Where the Axe Is Buried

February 1, 2025

This near-future world has fallen into dystopia, but most people don't realize it. The Russian Federation has turned to outright tyranny under a quasi-immortal president, while the Western democracies have turned over control to the Rationalization policies of AI-based Prime Ministers. Observing this world from the perspectives of an old Russian activist, a genius young cyberneticist, a bureaucrat seduced by an AI, the people caught up in their lives, and a shadowy group of operatives who don't even know their own motivations, readers get a slowly forming picture of a spider at the center of a vast web, determined to either save or destroy humanity before it's too late. But it's already too late, as even when warring factions bury the hatchet, neither ever forgets where that axe was buried. This near-future, borderline dystopian geopolitical espionage thriller tells a story of authoritarianism run amok even as it hides in plain sight and is set against by shadowy forces that have the best intentions but the worst methods of carrying them out. VERDICT Thought-provoking in the extreme, Nayler's (The Tusks of Extinction) sci-fi cyberthriller will trap fans of technothrillers in its web.--Marlene Harris

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Starred review from March 1, 2025
Zoya, a former revolutionary leader, lost hope for success long ago. The Federation is ruled by authoritarians who simply replace their president with a new body and the same mind each election, and who rule their subjects with a strict system of surveillance and punishment. But then she's approached by a group that claims to have a plan, a way to infiltrate the very mind of the president--a plan to pull it all down in order to give the people a chance to start from scratch. Meanwhile, the governments of the West replaced their heads with "Rationalization," AI prime ministers who only make rational decisions . . . or do they? As those too begin to fall, Nayler (The Tusks of Extinction, 2024) gives readers the stories of several characters, all richly built and convincing, who play an integral part in this effort to start over but (almost) all without knowing who is pulling the strings. Nayler's twisting, turning political thriller has spectacular surprises, grounded by realistic, complex characters who are determined to change their world, however hopeless it may seem. A bold, epic sf story and an inspiring tale about taking down all forms of authoritarianism.

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Starred review from March 15, 2025
Roll over, George Orwell: This post-apocalyptic dystopia makes Airstrip One look like a summer camp. Nayler's sophomore novel is set in a familiar future world in which totalitarian orders rule, with recognizably Putinesque touches in what's called the (n� Russian) Federation, not least an autocratic ruler who's been running the show for decades. One of his victims is an author named- Zoya Alekseyevna Velikanova, exiled to the Siberian taiga after having lost an eye to the security police's rubber bullets. "Just like in Byzantium," she says matter-of-factly, recalling that once deposed, rulers were routinely blinded. Yet she can see well enough to sense what she thinks might be a ghost--and is, in a way, a dead woman walking: Lilia Vitalyevna Rybakova, who's got revolution on her mind. The twist in Nayler's neo-Orwellian world is that the rulers are now AI, part of a process called "rationalization," and the AIs that run the (n� European) Union are going haywire, raising energy prices to unaffordable levels and courting rebellion in the streets, including a Guy Fawkesian burning of Parliament: "Across Europe, power systems were failing. There had been massive data losses. No transport moved." (We don't hear much about the North American Union, but its tyrant has imposed a full communications quarantine: "They were intending to cut themselves off from the rest of the world.") Lilia is in the thick of things, in trouble with the authorities everywhere but able to move around undetected, thanks to a gizmo that, she tells Zoya, "--replaces you with what would be there if you were not." All Nayler's characters are well rounded, but the most interesting, apart from Lilia and Zoya, is the Russian bot-in-chief, Krotov--the power behind the president--who, with his algorithms constantly remade, seems destined to rule forever, forgetting, perhaps, that even Stalin couldn't pull that off. And therein lies a twist... A richly detailed evocation of a grim future that is, sadly, absolutely believable.

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