Intricate neo-cyberpunk SF that takes adventurous readers on head trips inside of head trips.
In Prosit’s SF novel, an amnesiac data runner and his gifted girlfriend negotiate intrigues and deceptions in a network of virtual realities.
The setting is the year “Four Million,” an out-of-context number that clues readers to the fact that in this novel’s reality, what is seen, heard, and felt can no longer be trusted. Following two future apocalyptic “Events,” humanity’s most functional remaining society is in the former Twin Cities; Minneapolis and St. Paul, joined by high-tech boomtown Excelsior, are now the “TriCities.” The Mississippi River is a polluted sluice, wealth inequality is sky high, labor-class androids are (by law) low-intelligence thugs, and political division, pandemics, and propaganda threaten an even worse Third Event. The governing Alliance has therefore ordered a “Great Reset,” after which, elite, appointed “Caretakers” will take charge of healing the world while the rest of the population takes a 10-year “Long Nap” in virtual-reality beds. Only days before the Reset, collegiate prodigy Zigpatricia Jean finds herself named one of the Caretakers—the timing is poor, as she has taken a lover from the lower castes of computer hackers and data thieves. This lover, Josh, is unsure of his actual name and identity after his many consciousness-scrambling “drops” through the layers of VR environments that underlie the TriCities’ “TriVerse.” Josh accidentally discovers (and joins) the “Reality Reaction Team,” a squad patrolling for dangerous deepfakes, as circumstances suggest that a gigantic conspiracy surrounds the Reset. Prosit’s cyberpunk SF novel works like a chess game that plays out on multiple boards, with characters who pop in and out of realities (a funhouse hall-of-mirrors metaphor comes into play, quite literally, at the finale). There are rules to all of this, but readers will be hard-pressed to follow them much of the time. Genre fans will enjoy chewing on the bracing, deep-thought material, though they may be irked by the trope of all-powerful master villains who give too much away.
Intricate neo-cyberpunk SF that takes adventurous readers on head trips inside of head trips.Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2025
ISBN: 9798349604812
Page Count: 370
Publisher: Space Skull Books
Review Posted Online: yesterday
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.
A man walks out of a bar and his life becomes a kaleidoscope of altered states in this science-fiction thriller.
Crouch opens on a family in a warm, resonant domestic moment with three well-developed characters. At home in Chicago’s Logan Square, Jason Dessen dices an onion while his wife, Daniela, sips wine and chats on the phone. Their son, Charlie, an appealing 15-year-old, sketches on a pad. Still, an undertone of regret hovers over the couple, a preoccupation with roads not taken, a theme the book will literally explore, in multifarious ways. To start, both Jason and Daniela abandoned careers that might have soared, Jason as a physicist, Daniela as an artist. When Charlie was born, he suffered a major illness. Jason was forced to abandon promising research to teach undergraduates at a small college. Daniela turned from having gallery shows to teaching private art lessons to middle school students. On this bracing October evening, Jason visits a local bar to pay homage to Ryan Holder, a former college roommate who just received a major award for his work in neuroscience, an honor that rankles Jason, who, Ryan says, gave up on his career. Smarting from the comment, Jason suffers “a sucker punch” as he heads home that leaves him “standing on the precipice.” From behind Jason, a man with a “ghost white” face, “red, pursed lips," and "horrifying eyes” points a gun at Jason and forces him to drive an SUV, following preset navigational directions. At their destination, the abductor forces Jason to strip naked, beats him, then leads him into a vast, abandoned power plant. Here, Jason meets men and women who insist they want to help him. Attempting to escape, Jason opens a door that leads him into a series of dark, strange, yet eerily familiar encounters that sometimes strain credibility, especially in the tale's final moments.
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.Pub Date: July 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-90422-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
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Equal parts biting social commentary and page-turning thriller, a disturbing glimpse into humankind’s possible future.
The first installment of Liu’s Julia Z saga is an SF thriller set in a near-future “post-truth age” where the use of AI and the inundation of digital disinformation and data pollution have blurred the lines between delusion and reality.
Julia—whose immigrant mother, a divisive political activist, was murdered during a border protest—has lived on her own since she was 14. A brilliant hacker now 23, she’s been trying to live in online anonymity, acutely aware of the multitude of ways she can be identified and tracked. Living in a Boston suburb and struggling to make ends meet, she inadvertently becomes entangled with a lawyer named Piers Neri and his search for his artist wife, Elli Krantz—famous for her experimental work in vivid dreaming—who may or may not have been kidnapped. A prime suspect in his wife’s disappearance, Piers goes on the run with the help of Julia—and together, they begin putting together pieces of a mind-bogglingly intricate puzzle that links Elli to a powerful criminal with a global reach. As Julia digs deeper into the appeal of vivid dreaming and the criminal’s ruthless endeavors, she discovers the sham that is the American Dream: “America was corrupt and steeped in sin. The powerful had rigged the game for themselves and turned the country into a panopticon to imprison the rest of us. Anytime one of the powerless—it didn’t matter the color of your skin, the language you spoke, the place you were born in—was on the verge of climbing out, they would be ruthlessly tossed back into the pit.” And amid the backdrop of dealing with unresolved childhood trauma and the need to find her place in the world, she finds something unexpected—herself.
Equal parts biting social commentary and page-turning thriller, a disturbing glimpse into humankind’s possible future.Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9781668083178
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Saga/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2025
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