Brilliance

It’s set in a future where non-neurotypical people (demonized as “twists” by society) are threatening the status quo of the “normal” population with their unique gifts. Divorcé Nick Cooper is a noirish government agent who works for the dully named Department of Analysis and Response in a U.S.–funded agency, Equitable Services. His job is to track down criminals who use their gifts for ill. These aren’t the well-worn tropes of the superhero genre—for example, Cooper’s gift is for predictive analysis, allowing him to see what will happen before it happens and react. It’s a vision that offers up bone-crunching violence and a plausible future that is far more terrifying than it might seem on the surface. We first meet show more Cooper as he’s engaging an abnorm in a pitched rooftop chase. Before plunging to her death, she warns Cooper, “You can’t stop the future. All you can do is pick a side.” The book is ultimately about a standoff between a terrorist who dubs himself “John Smith,” Cooper, and a woman, Shannon Azzi, who may or may not be on Smith’s side. show less

I was puzzled to find a quote from Lee Child, who writes the Jack Reacher books, on the cover of this science fiction novel. After I finished “Brilliance” I was clear on why Child was on the cover, Brilliance is much closer to a Jack Reacher story than a typical science fiction novel. Given that Lee Child described “Brilliance” as “the kind of story you’ve never read before.” I can only assume he rarely reads science fiction and never goes near graphic novels.

“Brilliance” is set in an alternative modern-day USA, in a reality where, since the 1980’s, one percent of the population have been born “gifted” with genius level abilities that leave normal people in the dust. The alternative USA is much like our USA, so show more naturally the reaction of the government to the “gifted” is to co-opt the ones they can use and declare the rest to be security threats that are targeted for execution.

The main twist in “Brilliance” is that our hero, one of the gifted, is working for the government, tracking down and killing his own kind. This behaviour is not unusual in fiction or in real life but I found the reason for it difficult to credit – patriotism.

Our hero is brilliant at reading body language and recognising patterns. He’s married. He has two children. He seems rational. Yet he spends his time following orders and killing people. At the start of the book, he’s a sort of mutant Jack Bauer, unquestioningly loyal and willing to do whatever it takes to achieve his mission. Perhaps this doesn’t seem implausible in America, but to me, this kind of behaviour suggests either mental illness or a self-serving refusal to take accountability for his actions. I spend much of the first half of the book hoping the hero would be put out of my misery.

Of course, in the end, our hero realises that he has been used by evil men to do evil things (Well, DUH! Like that’s a surprise when you’re working for one of the US intelligence services) and has to dig himself out of the hole he’s in.

I still didn’t like him but I was intrigued to know how he was going to defeat the all-powerful bad guys (just like in the Jack Reacher novels).

I enjoyed the novel as a thriller. The pace was good, the action scenes worked and the plot took the right number of twists. As science fiction it added nothing new but it held its own. I thought the Academy system used to control the gifted children was clever, plausible and truly evil. I also liked the way our hero was forced to rethink his position (or perhaps think honestly for the first time) as he is brought into contact with the people he has been hunting.

The dialogue is sometimes a little flat and the novel reads a little too much like a movie script, but it was a fun read that kept my attention. show less

I would like to thank Thomas & Mercer, as well as NetGalley, for a copy of this ebook to review. Though I received this ebook for free, that has no impact upon the honesty of my review.

Goodreads Teaser: In Wyoming, a little girl reads people’s darkest secrets by the way they fold their arms. In New York, a man sensing patterns in the stock market racks up $300 billion. In Chicago, a woman can go invisible by being where no one is looking. They’re called "brilliants," and since 1980, one percent of people have been born this way. Nick Cooper is among them; a federal agent, Cooper has gifts rendering him exceptional at hunting terrorists. His latest target may be the most dangerous man alive, a brilliant drenched in blood and intent show more on provoking civil war. But to catch him, Cooper will have to violate everything he believes in - and betray his own kind.

From Marcus Sakey, "a modern master of suspense" (Chicago Sun-Times) and "one of our best storytellers" (Michael Connelly), comes an adventure that’s at once breakneck thriller and shrewd social commentary; a gripping tale of a world fundamentally different and yet horrifyingly similar to our own, where being born gifted can be a terrible curse.

As the first book of a series I'd expected this to be heavy on the world building and character development, but the two dovetailed nicely, cutting down on the slower material. This story essentially explodes off the page from the beginning until the end.

What really made this book work for me was how focused it was on the personalities. Other books about people with extraordinary mental abilities often get stuck in the description and use of those abilities, sometimes forgetting the person wielding them. Not Brilliance. Here we get deep into Nick Cooper's psyche and all that makes him tick. As we, and he, learn more about who he is and how he relates to the world around him he becomes the force that moves the story forward. His relationships bring in new characters and their relation to Cooper determines how much we learn about them in most cases.

Cooper's life is one of action, and pretty much always has been. He's a faithful believer in what he's doing, which is protecting the world from the abnorms gone rogue. But the reason he's the best at what he does is the fact that he too is an abnorm, or twist as he likes to call them. But part of the problem is that his work has cut him off from contact with others like him, something he isn't consciously aware is a problem. But at his core, his deepest belief is in protecting his family. Everything he does comes back to wanting a better, safer world for his two kids to grow up in. And that's what makes him so damned relatable. Not his abilities, not his faith that what he's doing is the right thing, but his love of his kids. But to protect them he'll have to step outside his safety zone, quite literally. He will have to become the very thing he hunts, and make everyone believe it's true if he's to have even a chance of pulling this off.

Following Cooper through his personal and professional interactions is like riding a roller coaster blindfolded. With this story's twists and turns you simply never know where you'll end up or what's coming next. And that's what makes this such an exhilarating read. Well that and the layers of commentary on not just the social system in his world, but how it's reflected in ours. So you can read this simply for the thrills involved, or for the messages included, or like me you can absorb them both. Though I'll say that I often stayed in the story and only got back to the messages on an active level upon putting the book down, and that didn't happen very often once I began reading. But both the thrills and messages are still percolating in my mind as I write this, and I'm sure they'll continue to do so as I read the next book, and the one coming after that. And I can't wait to get started on them! show less

[Cross-posted to Knite Writes]

Plot

The “brilliants” first appeared in the 1980s. One percent of all children born since then have “brilliant” abilities — they are savants without the crippling mental impairments. Some are capable of seeing all the patterns in the world. Some can dream up program codes that no normal human being could ever conceive. Some can defeat the best chess masters in the world…at the same time. And some can make $300 billion dollars off the stock market — and force the world to shut it down.

2013. Nick Cooper is a tier one brilliant who does the unthinkable: he catches (and sometimes kills) criminal brilliants. Having worked for the DAR (a government agency that keeps brilliants “in line”) since show more its inception, he’s a strong believer in the idea that only the government can prevent war between the brilliants and normals.

The world was fascinated by the brilliants at first. Of course. But when the markets were shuttered, when an activist turned terrorist named “John Smith” took out 73 innocents in a restaurant shooting, the world started to fear them. They started to fear their own inadequacy. Their inevitable obsolescence in the face of nearly infinite intellectual superiority.

Nowadays, all tier one brilliant children are sent to brainwashing centers called “academies” that teach them to hate and fear their own kind and only trust normals. Nowadays, Nick Cooper is regularly on the hunt for anyone and everyone related to John Smith. Nowadays, brilliant terrorists are throwing themselves off rooftops to protect their secrets. Nowadays, Agent Cooper’s belief in the system is starting to bend under the pressure.

His four-year-old daughter is a tier one brilliant, after all, and once the government finds out, she’ll be taken and locked up in a school of abuse and manipulation.

So, yeah, dissonance.

That’s the setup, anyway.

The story begins with Cooper watching a criminal brilliant named Alex commit suicide by jumping off a roof. Just so she won’t get caught and reveal her secrets when tortured. Disturbed by this turn of events, Cooper returns to DC convinced that something big is about to happen — Alex was in league with John Smith. When he gets back to the DAR office, he snatches Alex’s brother from the hands of a lower agent named Dickinson and convinces the man to help them catch whatever contact he is supposed to meet for his (and his sister’s) mission to sabotage military technology.

So Cooper, best friend/colleague Quinn, and a number of others stakeout the rendezvous location. Then Alex’s brother gets blown up. By a pretty woman who was standing behind Cooper the whole time. Oops.

And from here on out, the novel turns into a rapid avalanche of action and revelation.

Cooper figures out that John Smith is planning to blow up the new and improved stock exchange. He gets there in time to stop it, finds the pretty woman who blew up Alex’s brother, and…fails at the last second to actually prevent the bombs from going off. 1100 people die. Oops again.

As he’s recovering from the ordeal, Cooper gets an idea — to take the blame for the bombing, go under deep cover, and find his way to John Smith. Then assassinate the bastard.

In exchange, he gets his boss, Peters, to promise that his beloved daughter Kate will never end up in an academy.

Then, about 500 things happen in rapid succession. I’ll cover, like, ten.

1.) After six months as a fugitive, Cooper runs into the pretty girl again — Shannon. They team up and agree to help each other get to Wyoming, where the man who snagged $300 billion dollars from the stock market, Erik Epstein, has bought half the state and made it into a mini-country safe for brilliants.

2.) Cooper and Shannon make it to Wyoming, where they meet Epstein. Cooper gets the honor of meeting the real Epstein — turns out the guy on TV is his better-looking brother. Epstein is actually a hermit who spends his time in a data planetarium watching the patterns of the world. Epstein asks Cooper to kill John Smith. Since that’s what Cooper wants to do anyway, he agrees.

3.) Cooper and Shannon go their separate ways. Cooper finds John Smith’s lovely cabin in the woods and sneaks in to assassinate him.

4.) The truth becomes known! Turns out Smith didn’t actually murder all those people. It was Peters, the head of the DAR. He’s an evil, murderous nutcase who purposely set up the almost-war between brilliants and normals because he needed to make sure public sentiment remained against them. Otherwise, he knew the government would lose control over the brilliants. And we couldn’t have that, could we?

5.) Cooper has a bit of a breakdown at the revelation he’s been helping a homicidal nutcase for most of his adult life. He gets over it though and has sex with Shannon. Then he finds out she was sent to lure him to Wyoming by John Smith. Yikes.

6.) Smith tells Cooper that Peters has some kind of insurance policy to ensure nothing bad ever happens to him; it’s a video with something important on it. Smith gets Cooper to agree to steal the video.

7.) Back in DC, Cooper sneaks into Peters’ dead wife’s family crypt (yes, really) and finds the drive with the video on it. Unfortunately, he trips a motion sensor and gets a SWAT team on his tail. Luckily, Quinn is there and lets him go despite almost believing Cooper is a bad guy — that’s what friends are for, after all.

8.) Unfortunately (again), Peters is holding Cooper’s entire family hostage. Cooper recruits Quinn and Shannon to help him free his family. After a showdown in an office building, Cooper kills Peters by pushing him off a rooftop. Yay!

9.) Cooper decides to make Peters’ video public — it’s a video of Peters and the freaking President of the United States plotting the restaurant attack blamed on Smith. (Peters was also responsible for the stock exchange bombing, by the way.)

10.) Coopers reunites with his family. Yes! A happy-ish end…

“End of Book One”

Never mind.

-cue sequel-

___

My Take

Hot damn! This book takes off and never stops going. If you like fast-paced alternate-universe thrillers, this is the book for you! Thriller is not a genre I read often, and I was actually interested in this book because I didn’t know it was one. If I’d noticed it was listed in the thriller category, I probably never would have bought it. Glad I dodged that bullet. Jeez. I would have been sore to learn I missed such a great story.

Not that it’s entirely original. I’ve seen people saying it’s a more subtle X-men and what not, but I think the idea is more original than that. The execution is a little predictable in places — it goes for several typical thriller devices, such as Evil All Along and Good All Along (sort of), among others. To be honest, I guessed who the antagonist was in Chapter 3 (along with most of what was going to happen), but that didn’t negate my enjoyment of the story. I like dramatic irony.

The best thing about Brilliance was the way the brilliants vs. normals issue was so realistically handled. You can very easily imagine yourself in this world, where truly gifted people are being discriminated against because the average joe is so deathly afraid of being inferior. Terrified that the brilliants are going to take over and leave everyone else in the dust. Rights groups. Terrorism. Dystopian government bills mandating the microchipping of brilliants. It’s all part of the package.

Honestly, this book was just a great, fast, fun, exciting, speculative thriller, and despite being a good 450 pages, I zipped through it in about nine hours over the course of a few days. It reads very quickly. No doubt something Sakey intended, given his experience with the genre. He knows how to pace.

All in all, this book is a great start to what I believe may be a trilogy. Although I’m not entirely sure. I just know the sequel comes out in 2014. How do I know that? Well, this book told me so. And it also gave me the sequel’s prologue. Apparently, Sakey also knows how to sneakily get people interested in a sequel — by not saying there is one until the end of the first book and then slapping you with a juicy excerpt.

Clever. Very clever.

And slightly cruel.

No, seriously, I thought this book was great.

___

Writing

Sakey’s writing style is perfectly suited to his story and genre. I found it a bit odd and “jerky” at first, like driving a manual for the first time, but as soon as the action really picked up a couple chapters in, I got it. The words started flying by with an almost flawless blend of detail, dialogue, and action as soon as the pace quickened. If anything, Sakey knows thriller-structure like the back of his hand. It’s probably a bit of a two-edged sword, given the philosophical and moral messages embedded in the story; he has to be careful not to overpower the core themes with the action-intense thriller plot. He managed it reasonably well here. I hope he’s able to keep it up (and improve it even more) in the sequel.

___

It It Worth Reading?

Yes. Buy it now. The e-book is $4.99. The paperback is $8.97. Go grab it! It’s a fast read (despite its length), intriguing, action-packed, and has a host of interesting characters. While some readers may find the plot a bit predictable (it is, I admit, on several levels), that didn’t damage my ability to enjoy the novel at all. Which is a good sign, in my book. I knew about 80% of what was going to happen, but I still didn’t find it boring. Not sure how Sakey did that, actually…Hm. Anyway, buy it!

___

Rating

4.5/5 show less

The premise for this series is very interesting. People fear what they don't understand. People with unusual "abnormal" skills are seen as a threat to "normal" people and chaos ensues. Very well written, the characters are complete and the suspense will get your heart going. I plan to finish the series.

If it hadn't been for the fact that this book was free and mentioned "gifted" people in it I never would have chosen it as something to read for review--it's not the normal genre I read--and I would have missed out on an excellent, powerful story. And it appears that even though the book won't be released for months yet (as of this writing), the movie is already in development, which I don't find surprising at all. I'd finished the book before discovering that info; this after thinking it would make a great movie. I don't give out 5 star reviews very often, but wow, this story blew me away.

Back in the 80s, about one percent of the population--abnorms-- started being born with gifts. Not necessarily anything flashy or superhero-like, but show more it gives them an edge over norms. An abnorm abused his gift for personal gain by making billions on the stock market before the market was shut down totally, ruining the financial lives of others, so of course now all abnorms are a threat and those with stronger gifts must be controlled by the government. Some abnorms, not liking the limits put on their lives--heck, they're Americans too--are making waves and a war is about to begin.

Nick Cooper is an abnorm, born before children with a strong gift were tested and sent to academies to be brainwashed while being trained how to control their gifts so they could eventually work for the government. He's got a strong sense of patriotism and works for the Department of Analysis and Response (DAR), leading his team with seemingly endless resources to bring in or take out the gifted who pose a threat. And right now the biggest threat is John Smith, an abnorm who is declaring war and it doesn't matter how many civilians he takes out to make his point.

Cooper's ability is to read patterns, including those in people, making it easy for him to know the next move they're going to make, both with physical movement as well as their plans, making him an asset to DAR. Cooper ends up going deep undercover to take out the terrorist and make the world a safer place for his kids. Only along the way he starts to wonder if he really is one of the good guys as he meets and sees how other abnorms live and are being affected by the rules.

Wow, I don't know how much to say without giving much more away. Even though this is fiction, I could easily see the same types of response in today's world if some people were born this way. It'll definitely make you think, especially as we see more than one side of the situation. The story grabbed me right away and is told from Cooper's point of view. It's first and foremost a thriller/crime novel set in a futuristic world, with the science fiction taking a backseat to the hunt.

The plot, the characters, the details, action and emotions make this one of the best books I've read this year. I will definitely be looking at other books by this author.

Read as an ARC for review for Amazon Vine Voice show less

[Cross-posted to Knite Writes]

Wow. This book takes off and never stops going. If you like fast-paced alternate-universe thrillers, this is the book for you! Thriller is not a genre I read often, and I was actually interested in this book because I didn’t know it was one. If I’d noticed it was listed in the thriller category, I probably never would have bought it. Glad I dodged that bullet. Jeez. I would have been sore to learn I missed such a great story.

Not that it’s entirely original. I’ve seen people saying it’s a more subtle X-men and what not, but I think the idea is more original than that. The execution is a little predictable in places — it goes for several typical thriller devices, such as Evil All Along and Good show more All Along (sort of), among others. To be honest, I guessed who the antagonist was in Chapter 3 (along with most of what was going to happen), but that didn’t negate my enjoyment of the story. I like dramatic irony.

The best thing about Brilliance was the way the brilliants vs. normals issue was so realistically handled. You can very easily imagine yourself in this world, where truly gifted people are being discriminated against because the average joe is so deathly afraid of being inferior. Terrified that the brilliants are going to take over and leave everyone else in the dust. Rights groups. Terrorism. Dystopian government bills mandating the microchipping of brilliants. It’s all part of the package.

Honestly, this book was just a great, fast, fun, exciting, speculative thriller, and despite being a good 450 pages, I zipped through it in about nine hours over the course of a few days. It reads very quickly. No doubt something Sakey intended, given his experience with the genre. He knows how to pace.

All in all, this book is a great start to what I believe may be a trilogy. Although I’m not entirely sure. I just know the sequel comes out in 2014. How do I know that? Well, this book told me so. And it also gave me the sequel’s prologue. Apparently, Sakey also knows how to sneakily get people interested in a sequel — by not saying there is one until the end of the first book and then slapping you with a juicy excerpt.

Clever. Very clever.

And slightly cruel.

No, seriously, I thought this book was great. show less