A brainy near-future SF novel of exploited neurons and expanding consciousness.
In this speculative novel set in a postwar future, a retired detective/government operative comes out of retirement to solve the murders of several people who, like him, possess remarkable mental powers.
Giesler, the author of The Nothing Within (2019), sets this tale of futuristic intrigue at the end of the 21st century and the beginning of the 22nd. The United States no longer exists after a violent second civil war that resulted in a “mosaic” of independent regions, now uneasily at peace. Harmony “Bibi” Cain lives in a Wisconsin retirement community in a minination called the Northstar States of America. His mild, retro lifestyle of bicycling and reading printed books (including Octavia E. Butler’s 1993 novel, Parable of the Sower) obscures the fact that he once had a tumultuous career as a detective and, before that, was involved in government mind-based weapons projects. Bibi’s brain structure granted him a sort of psychic insight and empathy with other living things; this, in turn, led to him being part of a project to exploit the human pons adexterum—a mysterious, three-gram part of the brain that, it turns out, can command advanced drones called “motes.” Thanks to Bibi’s particular skills, the Northstar held its own in battle during the Mosaic War. But now, in 2099, he wants to withdraw from the noises in his head; he takes an illegal narcotic called kali to find solace. Meanwhile, the Northstar government is using the project’s technology to join billions of people around the world in online “lynks.” A deadly attack by motes and other drones targets those who happen to share Bibi’s rare powers; the flying automatons can remove neural matter with fiendish efficiency. Is Bibi next on the hit list? As tensions heighten across borders, Bibi reunites with old colleagues, rivals, and lovers to look into what’s going on.
The novel has elements of a trendy cyberpunk action yarn: man-machine interfaces, femmes fatales, techno-assassins, betrayals, rogue AIs, and so on. However, Giesler’s aims appear to be more ambitious than providing a simple genre exercise. He devotes many pages to the thoughtful hero’s introspection and ruminations, and action takes a back seat to descriptions of the ethical, mental, and psychological effects of hyperdeveloped empathy: “Whoever I’m around, however they’re feeling, I’m always experiencing them. I have no choice but to deal with them all the time.” Moreover, Giesler relates the narrative in an intricate, semifragmented fashion, moving back and forth chronologically. Some parts consist of transcribed interviews of a documentarian trying to uncover the truth about an apparently deceased Bibi; others are narrated by Bibi himself, who appears to be having an intimate conversation with an unspecified lynked individual; and still others are excerpts from in-universe published texts. The open ending may frustrate expectations of readers who might desire more conclusive, action-oriented material, à la The Matrix, and less philosophical pondering about the pons and God. But many SF fans will appreciate an older-than-usual main character with romantic partners who are roughly the same age.
A brainy near-future SF novel of exploited neurons and expanding consciousness.Pub Date: May 4, 2023
ISBN: 9781733567671
Page Count: 338
Publisher: Humble Quill LLC
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Sharp, funny and thrilling, with just the right amount of geekery.
When a freak dust storm brings a manned mission to Mars to an unexpected close, an astronaut who is left behind fights to stay alive. This is the first novel from software engineer Weir.
One minute, astronaut Mark Watney was with his crew, struggling to make it out of a deadly Martian dust storm and back to the ship, currently in orbit over Mars. The next minute, he was gone, blown away, with an antenna sticking out of his side. The crew knew he'd lost pressure in his suit, and they'd seen his biosigns go flat. In grave danger themselves, they made an agonizing but logical decision: Figuring Mark was dead, they took off and headed back to Earth. As it happens, though, due to a bizarre chain of events, Mark is very much alive. He wakes up some time later to find himself stranded on Mars with a limited supply of food and no way to communicate with Earth or his fellow astronauts. Luckily, Mark is a botanist as well as an astronaut. So, armed with a few potatoes, he becomes Mars' first ever farmer. From there, Mark must overcome a series of increasingly tricky mental, physical and technical challenges just to stay alive, until finally, he realizes there is just a glimmer of hope that he may actually be rescued. Weir displays a virtuosic ability to write about highly technical situations without leaving readers far behind. The result is a story that is as plausible as it is compelling. The author imbues Mark with a sharp sense of humor, which cuts the tension, sometimes a little too much—some readers may be laughing when they should be on the edges of their seats. As for Mark’s verbal style, the modern dialogue at times undermines the futuristic setting. In fact, people in the book seem not only to talk the way we do now, they also use the same technology (cellphones, computers with keyboards). This makes the story feel like it's set in an alternate present, where the only difference is that humans are sending manned flights to Mars. Still, the author’s ingenuity in finding new scrapes to put Mark in, not to mention the ingenuity in finding ways out of said scrapes, is impressive.
Sharp, funny and thrilling, with just the right amount of geekery.Pub Date: Feb. 11, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-8041-3902-1
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 7, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2013
PROFILES
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
