Where the Axe Is Buried

"All systems fail. The result can be catastrophic, or generative. Most often, they are a mixture of both." - Ray Nayler.

Having been following Ray Nayler's writing career since he began writing long-form speculative fiction, I've been impressed, but felt he was still feeling his way forward to writing THAT novel. This book may well be that novel, as Nayler gives you a dystopic thriller which remains propulsive even when he opted for a mosaic structure; this is where his efforts as a short-story writer have probably served him well.

I'm not going too talk to much in detail, because this is a new enough book that I don't feel like spoiling too much. However, what we have here is a work that feels like it's in conversation with cutting-edge show more social thought at the same time as it is with classic 20th-century dystopian literature, written by a man with a young daughter who is pissed off about her future prospects.

My expectation is that this book will remain in my top-five novels at the end of the year. show less

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: 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 show more 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 Buriedcombines the story of a near-impossible revolutionary operation with a blistering indictment of the many forms of authoritarianism that suffocate human freedom.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Political allegory is risky for authors to indulge themselves by creating. "The irony that haunts our entire history is that we humans have been the ones standing in the way of our own happiness the whole time" is a pithy truism. It's not much to hang a novel on.

Yet hang it does. The near-future techno-dystopia is all too real, all too probable, and dankly depressingly akin to the tech...bros...in charge of the most important functions of infrastructure's clear intentions. Why is "hacking" a crime? Because it interferes with the Aynholes' desires to install ransomware in all societal functions to exert supreme control over all humans. "The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me," is Ayn Rand's own deeply evil, greedy, and selfish distillation of the deeply evil, selfish, and destructive soi-disant "philosophy" entrenched in the tech industry, that reaches apotheosis in this story.

There are no good, humane systems in this novel, albeit they are uniformly very human-centered. Control of Humanity has always been at the center of all social and governmental systems throughout time. The eternal tension between the ideal of individual liberty and the safety of others has never, in my opinion can never, be anything more than temporarily balanced. It's the moment of imbalance, the time when the system built is not in equilibrium that makes this a novel not a short story. Looking into a dark and a deep void is courting vertigo. It's vertigo, a sense of the ground deciding it's not going to support one's weight any longer that defined this story to me.

Author Nayler blew past the discomfiting (to me) notion of AI government leaders into nightmare territory with the Federation president whose personality is digitized and downloaded time and time again into fresh bodies. An immortal being, like the Meths in Richard K. Morgan's Altered Carbon, will not in any meaningful way be human. I don't even think the present-day model for this character is human. Well, genetically so but not humane or honorable in human terms. Be that as it may...this is a cautionary tale about ignoring mile-long freight trains barreling towards you. You will get flattened.

“What a world, Nikolai,” the president had said. “no old age, no sickness, and no death. Finally, we can have both our wisdom and our health.”

The president said we—but it was only he who could have those things. It was only he who could escape old age, sickness, and death.”

Like the immense benefits promised to thee and me in the rollout of "AI" there's a very, very low likelihood of anyone under billionaire status deriving more than the tiniest benefits, and as few of those as they can manage, from "AI". Assuming it's ever better than it is at this moment, where the divide is already stark, it will immiserate billions and make greedy oligarchs a scoche richer.

The essence of the story is:

“That was how it was. One day you had your own country. Next day you were a refugee. You were in a line, waiting to be someone again. To be legal again. Not to be nothing.

You could spend your whole life waiting.”

...and you will.

It's a bitter pill of a tale written by Author Naylor from a far greater pool of knowledge than mine on every story axis. It is not me, an old, bitter, angry socialist, shouting at the clouds the tech...bros...float atop. It is one of their own saying, "pay attention now before you pay a very steep price for lazy inattention."

It behooves us without his knowledge, or his storytelling nous, to listen up while we can. show less

In contrast to much publisher-driven techno-thriller fiction—fast, plausible, and immediately forgettable—Where the Axe Is Buried asks for judgment rather than adrenaline. It leaves no clean answers, no viable collective solutions, and no comforting belief that scale can be redeemed by good intentions. That refusal is not nihilism; it is seriousness. The book lingers because it does not resolve its questions for you—and does not allow you to resolve them cheaply. by chatgpt

Where the Axe Is Buried is a change of pace for Ray Nayler. His first two books, The Mountain in the Sea and The Tusks of Extinction, dealt with animal intelligence. Where the Axe Is Buried is an Orwellian drama with a future Cold War vibe. The Western states have turned governance over to AIs called PMs. Meanwhile, the East has used biotech to make its autarch almost immortal. The focus shifts among a handful of characters on both sides. The arc of the story reveals how important it is to resist tyranny. At one point, Nurlan, a nebbish who reminds me of 1984’s Winston Smith, realizes he doesn’t own a single book until he finds a coverless tract that declares resistance “keeps us not only honest, but human. Without it, any of us show more is a monster” (236). Unlike poor Winston, Nayler’s characters find creative ways to resist. show less

In a world where Russia/environs are controlled by a totalitarian surveillance state, and the “free” world is run by artificially intelligent prime ministers, a new technology arises—one that allows access to a person’s mental state, and maybe more. A Russian educated in the West who returned and was trapped, along with a dissident living in internal exile, may be the key to everything. How does one rebel in such circumstances? How should we think about the people who don’t? I had a few worldbuilding questions, but it was a great exploration of the threat of surveillance in an increasingly networked world and recommend it for anyone who can stand reading about oppression in a world that might not be very far from ours.

Lots of political allegory. Multiple points of view. Basically, a discussion on AI and does a logic driven political system really benefit everyone. I loved the character of Palmer, just some dude doing a warehouse job, wanting to enjoy the simple things with his girl. While the author worked hard to bring the story full circle, the ending was left open, and you are allowed to make your own conclusions.

The pacing is not always great, but overall a great read with great & novel ideas. The end was quite poetic & I liked that Nayler tries to give a positive outlook here.