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Where the Axe Is Buried
Where the Axe Is Buried: A Novel | Ray Nayler
5 posts | 4 read | 2 to read
All systems fail. All societies crumble. All worlds end. In the authoritarian Federation, there is a plot to assassinate and replace the President, a man who has downloaded his mind to a succession of new bodies to maintain his grip on power. Meanwhile, on the fringes of a Western Europe that has renounced human governance in favor of ostensibly more efficient, objective, and peaceful AI Prime Ministers, an experimental artificial mind is malfunctioning, threatening to set off a chain of events that may spell the end of the Western world. As the Federation and the West both start to crumble, Lilia, the brilliant scientist whose invention may be central to bringing down the seemingly immortal President, goes on the run, trying to break out from a near-impenetrable web of Federation surveillance. Her fate is bound up with a worldwide group of others fighting against the global status quo: Palmer, the man Lilia left behind in London, desperate to solve the mystery of her disappearance; Zoya, a veteran activist imprisoned in the taiga, whose book has inspired a revolutionary movement; Nikolai, the President’s personal physician, who has been forced into more and more harrowing decisions as he navigates the Federation’s palace politics; and Nurlan, the hapless parliamentary staffer whose attempt to save his Republic goes terribly awry. And then there is Krotov, head of the Federation’s security services, whose plots, agents, and assassins are everywhere. Following the success of his debut novel, The Mountain in the Sea, Ray Nayler launches readers into a thrilling near-future world of geopolitical espionage. A cybernetic novel of political intrigue, Where the Axe is Buried combines the story of a near-impossible revolutionary operation with a blistering indictment of the many forms of authoritarianism that suffocate human freedom.
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Decalino
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Pickpick

In a future Europe where most western countries have installed AI PMs to "rationalize" society, Lilia is trapped in her authoritarian homeland after what was meant to be a brief visit to see her aging father, while in possession of dangerous knowledge.This timely book explores the fate of dissidents, the price of resistance, the turmoil of revolution and the forever argument that is true freedom. Nayler is officially a must-read author for me.

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BookishTrish
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Mehso-so

AI is bad. Dictators are bad. AI dictators are bad. At least I think that‘s what I read. Not my favourite Nayler.

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Robotswithpersonality
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Mehso-so

I want to champion this book for the messaging it put front and centre but I'm hampered by a few factors, some of which are subjective:
1) Something about the pacing had me regularly courting a reading slump. Following multiple people can sometimes ensure you don't end up with deadspace in the plot, and sometimes it means that the reader constantly feels like none of the storylines are moving as fluidly as they should 1/?

Robotswithpersonality 2/? (not the same as skillfully building tension). I think I wouldn't have had the sense that things should have moved faster if I wasn't waiting for something to happen for three or four characters at once.
2) I think there has to be a balance when a book is both sci fi and social commentary (as often as those two are paired together), otherwise, we'd be better off with a non-fiction essay collection. Perhaps I'm biased by the impact of the
3w
Robotswithpersonality 3/? recently read, superb, One Day, Everyone Will Have Been Against This by Omar El Akkad and On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder, contrasted with my negative reaction to also recently read Playground by Richard Powers, but an endless refrain on the bad of the world, especially aided by AI technology, making most characters suffer (arguably with slightly more hope at the end of this one) is not apparently the most useful way to deliver the message to me 3w
Robotswithpersonality 4/? I think perhaps I'm cautionary tale-d out.
3) A related, additional critique, it's hard to do a book that's covering both the risks inherent in artificial intelligence, in increasing our reliance on technology, alongside concerns about the latest rise in authoritarianism and the surveillance state. For me, it ends up feeling like you didn't give either issue your full attention. And while Nayler did his best to present a harrowing future,
3w
Robotswithpersonality 5/? , when you've read We the Living and 1984...I've already hit my personal threshold for poignancy of human misery related to the latter topics in fiction, and I didn't need more. 3w
Robotswithpersonality 6/6 There are some innovations in the sci-fi future tech introduced, but overall this had the flavour of something I've read before, that I found more impactful in an earlier iteration. I'm sure it will find its audience with others who may have encountered the concerns presented less often, or are now encountering it in a way that speaks to them more directly. 3w
10 likes5 comments
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Robotswithpersonality
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Today's 'scratched my brain just right' sentence.

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sebrittainclark
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Pickpick

5/5

The Federation is ruled by The President, who thanks to technology will never die. The West is under the rule of AI MPs who haven't changed anything. On the brink of the world either being destroyed or changed, many lives are intertwined.

This is an incredible dystopian novel imaging a techno-authoritarian future that considers what is good and what is evil and what does it mean to act. It is a complicated story, and I could not put it down.

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