yellowstone Restoration Project (GYRP).Zeke Sanchez and Brett Fairbanks, a former U.S. Navy SEAL, investigate a series of puzzling and gruesome crimes. They are former soldiers and buddies from the Iraq War of years ago.Monica and Katy (two volcanologists from Caldera) cluster with other scientists at the GYRP. They both have young children with them, and they both want out of Yellowstone due to the menacing developments there. They live within the blasted landscape in a bleak campus of geodesic structures that resembles a lunar habitat.A sketchy mining operation has also settled on the site, hoping to rake in millions off a rumored vein of rare-earth elements.The themes this novel explores include surveillance and A.I. run amok and rough-shod over normal, well-meaning humans.Bearing the responsibility for hard-labor and security details, artificials, powered by unstable artificial-intelligence programs, roam the landscape, wreaking havoc and behaving increasingly hostile.Is geologically unstable Yellowstone gearing up for another magmatic explosion? Katy and Monica scramble desperately to protect their children amidst the duel hazards of erupting volcanos, and increasingly hostile techno-apparatus.