Where the Axe is buried by Ray Nayler
Freedom!
In his earlier two books, the novel The Mountain in the Sea and the novella The Tusks of Extinction, Nayler mainly focused on non-human consciousness and the risk to possibly sentient but definitely worthy species from human encroachment into their ecosystem. In The Mountain in the Sea, Nayler follows an expedition researching a potentially sentient species of Octopus - but couples that story line with multiple other threads from over-fishing and modern slavery to international espionage and conspiracies. In the Tusks of Extinction, a scientist’s mind is implanted into the brain of a resurrected mammoth to help the mammoth’s herd survive in a world where the last elephants were killed by poachers. Both stories had their merits, but - in the case of The Mountain in the Sea - felt overburdened with side stories or - in The Tusks of Extinction - a bit too fantastical.
His new book, Where the Axe is buried, is similarly broad in scope, touching on AI, political oppression, geopolitics and technology. This time, however, Nayler manages to package his story much more convincingly: Despite multiple story lines only very slowly converging, Nayler doesn't lose focus and most of the many elements of his plot fit together nicely clearly conveying a message of the value of human freedom: Both freedom from oppression and freedom to independently determine ones own fate.
Set in the future, the book's world nevertheless bears a close resemblance to today's: In the West, following populist revolts in many countries, order and satisfaction appear to have been restored through the introduction of virtual Prime Ministers: Artificial Intelligence systems designed to ensure economic advancement while also being fine-tuned to not disrupt the status quo, leading to content but stagnant societies. In the Federation, on the other hand, a clear stand-in for Putin's Russia, society is ruled by fear, all opposition has been crushed, and the country's forever-president continues to rule with the help of a pervasive security apparatus and ensures his own long-term survival by swapping his own body for a younger shell whenever needed.
The first character we meet is Zoya, an opposition activist in the Federation currently exiled to a small residence in the Taiga and author of a forbidden book, The Forever Argument. Despite all the surveillance placed around her exile, she is visited by another opposition member trying to convince her that even after years in exile, her mind might still hold the key to ending the Federation's regime.
Nayler then weaves in Lilia. A scientist from the Federation, she was given the opportunity to leave the country to pursue her research in the UK, where she manages to build a device that allows her to remotely map, but also influence the human brain. Having achieved her scientific break-through she makes the makes the obvious (but necessary for the plot) mistake of returning to the Federation once more to say good-bye to her frail father and promptly finds herself unable to leave and dragged into a vast plot of competing forces trying to use the results of her research to shape the future.
And lastly, we are introduced to Nurlan, a low-level government employee in one of the many unnamed countries run by an artificial Prime Minister, who suddenly is faced with revolutionary uproar as the AI Prime Minister appears to have gone rogue, doubling energy prices every few hours until frustrated citizens try to storm parliament to overthrow their virtual Prime Minister and government.
Throughout the book, Nayler jumps back and forth between these main characters (and a few more), creating a dense plot centered around a conspiracy to quite literally change the Federation's dictator's mind. While some of the sub-plots can be a bit confusing (and some of them could be more clearly resolved in the end as Nayler seems to partially skip over the motivations of some of the minor characters in the book), Nayler has written a fascinating political thriller based on a scientific break-through - Lilia's mind mapping technology - that doesn't have to shy away from being compared with some of the best cold-way (or other) thrillers.
While presenting a fascinating spy novel, Nayler never loses sight of the main point he is trying to make: How oppressive systems perpetuate themselves beyond even their most powerful leaders and how humans the world over accommodate to systems limiting their individual freedoms: For Nayler, this happens not only in the most oppressive regimes, but also in demoocratic societies that can nevertheless stifle human creativity and liberty through the promise of an easy life. Throughout his novel, he makes these points through quotes from Zoya’s fictional book The Forever Argument and characters debating the book's arguments. While banned in the Federation, the book is widely available and read in the West, and yet - in Nayler's view - while people there may talk about how power structures limit their own freedoms, they nevertheless all too easily give in to a state of limited agency in the interest of convenience.
As much as this book has a fascinating and fast-paced plot, it is not without flaws. Just like in The Mountain in the Sea, it appears as if Nayler really had ideas for more than one book, but felt compelled to put them all into one story line: While the idea of the artificial Prime Ministers is interesting in the context of the ongoing discussions about the possible dangers from deploying artificial intelligence systems with more and more capabilities, it has little to do with the rest of the plot. Nayler could easily have made his points around people being complacent to their liberties being curtailed without introducing this sub plot and the associated characters. Nayler is clearly concerned around the pace of artificial intelligence systems being developed and deployed - but maybe those concerns and ideas would have been better kept for his next book. Similarly, the repercussions of the virtual Prime Ministers seemingly going mad create apocalyptic scenarios across Western nations, which Nayler uses to very superficially sketch a vision of smaller communities banding together to re-build in a hostile world - a situation that has filled multiple seasons of more than one television drama and is being covered here in just a few pages. This feels both unnecessary to the core plot of the book as well as a wasted opportunity for a stand-alone story.
Additionally, Nayler brushes over some important details not only on the technologies used (this is a science fiction review site, after all), but more importantly on the motivations of many of his characters. As much as he emphasizes agency and individual liberty, most of his characters ultimately appear to be moved around in a giant game of chess - liberating a country but being caught up in somebody else's game nevertheless.
That being said, Where the Axe is buried is a very entertaining read touching on important subjects - I gave it 5 stars in my Futureboy Goodreads list.