Lengthy, immersive cyber-SF that puts fresh life into a familiar operating system.
A troubled cybernetics “mechanic” is forced to join an elite squad of government agents to halt the insidious spread of deadly software in Weald’s sci-fi thriller.
The impressive debut of author Weald (aka Michael Woodworth) is set in the Chicago megapolis, year 2195. Lee Hall is a brilliant but obscure “mechanic” IT expert who services the cybernetics essential to human life throughout the solar system. Everyone has “bots,” and even the North American government runs in tandem with a regulating AI, maintaining society through ubiquitous surveillance. But after a renegade software update goes broadband, robots act erratically, even homicidally, by exhibiting forbidden traits of anger and free will. Lee is on the crime scene of one murder-by-machine and winds up forcibly recruited to join agents Ren and Jace, physically and mentally enhanced operatives of the elite Division 13, to learn what’s behind the dangerous Qualia Code now viral throughout civilization and how to stop it. For Lee, abandoned by parents who fled to deep space rather than live on a roboticized Earth and feeling heartbroken after divorce, the investigation comes dangerously close to home. The robot-uprising SF plotline is, literally, as old as robots in literature. The concept of a tech-soaked urban sprawl with overlay environments of virtual- and augmented-reality enjoyed by citizens wired directly into the digital mesh is cyberpunk 101. Weald does not radically reinvent such concepts, but thinks their aspects through with a seriousness of purpose and nuanced characterizations. Throughout, one finds the efforts of a serious literary novelist lavished on material that otherwise would fuel scores of sci-fi potboiler paperbacks and Japanese anime. Quad-core-rapid action/combat scenes (“Some of the soldiers were torn apart by metal hands so fast their last thoughts were lively curses towards the attacker”) should sate fans, while those who find cyberpunk a 1990s fad long obsolete can salute how the material transcends a self-referential pastiche of retro-noir cliches, one of the form’s pitfalls.
Lengthy, immersive cyber-SF that puts fresh life into a familiar operating system.Pub Date: June 22, 2023
ISBN: 979-8987879801
Page Count: 608
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Feb. 14, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
American honor, high-tech power, and on-the-ground bravery highlight this exciting yarn.
Deadly drones threaten chaos, and Ryans are in the thick of the fight.
A U.S. Air Force C-32A crashes near Bodrum, Turkey, killing all aboard, including the secretary of commerce. American investigators suspect sabotage, which elevates the issue up to the White House. Strangely, only 15 passengers had been aboard while 16 were listed on the manifest. Gunther Klaus, a Swiss moneyman for the Russians, was supposed to be on that plane. Code-named Fulcrum, he wants to get to the West to expose Russian chicanery. On the book’s dark side, Andrei Malenkov has a “little squadron” of drones he plans to load with radioactive cesium chloride that would change the world and make him rich. Given his intended target in northern Africa, the plan sounds plausible. Unfortunately for him, he must face Americans like series regulars Ding Chavez, John “I’m too old to die young” Clark, and Lieutenant Commander Katie “What the hell are we getting into now?” Ryan. The story is rich in weapons technology and balanced by Americans, to a one, displaying courage and solid character. At the top, President Jack Ryan tries to contain a simmering geopolitical mess by talking to an unfriendly President Nikita Yermilov. The tactical level is what readers live for—the gunfights, the explosions, the drones that hunt and kill—and always, always, another threat from a deadly adversary. The demise of the Cold War certainly didn’t end the supply of material for this Clancy-created series. In a world of constant turmoil, the Clancy crew will always be busy. There’s a sameness to the novels—the U.S., with its noble leader (alas, fictional) “trying to hold together a world that’s blowing apart,” and its noble warriors, like Katie, who “seemed to find action like a moth found light.” With this novel, thriller writer Larsen makes his first entry in the Clancy series. His style fits perfectly.
American honor, high-tech power, and on-the-ground bravery highlight this exciting yarn.Pub Date: May 19, 2026
ISBN: 9780593718094
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: April 20, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
It’s just as exhausting as it sounds, but it may be the most ambitious spy novel you’ve ever read.
What happens when an eminent mystery novelist collaborates with an award-winning journalist on a spy thriller? Pretty much everything you can imagine.
While food blogger Alice Li is in retreat from her overbearing mother, famous Chinese dissident Vivien Li, in a restaurant bathroom, the alarm goes off. And not just the fire alarm, but every alarm in the city, the country, and around the world. Their triggering is clearly an act of terrorism, and the silencing of all those alarms, which comes as suddenly and inexplicably as their screeching, is anything but reassuring. Vivien spirits her daughter off to the White House, where Grant McAllister, the director of National Intelligence, informs Alice that her friend and fellow blogger Liam Palmer has just been fished from the Hong Kong harbor. McAllister and Alan Zhou, head of the China Mission Center, are convinced Liam knew something about those alarms, and President Fraser Pardington is determined to do whatever he can to prevent a sequel. He fails, of course, and the second act of global terrorism is even more disastrous than the first. All the president’s men and women initially believe the threat comes from the Chinese government, and Chinese President Chen Jiayang thinks the Americans might be behind it. Alice and Vivien race around the globe to track down the culprit, and what they find will knit together the fates of Alice’s family, the U.S. and China, and the history of the world as we know it.
It’s just as exhausting as it sounds, but it may be the most ambitious spy novel you’ve ever read.Pub Date: May 12, 2026
ISBN: 9781250412522
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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