Not far in the future the seas have risen and the central latitudes are emptying, but it’s still a good time to be rich in San Francisco, where weapons drones patrol the skies to keep out the multitudinous poor. Irina isn’t rich, not quite, but she does have an artificial memory that gives her perfect recall and lets her act as a medium between her various employers and their AIs, which are complex to the point of opacity. It’s a good gig, paying enough for the annual visits to the Mayo Clinic that keep her from aging.
Kern has no such access; he’s one of the many refugees in the sprawling drone-built favelas on the city’s periphery, where he lives like a monk, training relentlessly in martial arts, scraping by as a thief and an enforcer. Thales is from a different world entirely—the mathematically inclined scion of a Brazilian political clan, he’s fled to L.A. after the attack that left him crippled and his father dead.
A ragged stranger accosts Thales and demands to know how much he can remember. Kern flees for his life after robbing the wrong mark. Irina finds a secret in the reflection of a laptop’s screen in her employer’s eyeglasses. None are safe as they’re pushed together by subtle forces that stay just out of sight.
This book is going to be tricky to review. Oddly enough, it kind of reminded me of Orphan Black a little bit. It might have been the chapter titles and the light bio/cyber-punk vibe that was going on.
While I didn't dislike it, this book didn't really grab my attention all the way. I was interested in the concept and the world-building and the attention to detail that Zachary Mason achieves in this outing.
This book's greatest achievement by far is the writing and the world-building. The writing is really disorienting at times, which works well for a book like this. Zachary Mason has a strong writing voice, and he builds his near-future world with ease. He's a really gifted writer in this regard. I could very easily imagine this happening; usually with SF novels of this type, there's usually at least one moment where I say "that wouldn't happen!" That didn't happen with this book. His writing style is easy to follow and he creates a world just so disparate from our own that it works. I liked that about this book. If I was judging this book based solely on the writing style, it would for sure get a 4+ rating from me.
Going off of that, the attention to detail for the bots, AIs and gizmo-y stuff was amazing. I think Zachary Mason has some background in I.T. or computer programming, which comes in handy for this world. I'm not super-into this sort of stuff, but I always like to broaden my horizons when it comes to reading. It was rather dense for my liking at times which took me out of it a little bit, and I found myself skimming when it got to be too dense for me. If it was drawn back a few notches, my enjoyment level would have gone up a little.
While the writing style and world-building was excellent, I felt like the characters were not as developed as they could have been. I felt sympathy for them in their plights at certain moments, but I didn't really notice any defining characteristics, and they didn't really grow as much as people or characters. Since I'm all about characters and finding what makes them tick, not having that in this book was a let-down, and was ultimately why I didn't enjoy it as much as I wanted to.
All in all, I was kind of disappointed by this book. While it wasn't bad, it just didn't get my attention, the characters were under-developed, and the narrative got super-dense at times. I also found that the storylines didn't converge until the very end. I know some people who would love this book. The writing style and world building were incredible and Zachary Mason has a real talent for writing and creating realistic future worlds, but it really wasn't my cup of tea on the whole. I'm going to give Void Star 2.5/5 - it just didn't work for me.
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