Day One by Nate Kenyon

Published by Thomas Dunne Books on October 1, 2013

The "evil computers become sentient and try to take over the world" plot has been done so many times that it's difficult to breathe fresh life into it. Day One doesn't even try.

The protagonist's name, John Hawke, is the first indicator of Day One's unoriginal nature. Hawke is a hacker turned journalist. In his less disciplined days, he was part of a group called Anonymous that stole secrets from the CIA (because that's what fictional hackers do, at least in mediocre novels). Hawke is disgruntled because he was recently fired by the Times (as he should have been) for hacking into a prominent person's computer, where he discovered child porn.

Hawke, now writing for a tech magazine, is investigating a company called Eclipse. Strange events start to occur all across Manhattan. Copiers and coffee pots become instruments of death. Tablets and cellphones download unauthorized programs. Predictable and uninspired scenes of urban chaos soon follow. These incidents appear to be related to something called Operation Global Blackout. Hawke's friend from Anonymous traced a recent attack on the Justice Department's servers to -- oh happy coincidence! -- Eclipse, putting Hawke in the center of the maelstrom.

The rest of the novel is an extended chase scene as a Computer Gone Bad tries to kill Hawke. Attempts at character development are shallow and unconvincing. Hawke, for instance, still carries scars from catching a glimpse of someone masturbating in a men's room when Hawke was nine years old. Seriously? Hawke has a three-year-old autistic child about whom he is Deeply Concerned, a cheap attempt to generate sympathy for the otherwise unsympathetic Hawke.

Nate Kenyon's awkward prose is often marred by clichés. Hawke avoids authorities "like the plague"; bankers and protesters mix "like oil and water"; people "changed on a dime"; people "vanished into thin air"; Hawke "had a few tricks up his sleeve." Dialog tends to be unrealistically melodramatic, as are descriptions like "Armageddon had descended in a split second's time." It's a remarkably survivable version of Armageddon, at least for Hawke and some of the book's principle characters. Sadly, they are such a pathetic group of whiners that I was rooting for Armageddon to prevail.

Much of the story is too preposterous to believe. The Threat That Endangers the World manages to turn New York City into a ghost town in seconds but can't seem to harm Hawke. The Threat not only has the ability to start cars by remote control, it can shift them into gear and steer them. It can also fill buildings with carbon monoxide by "rerouting" it from the building's heating system. Seriously? There's a switch a computer can activate that will let it poison everyone in an office building? Remind me to find that switch in my building and cover it with duct tape so it doesn't get flipped accidentally. Oh, and when the police and the FBI and the CIA receive orders to "shoot to kill" unarmed American citizens, they follow those orders blindly. Okay, that I might believe, but I'd prefer to think that cops might question illegal orders issued by unseen authorities.

The last "evil computers become sentient and try to take over the world" novel I read was mediocre. Day One is worse. Maybe it's time to retire the plot. As the title implies, the novel sets up a sequel (Day Two?). I will avoid it "like the plague."

NOT RECOMMENDED

Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie

Published by Orbit on October 1, 2013

There are echoes of C.J. Cherryh, Iain Banks, and Frank Herbert in Ancillary Justice. The novel is both familiar and fresh. The writing is powerful and tense. The plot -- about which I will say little, lest I risk spoiling it -- is intelligent and surprising.

The Radchaii are human but they consider themselves superior to other humans. The Lord of the Radch, Anaander Mianaai, controls Radch space with the help of thousands of genetically identical, linked bodies. Extra bodies seem handy (wish I had some) but they prove to have unforeseen consequences. The Radch rule by conquest, annexing other human worlds and forcing their inhabitants to join the Radch or to surrender their bodies to be used as ancillaries, otherwise known as corpse soldiers (an ancient practice that has been mostly abandoned). They justify their actions with the belief that they are imposing order and justice on the universe. They control annexed planets by coopting the privileged class, allowing them to retain their social status provided they embrace the Radch. The one exception is Garsedd, a planet the Radch destroyed because the Garseddai posed a threat the Radch could not tolerate.

The protagonist of Ancillary Justice, having been manufactured by the Radchaai, is sometimes a ship called Justice of Toren, sometimes an ancillary called One Esk, sometimes other ancillaries. As the novel begins, however, the protagonist is called Breq. All of those identities should be the same, but Justice of Toren/One Esk/Breq is having an identity crisis. No longer endowed with the abilities of an AI, Breq has the weaknesses of a human ... without quite being human. In the first pages, Breq saves a Radchaai named Seivarden (who once served on Justice of Toren) from hypothermia. The story then alternates between the present (Breq is tracking someone in order to obtain something ... more than that I won't reveal) and a past in which One Esk was serving the Radchaai, who had just used ruthless means to annex a planet called Shis'urna. The final element of the story is the Presger, a race of aliens who once made pests of themselves by dismantling Radch ships.

The novel's background is more intricate than I've sketched out here. It is initially confusing ... but initial confusion caused by complexity is better than boredom caused by pages of exposition. Everything falls into place well before the novel's midway point. Ann Leckie plays with gender and culture in ways that are interesting but subtle. Her prose is robust.

The story builds upon a familiar moral struggle -- whether to follow unjust orders if the penalty for disobedience is death. If doing the right thing will have dire personal consequences, is it best to do the right thing only when it will make a difference? And how does one know whether doing the right will make a difference? These are difficult questions and Ancillary Justice brings them into sharp focus in different ways. More than one character, not all of them human, must make a choice of that nature. Ancillary Justice makes the point that virtue is easy to achieve in the abstract but easily vanishes when the lives of the "virtuous" are at stake. It makes the equally salient point that it is easy to judge when it isn't your life that is at stake. At the same time, this isn't a preachy novel. Leckie leaves it to the reader to draw whatever lessons might be taken from it. The blend of philosophy and adventure, the imaginative culture-building, and the strong characters all add up to an impressive work of science fiction.

RECOMMENDED

The Golden Trap by Hugh Pentecost

First published in 1967; published by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road on September 25, 2012

Although it was first published in 1967, The Golden Trap doesn't feel dated (except that a suite in a New York hotel can no longer be had for $50). It is the fourth in a series of twenty-two novels that prolific author Judson Phillips, writing as Hugh Pentecost, set in the Beaumont, New York's finest luxury hotel. The Golden Trap could be called a "hotel procedural," an interesting variation on the police procedural with hotel personnel playing the detective roles. The behind-the-scenes look it offers into hotel management is convincing and the detailed atmosphere is realistic.

Mark Haskell handles public relations for the Beaumont. The day John Smith is shot dead in suite B on the tenth floor is a busy one for Haskell. While Haskell is helping a wealthy cougar named Marilyn VanZandt organize a charity ball, George Lovelace checks in. Marilyn recognizes him as a former lover. Lovelace, a man of many names and nationalities, claims Marilyn is mistaken. We soon learn that someone has been trying for months to kill Lovelace and that the killer has tracked him to the hotel. Fortunately for Lovelace, his best friend is Pierre Chambrun, the hotel's manager. Chambrun resolves to keep Lovelace alive and enlists the help of Haskell and Jerry Dodd, the Beaumont's head of security.

In the tradition of "red herring" mystery plots, several guests are staying at the Beaumont who might have reason to welcome Lovelace's demise. It is an improbable coincidence that so many people from around the world who have reason to kill Lovelace are staying in the same New York hotel at the same time, but it is a forgivable coincidence because it makes the story better. Lovelace's chance meeting with Marilyn is improbable enough -- of all the gin joints ... er, hotels in New York, she happens to be in the Beaumont just when Lovelace checks in -- but again, the coincidence is central to the romance that drives a key subplot and I was willing to accept it for the sake of enjoying the story.

The novel's most intriguing question is whether Lovelace is worth protecting. He sees himself as a patriot who killed to protect his country. Others see him as a trigger-happy gunslinger who left an unnecessary trail of bodies in his wake ... or as something even worse. The truth is concealed for most of the novel, leaving the reader (and the hotel staff) to wonder whether Lovelace deserves empathy or death.

The solution to the mystery is clever. Enough clues are planted to give an astute reader a chance to identify the killer (as a less than astute reader, I didn't solve the mystery). Characters are sharply defined. Pentecost's prose style is capable and professional: it never soars but it doesn't get in the way of the story. While there is nothing truly remarkable about The Golden Trap, there's also nothing to dislike about it. It is a solid, enjoyable murder mystery with elements of a spy thriller and a dash of romance that encourages the reader care about the characters.

RECOMMENDED

Snow Hunters by Paul Yoon

Published by Simon & Schuster on August 6, 2013

In 1954, at the age of 25, Yohan leaves a prison camp in a UN truck and boards a Japanese cargo ship crewed by South Koreans. Captured by Americans after he was buried in snow during a bombing, Yohan is the only prisoner who declines repatriation to North Korea. Instead, he accepts an offer to apprentice for Kiyoshi, a Japanese tailor in Brazil, a country of which he has never heard where people speak a language he does not understand. Snow Hunters follows several years of Yohan's new life, with flashbacks to his interment and to his younger days, both before and after his country was divided.

Paul Yoon's debut novel is characterized by fine prose and honest emotion. It is filled with powerful images of war and poverty and of lives that are both unburdened and unaided by technology. The novel is built upon resonant scenes of Yohan's life: helping a blind prisoner play poker with medics; dancing in the snow with a tipsy nurse on Christmas; sitting with two Brazilian children, apparently orphaned, as they sell trinkets; Kiyoshi's tears when his hands become too unsteady to pin a jacket; Yohan's habitual search for lost or discarded objects. This is a story of small kindnesses in an unkind world, of people helping each other in surroundings of misery, of kindnesses repaid in unexpected ways.

Several themes echo through Snow Hunters: fate; the unitary nature of the world we all share; the changes -- generally for the better, temporarily for the worse -- that people and places undergo; the impact that seemingly insignificant people have on others; the simple pleasures of life; the changing perceptions of time ("how time could completely abandon someone" when love enters a life). Snow Hunters is a short novel, written with an economy of language that more writers should emulate, but the story is bigger than it first appears. The ending is perfect in its ambiguity because, for Yohan, it isn't the ending. He has more life to live, and how it will turn out is, as always, a mystery.

RECOMMENDED

The Incrementalists by Steven Brust and Skyler White

Published by Tor Books on September 24, 2013

The "ancient secret society trying to control us all" plot has been done to death, but The Incrementalists takes an unusual (although only partially successful) approach. The novel departs from the norm in two ways: it doesn't feature the mindless chase scenes that too often characterize secret society novels, and the secret society (or most of it) isn't malevolent or power-hungry like the typical ancient secret societies that tries to control us. While the novel's set-up is therefore promising, The Incrementalists too often reads like a romance novel. It isn't a trashy romance novel, but neither is it a compelling love story.

Phil is a member of the Incrementalists, an ancient organization that is modern enough to use email (@incrementalists.org). The Incrementalists strive to make the world a little better. Their tool is meddlework -- meddling with someone's mind to change his or her actions. Not only has the organization been around forever, so have its members ... in a sense. Incrementalists live beyond their deaths when their memories are absorbed by new recruits.

Phil recruits Ren to join the Incrementalists without telling her that she'll be absorbing Celeste, his long-time lover. Ren, on the other hand, doesn't tell Phil that she has her own agenda for learning the business of meddlework. But Celeste has an agenda too, leading to a plot that is filled with conflicting agendas. Another plot wrinkle: Celeste's last memory before her suicide (which should be stored in the Garden where the Incrementalists keep their collective memories) has gone missing.

Meddling is a subtle process, more an act of manipulation than control, and that's another departure from novels with similar themes. Whether meddling, however well-intentioned, is morally right or wrong is a strong theme that creates the opportunity for conflict among the characters, but that theme is underutilized. The plot focuses not on what the Incrementalists do (mostly they fret and quarrel without doing anything) but on an internal conflict within the group. That's both good and bad. It's good to personalize a story. It's bad (or at least disappointing) to set up a large moral dilemma without using it effectively. The story's background details are often more interesting than the story itself.

To a large extent The Incrementalists tells a love story, and like most fictional love stories, it runs a predictable course. It's different from most love stories in that the lovers are masters at manipulation, leaving the reader to wonder whether the love is real or induced by meddling. Unfortunately, that theme too is underutilized. Intrigue is added to the story by Phil's love of both Ren and Celeste (conveniently for him, they sometimes occupy the same body), but that love triangle is more interesting in concept than in execution.

In the end, while The Incrementalists is well-paced, written in capable prose, and often entertaining, it doesn't live up to its potential. The main story is too abstract while the love story is unexciting.  Because the novel is better in concept than in execution, I cannot recommend it with enthusiasm.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS