Ten years after the events of Hell Divers, the little boy with a foil hat called Tin has grown up to be Commander Michael Everheart, one of the Hive's most promising Hell Divers--those who brave the wasteland below for supplies that will keep their airship home afloat. He and the other few hundred souls on that ship--possibly the last remaining humans--have given up Xavier "X" Rodriguez for dead. No one, they believe, can survive on the irradiated, storm-wracked, monster-infested surface of the war-torn Earth for a decade.
The new leader of the Hive knows better. Captain Leon Jordan, promoted after Maria Ash succumbed to cancer, has kept X's years of desperate radio calls secret. He refuses to risk humanity in the search for one lost diver, and this is just the beginning of Captain Jordan's increasingly ruthless reign. When a different call comes from the surface, this time from a supposed enclave of people seeking aid, Jordan can't keep it hidden. Commander Everheart and a team of new and old faces take on a mission that may decide the fate of the Hive and humankind alike.
Nicholas Sansbury Smith's second entry in the Hell Divers trilogy delivers the same heart-pounding, post-apocalyptic action as the first. Horrific mutants and ceaseless lightning storms make Smith's surface world a vision to remember. Like its predecessor, Ghosts blasts along at a thriller's pace. Readers left hanging by Hell Divers's ending will find much to love in its sequel, and its conclusion promises an intriguing final entry. --Tobias Mutter, freelance reviewer