The Immune System: A Dewey Decimal novel

By Nathan Larson

"This final installment of the Dewey Decimal trilogy capably stands alone as a quirky, sparkly read that will embiggen your cerebellum."
--Library Journal

"Larson treats the English language as a sort of toy to play with and use for experimentation; language is not just used to tell the story, in other words, but is a part of the story, an extension of its narrator, Dewey Decimal, one of the more offbeat characters in fiction. A fitting conclusion to a unique and memorable trilogy."
--Booklist

"A sharp and satisfying conclusion to one of the most unique hard-boiled arcs in recent memory."
--Kirkus Reviews

"Dewey is an unlikely hero, a gimpy, smart-mouthed loner, obsessed with a brand-name hand sanitizer. His indomitable spirit and his distinctive ghetto-infused, educated patter give Larson's series its unique and spicy character."
--Publishers Weekly

"The final book in Larson's compulsively readable, uniquely strange Dewey Decimal trilogy, The Immune System features Larson's patented ability to play with words and sentence structure in a way that mirrors the disorienting events happening in the plot. And yet, because the reader is in such good hands with Larson, it doesn't matter if everything is clear right from the start. Just trust that Larson knows where he's taking you, and enjoy the slightly surreal, definitely funny ride."
--The L Magazine

"The final book in the Dewey Decimal System trilogy, in which Dewey deals with dirty politicians, civilian outcasts, Saudi, royals, and the truth about the cataclysmic events in NYC. I adored these books, and it thrills me to know the author is also a member of Shudder to Think."
--Book Riot

"The final installment of one of the finest (and weirdest) thriller trilogies ever....There is physical action aplenty in this breathtaking novel--fistfights, shoot-outs, bombs, etc.--but during the finale of Larson's glorious trilogy, we learn that in the end, the only struggle that ever mattered was Decimal's struggle with himself."
--Mystery Scene

"[An] engrossing concluding entry in Larson's Dewey Decimal trilogy....Larson's version of New York City is vividly...realized, almost becoming a character in itself, and his fast-paced narrative style makes the most of both his post-apocalyptic setting and his brain-scrambled protagonist."
--Manhattan Book Review

"A perfect synthesis of poetic observation melded with streetwise patois, percussive and rhythmic....It’s quite a feat to write a dystopia that is fun and takes the reader to a better place for a while. Larson does this."
--Razorcake

The Immune System is the explosive final installment in the Dewey Decimal trilogy. Picking up months after the events of The Nervous System, Dewey finds himself running dirty operations for the crooked Senator Howard. When Dewey is tasked with disrupting unrest from a growing group of outcast civilians, and simultaneously given the assignment of protecting a pair of Saudi royals, he is forced to look within and make some impossible choices. Ultimately, this puts him at odds with his benefactor and the powers that be.

In the course of the novel, we learn the true nature of the 2/14 cataclysm that decimated New York City, and by the end of it, Dewey must choose whether or not to face his own past. He must also decide if he is to be part of the elite control system, or if he's willing to commit himself to the unknown, without the protections he enjoys in the good favor of the landlords of the new New Order.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Akashic Books
• Release date: Apr 13, 2015
• ISBN: 9781617753619

Nathan Larson

Nathan Larson is an award-winning film composer, musician, producer, the author of the novels The Dewey Decimal System, The Nervous System, and The Immune System. He has made music for many films, including Boys Don't Cry, Margin Call, and the Swedish movies Stockholm Stories and Lilya 4-Ever. He and his wife, singer Nina Persson, divide their time between New York City and Sweden.

Reviews for The Immune System

[bravenewbks · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Our setting: post-apocalyptic New York. "2/14" has supplanted "9/11," although we don't know exactly what happened or why, just that most of the bridges are destroyed and the City is now a sparsely populated ruin of its former self.

Our protagonist: Dewey Decimal. So named because he plans to spend the rest of his days re-organizing the books in the New York Public Library. He gets his supplies from the DA, a recoil-inducing opportunist who sends Decimal out to get rid of inconvenient characters. Librarian-hitman hybrids aren't common characters in dystopian fiction, but Decimal is more than just that. He's paranoid like Mel Gibson in Conspiracy Theory, he's a germophobe constantly thinking about using Purell, and he can speak Serbian, Ukrainian, and who knows how many other obscure languages. He also ascribes a mysterious importance to "the System," (thus completing the title's play on words). The System -- which mandates, for instance, that he make only left-hand turns before noon -- makes Decimal's life pretty difficult, but he believes it keeps him safe.

This book is written like a pulp detective novel, but set in the dystopian future. That pulp cliché, the oldest of the old, the most tired of all tired phrases comes to me. But I dig the truth at its core. When in doubt, look for the girl. Cherchez la femme. That dystopian-pulp combination, like the OCD-librarian-hitman, took some getting used to, but it kept me entertained and was unlike anything I've read before. Neither of those is my favorite genre, but if one is yours, I recommend you check this out.

[ajbraithwaite_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Possibly not enough library in this book, given its title, but it's an interesting read about what life could be life in a post-Apocalyptic New York. The protagonist is a hit man with a 'system' of morals and rules which help him to navigate the world he's living in. Violent and sweary, this won't be to everyone's taste, but the main character's dilemmas were enough to keep me reading.

[ladycato · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

The concept of this book is absolutely fascinating: a noir detective novel set in post-apocalyptic New York City. It's gritty, bloody, and profane, with the twists and turns ones except of a dark mystery.I had major questions from the start, though, when Dewey Decimal (supposedly this efficient hitman) makes a series of juvenile errors. And continues to make them. I didn't want a flawless protagonist, and he certainly still had plenty of other issues--the guy is severely OCD, like Detective Monk on overdrive. Then the famed "dame" of noir enters. Despite the fascinatingly dark and ruined New York City, the plot becomes awfully predictable if you've read or watched any noir.Dewey himself is an intriguing character. He's a completely unreliable narrator. He believes he lost his family in the disasters that have crippled the country. His memories feature large gaps, while he remembers other marginalia in excruciating detail. By the end of the book, he suddenly shows that he's an efficient killer, too, and in some repulsive ways. I read a lot of dark fantasy where the protagonist does not-so-nice things. But here... by the end, I found my empathy for the character strained, and I was glad to reach the final page.

[bragan_8 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

New York City -- and possibly the rest of the US? It's never entirely clear -- has been devastated by a series of rapid, highly coordinated terrorist attacks. But, crippled and substantially depopulated, the city continues to limp along. Our story follows "Dewey Decimal," so called because he's set up residence in the New York Public Library, and because he doesn't remember his actual name. There are a lot of other things he doesn't remember, too, not to mention his periods of confusion and his OCD tendencies. But somehow, he still manages to function as a hit man for the city's corrupt DA.It's a really interesting setup, but while the resulting novel isn't bad, it just never clicked with me quite the way I was hoping it would. The backstory of what happened to NYC, and what the city's been through since, are frustratingly lightly sketched and not entirely convincing. Dewey himself almost comes across more as a random collection of damage than as a character. And while the plot, which is full of violence and double-crosses, is decent enough, it has a slightly generic feel to it. There's not much there that I haven't seen before, more or less, and nothing that couldn't work equally well in any setting at all with only minimal changes. Again, it's not bad. It's a quick, decently written noir-ish thriller. But it's not quite what I was hoping for, somehow.

[hairball_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

This book is pretty conceited--by which I mean it's full of conceits, and they're a little tiring. One or two should be the limit to avoid the appearance (and reality) of literary gimmickry. It felt to me like a bunch of shtick stuck onto the frame of a story, but not enough of anything to make a novel or a point or the five dozen points the author wants to make.

[timtom_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

In a post-apocalyptic New York, left half-empty and under the rule of thugs and corrupt officials after an unprecedented series of terrorist attacks, lives a man that doesn't remember his name. Known as Dewey Decimal because he lives in the deserted New York Public Library, he makes a living as a mercenary. His last job, eliminating a union leader, seemed simple enough at first...I very much enjoyed this story. Larson's tough-talking, obsessive-compulsive antihero takes an original go at the first-person detective story. The fast-paced action makes this book very hard to put down. I hope there will be a sequel.

[ageoflibrarius · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Dewey Decimal is a great character. Everyone else is pretty much a stock mystery character---which is fine with me. What isn't fine is the resolution of the story. After all that happened, I just didn't buy it.

[jasonpettus · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

[Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography (cclapcenter.com). I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.]I know, I know, you haven't been seeing very many reviews this year from our buddies at Akashic Books, which is because they simply haven't been sending very many books this year; and that's a shame, because it seems like every time I pick a new one up by them, at the very least it's still okay but much more often some of my favorite reads of the year. Take this most recent double-header, for example, the "soft apocalypse" noir thrillers The Dewey Decimal System and The Nervous System by former Shudder To Think guitarist Nathan Larson, which turns out to contain one of the most inventive post-apocalyptic milieus I've ever come across (and I read a lot of post-apocalyptic novels); two tales concerning a black former soldier with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, who has recently moved into the New York Public Library with the goal of manually reshelving all its books, within a Manhattan that after an endless series of coordinated terrorist attacks in the near future has voluntarily emptied to roughly one-tenth the population it once was, like The Yiddish Policeman's Union these use simple crime-novel plots as a sly way to explore this expansive alt-history universe, even while layering in an ultra-slow reveal concerning "Dewey"s actual past, the terrible eugenics experiments performed on him by the US military, and why it is that he can't remember any of it, despite still having an autonomic sense memory of how to speak Korean (for one example) or how to kill a man with his bare hands (for another). Two of the most legitimately exciting novels I've read in a long time, these had the rare ability to completely suck me out of my daily reality while I was in the middle of reading them, something that doesn't happen to me much anymore now that I read 150 books a year; and I always take that as an extremely good sign, taut genre actioners that belie the usual tropes of their genres, and which will undoubtedly be making our Best Of The Year lists come December.Out of 10: 9.7

[cygnoir_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

It may be weird to say that I am a fan of dystopian near-future settings. I have a morbid fascination with bleak, sparse landscapes and crumbling infrastructure; I remain hopeful that I will never have to live in such a world, but constantly wonder what type of person I would be if I survived in one.

In "The Dewey Decimal System", Larson creates an instantly engaging survivor as a protagonist, and a compelling city in ruins around him. Larson's staccato, fragmented style makes this a quick and brutal read with plenty of physical and emotional carnage. I only wished for more scenes in the New York Public Library, yearning for more details of this post-apocalyptic information age that seems entirely devoid of the 'net.

[ericfitz08 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

it could be tightened up a bit, especially the dialogue. That said, the story is strong, the action is intense, and this is a fresh take on noir.