Review: Neuropath by Scott Bakker

Scott Bakker’s series, The Prince of Nothing (review), hit the SFF world with critical acclaim and a cerebral approach to epic fantasy. Bakker jumps genre in Neuropath to the realm of psychological and techno-thrillers and the same approach of intellectual depth without sacrificing the entertainment value of reading. Neuropath succeeds at both with its weighty implications of cognitive science and a suspenseful thriller plot.

Thomas Bible and Neil Cassidy have been arguing since college as only the closest of friends can – specifically The Argument that is founded in cognitive science about the root of consciousness and free will itself. Thomas, now a professor at Columbia University, has moved on to a family life complete with an ex-wife and 2 kids. In a drunken evening Neil reveals to Thomas that he has been covertly working for the NSA in neuroscience, making unimaginable leaps in neurosurgery and cognitive understanding without the hindrance of ethical constraints. Thomas is horrified when he realizes that the Neil is essentially a rogue agent elevating The Argument to a new level and now one of the FBI’s most wanted.

For a thriller, Neuropath takes a slower pace – the entire book occurs over the course of about two weeks with only a few bursts of action. The real action occurs internally and in verbal sparring as The Argument is laid out repeatedly and the horrors of Neil’s plan become more visible, if not more clear. The appropriate twists occur along the way, calling the anticipated conclusion into question – and the conclusion itself provides the perfect ending for Bakker’s Argument, if not for a reader’s sense of mind.

Thomas and Neil’s Argument is the point of the book and Bakker’s Argument as well – an Author’s Afterward lifts the veil of fiction to the reality of modern cognitive science. Simply said (and I’m sure not very accurately said), The Argument is that consciousness and all that goes with it (such as free will) is an illusion that our brains trick us into believing. This delusion drives the actions of humanity and its many short-comings. The real kicker is that our brains’ ability to rationalize almost insures that we will never allow ourselves to believe The Argument. Neuropath lays out The Argument, all of its disturbing implications and horrific potential.

Fans of philosophy and deep intellectual debate will eat up The Argument as it consumes them – I lost a bit of sleep and have brought its implications into many a conversation since reading Neuropath. But Bakker suffers some of the flaws of a fire and brimstone preacher relentlessly pounding his point into the reader’s head. This righteous repetition eventually becomes tiresome, further encouraging rationalization of The Argument – of course I think that Bakker in all his efforts to convert the reader to the truth of The Argument is as frightened of its implications as the rest of us.

If you read other reviews and commentary of Neuropath, words like disturbing and horrific abound. The physical act of arguing The Argument does in fact horrify. At no point can I actually say that the book is overtly graphic, but Bakker brings the reader to the brink and lets them imagine the rest – which, at least in my case, does lead to horrifically graphic scenes. The direct assault on common moral code and the human condition drives the reader’s reaction and the truly disturbing horror invoked. However, for those that have followed the building buzz, disappointment may be the result of repeatedly hearing how horrific and disturbing Neuropath is.

With Neuropath Bakker succeeds in having his cake and eating too in this intellectually stimulating techno-thriller. It’s not a book for everyone, but does work on multiple levels and will be a book to talk about. 8/10

Related Posts: Scott Bakker Answers Questions Five, Review of The Prince of Nothing Trilogy, Review of The Darkness That Comes Before, Review of The Warrior Prophet, Review of The Thousandfold Thought

The Traveler by John Twelve Hawks

The Traveler refuses to be pigeon-holed into any one genre – it is equal parts spy novel, adventure, techno-thriller, science fiction, fantasy, secret history, and ass-kicking chic-lit. And as a sum of these parts it should satisfy fans of each and all.

Maya has been raised by an elite warrior class known as the Harlequins – but their kind are dying, having been systematically hunted and exterminated by the Tabula, a secret organization seeking a world order. The Harlequins are the sworn protectors of Travelers – mystics, healers, and leaders of mankind who have the ability to travel between the dimensions of reality and are the true enemy of the Tabula their desired world order. The last known Traveler is long dead and Maya seeks a normal life as an ordinary citizen. Her father begs her help on a mission, seeking a pair of brothers who just might be Travelers. The Tabula are wired into the world’s surveillance systems and secretly pull the strings behind most world powers and they know.

Maya is a truly fascinating character who is wonderfully presented. Conflicted, hurt, lonely, and deadly – this isn’t the life she wanted. The other ‘good guys’ are equally interesting and rounded, while the ‘bad guys’ seem just a bit too cliché and uninteresting.

Though the summary above sounds rather SFF, the framework of The Traveler is all spy and techno-thriller. The standard approach to introducing a heroine and her environment is taken, but written with skill enough to not matter – after all, this is a book for the masses, and we’ve come to expect certain things.

The constant and complete surveillance of the world created, where governments seek to control and eliminate true freedom, makes this book the 1984 of a post 9-11 world. Personal freedom is assaulted and destroyed, and the visionaries, the most human of us all, hunted to extinction. The underlying views are neither subtle nor preachy, and they are certainly exaggerated to an extreme that is all the more scary because it rings true. Secret organizations seeking to rule the world aside, the implications and truth sink in and would make the Lone Gunmen cry.

The Traveler garnered lots of attention, maintaining a presence on the international bestseller lists when released in 2005. The attention was largely focused on the paranoia of the book and the author himself, whose identity is not publicly known and who advocates a life ‘off the grid’. Of course if you aren’t interested in all that nonsense mentioned above, it is a very good action-adventure-spy-techno-thriller written with more skill than one usually finds.

The Traveler picks and chooses from numerous genres and delivers a truly entertaining book, meaty with paranoid echoes of the real world. The first entry in the Fourth Realm Trilogy is followed by The Dark River, which I look forward to reading, and you should too – 8/10.

Brasyl by Ian McDonald

Imagine a trip abroad where they don’t speak your language, the climate and smells are all different, the rapid pace makes you believe everyone must be on methamphetamines, and all the while you see clear yet seemingly out of place influences from the good old USA. You’ve got your guidebook in hand, but for all the help it is once you step out of the airport you should throw it away.

“You like this car? You like it?” She was shrieking like a shoutygirl-presenter. João-Batista looking pityingly at her. On the car cams the boys looked as if a bomb had gone off under their Knight Rider LEDS. Don’t bail, Lady Lady Lady, don’t bail. “It’s yours! It’s your big star prize. It’s all right, you’re on a TV game show!”

McDonald drops us into a Brazil where the reader is the tourist in a foreign land, McDonald the ex-pat guide fully immersed in local culture, and it’s a constant struggle at first to keep track of what’s going on.

Brasyl begins in Rio in the year 2006, following a morally ambiguous producer of reality-shock TV setting the stage for her next show. Immediately thrown into a high-octane police chase full of the sights, sounds, and lingua franca of Brazil, the reader is left trying to catch up and make sense what exactly is happening. I imagine this approach is designed to grab hold of the reader with an immediacy they are not prepared for, however, this early disorientation made it harder for me to connect and involve myself in the story. The glossary thoughtfully provided by McDonald offers some reprieve, but breaking the carefully constructed rhythm of the prose looses much of its effectiveness.

Each of the three ultimately inter-related story arcs and their main characters embody the time-line they come from and McDonald’s view of the world as it was, is, and could be. The first arc introduces us to Marcelina Hoffman, trashy television producer. McDonald utilizes Hoffman and her pop-culture ties to orientate the reader to Brazil. Her up-to-the-minute fashion sense and stratospheric ambition form a shallow shell around a confidently clueless core as we see Brazil through her distinctive point of view. Marcelina slowly realizes who she is and what she truly desires in life as she is literally confronted with herself.

In the second arc we jump ahead to a mid-21st Century Brazil and the fringes of an Orwellian society. Here we follow Edson Jesus Oliveira de Freitas, the sixth son of a sixth son, a semi-legit businessman of the slums of São Paulo who becomes enthralled by Fia, a black-market quantum physicist pawning her skills to crack quantum tracking devices in stolen goods. Edson struggles with his identity and sexuality as he cons his way through life as his world overlaps with others, his puppy-love for Fia at the heart it all.

The third arc takes us back in time to 18th Century Brazil where Father Luis Quinn, a Jesuit priest, embarks on a journey to the dark heart of the Amazon to confront a renegade Jesuit missionary. Father Luis is accompanied by the French intellectual and spy, Robert Falcon, a friend and foe. Both are brilliant, introspective, hard and dangerous men with the best of intentions of this dark past.

Brasyl is the first novel by McDonald I have read as the oft-compared River of Gods languishes in The Stack of books to read. McDonald has earned a reputation for his stylistic prose, and he certainly justifies it. Brasyl is a stylistic tour de force where the techno-punk soul of quantum physics permeates his multidimensional Brazil. The emotional response invoked in this American was as otherworldly as any SFF book set in its own created world.

McDonald carefully styles the look and feel of each story arc with a rhythm not often found in SFF writing. It’s almost a beat you could dance to (you, not me) that changes from arc to arc. This rousing Latin beat begs a soundtrack and McDonald happily obliges with a set list provided at the back of the book. The beat of 2006 is fast and reckless with the occasional moderation of elderly, more sedate characters.

Gunga spoke the rhythm, the bass chug, the pulse of the city and the mountain. Médio was the chatterer, the loose and cheeky gossip of the street and the bar, the celebrity news. Violinha was the singer, high over bass and rhythm, hymn over all, dropping onto the rhythm of gunga and médio then cartwheeling away, like the spirit of capoeira itself, into rhythmic flights and plays, feints and improvisations, shaking its ass all over the place.

The beat of the future has the same fast and reckless feel of 2006 with an added bi-polar identity crisis and at times, extreme paranoia.

The loading ramp extends, lowers. Steel hits road. Sparks shower around the brothers Oliveira. Black Metal beckons them again: Come on, come on, on the ramp. Sparks peel away round Edson as he lines up the run. He’s a businessman, not a stunt-rider. Edson edges forward: the concentration pill gives him micro-accelerations and relative velocities. Wheel on wheel off wheel on wheel off, wheel on; then Edson throttles hard, surges forward, and brakes and declutches simultaneously.

The 18th Century slows down to a more traditional and introspective classical dance of events while keeping the feel that Brazil is not like any other place.

Luis Quinn sipped his coffee, rapidly achieving equilibrium with the general environment. An unrelenting climate; no release in the dark of the night. A cigar would be a fine thing. After months of enforced chastity aboard Cristo Redentor, he found his appetite for smoke had returned redoubled. The beginning of attachment, of indiscipline?

While stylistically superb, Brasyl falls short with a lack of resolution of its plot. The 18th Century story arc of Father Luis concludes well, while the other two offer more ambiguous conclusions. Ambiguous conclusions often add strength and the feeling of the right kind of completeness to a plot, and if each of the three story arcs existed independently, this would be the case. The problem arises with the inter-relation of the three arcs and their eventual convergence. At the point of convergence the plot just ends, leaving over-arching questions about the nature of quantum universes, human existence, and the mysterious factions in conflict unanswered. Early ascertains for award recognition may be justified, but for me, Brasyl falls flat at precisely the time it should and could have blown my mind.

Brasyl reflects the high-on-meth, ambitious, and paranoid times suffering an identity crisis emerging in the world around us and infuses it with the Latin beat of the Brazilian melting pot. It’s a view of our world and its possible future directions as reflected in a seemingly warped mirror. Brasyl is a good book, but for me it failed to reach its full potential as a great book, an important book. Even so, dust off the thrown-out guidebook and read Brasyl, but don’t don’t don’t lick the frog.

7.5/10

Keeping It Real by Justina Robson

Multidisciplinary Studies is a buzz term often heard in the realm of higher education. Essentially referring to exactly what it sounds like, it is often praised and criticized by many people, though it’s generally agreed that it is an important part of dealing with our modern, integrated and global world. Genre-bending in the term most often used for a book that seems to fit into more than one existing genre category. Referring to Keeping It Real as genre-bending is not good enough – this book is multidisciplinary.

In Keeping It Real, the near-future Earth as we know it has suffered a catastrophic event – the explosion of a quantum bomb. The affects of this are not what we would generally associate with the explosion of a bomb, such as widespread physical destruction, but the breakdown of dimensional barriers separating parallel worlds that humans were unaware of. The worlds of elves, faeries, elementals, demons, and the dead have been revealed and uneasy integration has begun.

Lila Black is a human agent recovering from extreme injuries suffered at the hands of elfin agents. As a result she has been remade into a human-cyborg, a unique, powerful, and fully integrated super spy. Her new assignment is to guard an eccentric rock star elf under threat from his own kind in a conspiracy of unknown dimensions.

Keeping It Real has been called a book for the twenty-first century and I can see why. A gadgety, techno-punk feel prevails in a story with rock concerts, groupie parties, motorcycle chases, sex, shifting loyalties, and explosions. Ass-kicking female protagonists have become hot sellers, and Agent Black fits the typical mode of a damaged soul struggling to deal with her past as it’s confronted in the present – same story, different setting. In this aspect, Keeping It Real neither succeeds nor fails, it just is.

The flow of the book is somewhat uneven as Robson struggles with her hard sci-fi roots and comes across a bit bi-polar while inconsistent characterization never allowed me to fully care about Lila and the most intriguing characters are essentially ignored. Until the final 100 pages, I was never fully committed to this book and it was too easily set aside; however the final 100 pages generally rocked in spite of continued unevenness.

Keeping It Real is the first installment in the Quantum Gravity Sequence, with the second installment, Selling Out coming to the UK in June. It stands on its own well, as it contains a complete story arc, but leaves overarching questions unresolved – I’m comfortable with not knowing where the story will go next. In the future I hope to see more development of the secondary characters as they were simply more interesting than Lila.

Keeping It Real succeeds as a techno-punk romp through fantasy and science fiction while not quite achieving full integration elsewhere. For me, it scores a 6.5 out of 10 – this book will really appeal to some people while leaving others behind.

Related Posts: Review of Mappa Mundi

Sagramanda by Alan Dean Foster

One of the more interesting directions sci-fi has taken recently is an emphasis on emerging economies and non-Western societies. Hallmarks of this movement include River of Gods by Ian McDonald and his upcoming novel, Brasyl. Similarly inspired, Foster writes of a near-future India in the techno-thriller, Sagramanda.

We are introduced to a cast of players in Sagramanda, a huge megalopolis of 100 million people in India’s east. Taneer is a brilliant scientist who has developed a revolutionary technology a massive global corporation. He and his beautiful, ‘untouchable’ fiancée, Depahli, are in hiding because Taneer has stolen this developed technology with the intent of selling it on the open market for an unimaginable sum of money. Taneer’s father is searching for his disowned son to perform an honor-killing to end the shame brought on by his son’s association with the ‘untouchable’. Chalcedony Schneemann is the problem solver that has been hired to find Taneer and recover the stolen merchandise. Added to the mix are a farmer-turned merchant who helps to broker Taneer’s hopeful sale, a French serial killer, the chief police inspector searching for her, and a hungry tiger prowling the city’s margin.

We follow the various players through the seething streets of Sagramanda – some hunt, some are hunted, and they all converge at a clandestine meeting one night. Of course, not all of them leave it alive.

Sagramanda becomes a character all its own as we see a microcosm of India – the poor, desperately poor, the rich, the tourist, the huge population, the filth, the decadence, and the contrast of old and new – through the eyes the hunters and hunted. The portrayal of India is fascinating – especially for someone like me who has never been there. As I said about John Burdett in relation to Bangkok 8, I don’t know if Foster gets it right, but it feels like he does.

The underlying narrative to this story of Sagramanda is merely serviceable. Yes, it’s interesting, but it’s not particularly memorable and is quite often rather predictable. In a city of 100 million, there are a few too many conveniences of the plot to be believable. The value of Sagramanda is the representation of India – the vehicle is reliable if not remarkable.

Sagramanda rates a 6.5 on the 10-point scale. It’s a fascinating portrayal of near-future India with an average techno-thriller plot holding it together.