A heady technothriller that reads like the lovechild of Cory Doctorow and Tom Clancy.
Rosone’s near-future technothriller spins a cautionary tale about the integration of artificial intelligence into modern warfare.
The year is 2032. China, Russia, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan have formed the Eurasian Defense and Economic Pact. North Korea has free access to Chinese ports and Russian energy. Taiwan has recently become a province of China. When the EDEP announces large-scale military and naval exercises in the South China Sea, the North Pacific, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe all at once, the world is suddenly paying very close attention. Coincidentally, Beijing also announces the establishment of the Maritime Sovereignty Protection Zone after claiming that Taiwanese authorities have failed to control the flow of an illicit drug known as Vortex; as of April 15th, all vessels entering Chinese ports, explicitly those bound for Taiwan, will be subject to rigorous customs inspections. Those vessels exhibiting resistance, hostile intent, or failing to comply will be boarded by patrolling naval units. It’s a classic pretext for provocation, and now the writing is firmly on the wall: If Taiwan falls, the rest of the world will fall along with it. In response, the United States creates the well-funded and well-equipped Taiwan Study Group to secretly support Taiwan’s independence, offering Taiwan carte blanche access to the best unmanned, autonomous weapons systems money can buy. As the author deftly builds the tension between the world’s most powerful countries, the end result will ultimately be decided by whoever commands the digital and physical battlespace. Rosone’s experience in the military is evident in the dizzying array of acronyms and jargon that graces the pages—while adding authenticity to the story, this also is distracting to the reader at times (as when the author describes “a backpack-mounted omni-antenna disguised as a folded bird blind frame—used to passively scan for encrypted VHF comms from new SHORAD nodes”). His narrative turns the traditional novel on its head; instead of a traditional cast of characters, technology plays the central character here, with countries serving as secondary characters. And it works.
A heady technothriller that reads like the lovechild of Cory Doctorow and Tom Clancy.Pub Date: July 29, 2025
ISBN: 9781967436262
Page Count: 355
Publisher: Front Line Publishing
Review Posted Online: yesterday
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A fun read. Terrorists make great Clancy fodder.
Evildoers plan attacks from America to India, and Jack Ryan Jr. is a prime target.
In Washington state, a man and his family are murdered, and President Jack Ryan learns it is another Poseidon Spear incident. Three retired members of that counterterrorism group have been killed now, and the U.S. government suspects a mole in its midst. Meanwhile, the Umayyad Revolutionary Council believes it has a holy and wholly anti-American mission. Against this backdrop, Jack Ryan Jr., and his fiancée, Lisanne Robertson, visit Delhi, India, to attend the wedding of Srini Rai, the brilliant surgeon who attached Lisanne’s prosthetic left arm. Lisanne had lost her arm in Tom Clancy Shadow of the Dragon (2020). Jack and Lisanne are both operators working for the Campus, a covert group that executes secret presidential directives. A wedding is a happy occasion, and the engaged American couple intend the trip as a vacation. Jack and Lisanne will attend a sangeet, an elaborate pre-wedding party. But it isn’t long before they survive a suicide bomb attack. As with all Clancy novels, there’s plenty of action on a global scale. In simultaneous strikes, terrorists plan to contaminate America’s Western water supply with radioactive waste from Washington’s Hanford nuclear power plant, blow up a spectacular new bridge in Kashmir, and kill the evil Ryan—or Junior, at least. It will be At-Takwir, the end of days. There is an appealing mix of Indian culture, high-speed action, and the rich lode of details that characterizes the whole series. And in the background lingers the question on several characters’ minds: Have Jack and Lisanne set their own wedding date?
A fun read. Terrorists make great Clancy fodder.Pub Date: Sept. 2, 2025
ISBN: 9780593718032
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
The plot is absurd, of course, but the book is a definitive pleasure. Prepare to be absorbed—and in more ways than one.
Another Brown (Inferno, 2013, etc.) blockbuster, blending arcana, religion, and skulduggery—sound familiar?—with the latest headlines.
You just have to know that when the first character you meet in a Brown novel is a debonair tech mogul and the second a bony-fingered old bishop, you’ll end up with a clash of ideologies and worldviews. So it is. Edmond Kirsch, once a student of longtime Brown hero Robert Langdon, the Harvard symbologist–turned–action hero, has assembled a massive crowd, virtual and real, in Bilbao to announce he’s discovered something that’s destined to kill off religion and replace it with science. It would be ungallant to reveal just what the discovery is, but suffice it to say that the religious leaders of the world are in a tizzy about it, whereupon one shadowy Knights of Malta type takes it upon himself to put a bloody end to Kirsch’s nascent heresy. Ah, but what if Kirsch had concocted an AI agent so powerful that his own death was just an inconvenience? What if it was time for not just schism, but singularity? Digging into the mystery, Langdon finds a couple of new pals, one of them that computer avatar, and a whole pack of new enemies, who, not content just to keep Kirsch’s discovery under wraps, also frown on the thought that a great many people in the modern world, including some extremely prominent Spaniards, find fascism and Falangism passé and think the reigning liberal pope is a pretty good guy. Yes, Franco is still dead, as are Christopher Hitchens, Julian Jaynes, Jacques Derrida, William Blake, and other cultural figures Brown enlists along the way—and that’s just the beginning of the body count. The old ham-fisted Brown is here in full glory (“In that instant, Langdon realized that perhaps there was a macabre silver lining to Edmond’s horrific murder”; “The vivacious, strong-minded beauty had turned Julián’s world upside down”)—but, for all his defects as a stylist, it can’t be denied that he knows how to spin a yarn, and most satisfyingly.
The plot is absurd, of course, but the book is a definitive pleasure. Prepare to be absorbed—and in more ways than one.Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-51423-1
Page Count: 461
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
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