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Where the Axe Is Buried by Ray Nayler
May. 30th, 2025 01:23 pmWhere the Axe Is Buried
4/5. A near future scifi thriller about the violently authoritarian surveillance state (it’s Russia) where the president is downloaded into successive bodies which the population steadfastly pretends not to notice, and the western european powers that have “rationalized,” i.e., installed AI prime ministers. A book about regime destabilization, and surveillance shadows, and thought control, and inception.
I was reading perfectly acceptable books, and then I picked this up and was like oh damn. Now this is good writing. This is tight (less than 100,000 words, probably) and intense and strange and bleak and hopeful. It stradles several genres and as such I suspect will not satisfy a lot of people: too literary and ambiguous for some, too much thriller for others. But this really landed for me.
Dense, chewy, controlled, beautifully written. Terribly sad on the costs of defying authoritarianism. Hopeful, in a complicated way.
Content notes: State violence Disappearances, camps, etc.
4/5. A near future scifi thriller about the violently authoritarian surveillance state (it’s Russia) where the president is downloaded into successive bodies which the population steadfastly pretends not to notice, and the western european powers that have “rationalized,” i.e., installed AI prime ministers. A book about regime destabilization, and surveillance shadows, and thought control, and inception.
I was reading perfectly acceptable books, and then I picked this up and was like oh damn. Now this is good writing. This is tight (less than 100,000 words, probably) and intense and strange and bleak and hopeful. It stradles several genres and as such I suspect will not satisfy a lot of people: too literary and ambiguous for some, too much thriller for others. But this really landed for me.
Dense, chewy, controlled, beautifully written. Terribly sad on the costs of defying authoritarianism. Hopeful, in a complicated way.
Content notes: State violence Disappearances, camps, etc.
