BOOK REVIEW: The Nexus Trilogy by Ramez Naam

Ramez Naam's Nexus trilogy consists of  the books Nexus, Crux and Apex. The series takes place in the year 2040 and beyond. The central character is Kaden Lane, who invented a drug called Nexus which allows the human brain to be programmed and networked like a computer. Various books in the series have won multiple awards: the Prometheus award (2014), Philip K. Dick award (2015).
The first book Nexus in the series was optioned in 2013 by Paramount to be made into a film. The entire series is a heckuva fun ride; I inhaled all three books during Thanksgiving break last year. They are incredibly hard to put down once you start them. Beware!

Excellent SCIENCE fiction action-packed thriller!

I was skeptical at first about this book (there's a LOT of mumbo jumbo and touchy-feely language in the very beginning) but  I became increasingly enthralled since after the opening sequence Nexus hurtles along at a breakneck pace, introducing nuanced and interesting dilemmas for the characters as the story rushes forward.

Any STEM academic will recognize the cultural milieu in which much of the story in Nexus takes place. The main character is Kade Lane, a late-stage graduate student who has discovered a breakthrough to expand the Nexus operating system to enhance the duration and intensity by which human brains can interact with each other remotely. There is a lot of clever-sounding technobabble involving computational neuroscience, programming and biology that will appeal to most scientifically oriented readers.

Additionally, the world building of Nexus is top notch. The story is set in the mid-21st century and includes excerpts of documents which refers to (future) historical events which give a compelling sense of verisimilitude to the book. For example, one of the primary antagonists in the plot is Samantha (Sam) Cataranes, who works for the Emerging Risks Directorate (ERD) of the Department of Homeland Security. The ERD uses all sorts of technological forms of surveillance and weaponry to protect the United States from various technological advances that are perceived to be destabilizing or open to potential exploitation by evildoers. As someone who works inside a federal agency, the depiction of government action  (and inaction) appear to be right on point.

The plot follows Kade and Sam as they go to an international biotechnology conference in Bangkok Thailand in order to meet the world's leading scientist in the area of nanotechnology (who is going to offer Kade a postdoc position in her lab) and teach her more about how Kade's scientific breakthrough could change the world (and the humans who live in it). Of course there are people who are determined to maintain the status quo and they want to steal Kade's invention and use it for their ends (or suppress it's development). The struggle between these forces is thrillingly depicted in an exciting and suspenseful way by the author, Ramez Naam.

If you liked Marcus Sakey's Brilliance trilogy (and I certainly did), I'm confident that you will enjoy Nexus. I am looking forward to reading the rest of the Nexus trilogy and hope that it maintain's its quality and energy.

Title: Nexus.
Author: Ramez Naam.
Paperback: 460 pages.
Publisher: Bad Robot.
Date Published: December 18, 2012.
Date Read: November 23, 2016.

OVERALL GRADE: A (4.0/4.0).
PLOT: A.
IMAGERY: A-.
IMPACT: A+.
WRITING: A.

Very fun technothriller!

The second book in the Nexus trilogy, Crux, extends the story begun in the first book, Nexus, by broadening the dilemmas encountered by the characters to even larger scale. At the same time Crux reveals ever widening conspiracies by government agencies as they grapple with the technological advances engendered by the widespread distribution of the drug Nexus which allows human-to-human brain communication and control.

Crux is pretty good but not as good as its prequel, Nexus. It's still very well plotted and also action-packed but to me the story itself doesn't really advance as far as the first one did. (This is a known common problem with middle books in trilogies.) 

I've seen in other reviews of the books that Naam has been called a "plot artist" instead of a writer and I think that is unfair, but I would agree that plotting and pacing are his strong suits and characterization and lyrical/lexical expression are not.

This is not to say that Crux is bad, it's just not as fantastic as the first book (Nexus) was. The series (so far) is at least as good as the Brilliance series by Marcus Sakey and the Tao series by Wesley Chu and occupies a similar narrative space (action-packed, techno-thriller set in the near future with SFnal elements).

Title: Crux.
Author: Ramez Naam.
Paperback: 512 pages.
Publisher: Bad Robot.
Date Published: August 27. 2013.
Date Read: November 25, 2016.

OVERALL GRADE: A/A- (3.83/4.0).
PLOT: A-.
IMAGERY: A-.
IMPACT: A.
WRITING: A-.

An awesome and exciting SF read!

The final book in the Nexus trilogy ratchets up the suspense, stakes and action to pulse-pounding levels.

The killer app (or key idea) of Apex (and the series as a whole) is the existence of Nexus, a drug which allows one to access and manipulate the human brain like a computer operating system. Additionally, Nexus-enhanced brains can communicate with other Nexus-enhanced brains similar to internet-connected computers. 

Ramez Naan takes this technological development and explores how the world would react were this to happen (roughly 25 years in the future), paying particular attention to the governments of United States, China and India. It is an exciting and frighteningly realistic portrayal of how events can be influenced by the decisions and actions by a few key people (the President, White House Chief of Staff, National Security Adviser, etc).

The main character we follow through all three books is Kaden Lane, who developed Nexus 5, which is much more powerful and longer-lasting than earlier iterations of psychotropic drugs. Kaden is flawed but we get to know him quite well, and he matures a lot as the story develops through the three books of the series. The Kaden of Book 3 is definitely NOT the same naive graduate student of Book 1. In addition to Kaden, we also follow the fortunes of Feng, a cloned biologically enhanced bodyguard who was tasked with protecting Kade but now treats him like a brother and Sam(antha) Cataranes, a Nexus-running, US government operative who was tasked with controlling Kaden to satisfy her mission orders but who has a change of heart when she meets a child exposed to Nexus in the womb in Book 2.

In addition to Nexus, Ramez Naan also posits other technological and sociological advances that greatly enhance the story. Overall, Apex is a near-future, hard sci-fi techno-thriller, and an excellent read.

Title: Apex.
Author: Ramez Naam.
Paperback: 608 pages.
Publisher: Bad Robot.
Date Published: May 5, 2015.
Date Read: December 3, 2016.

OVERALL GRADE: A- (4.0/4.0).
PLOT: A.
IMAGERY: A.
IMPACT: A.
WRITING: A.

BOOK REVIEW: Trident's Forge (Children of a Dead Earth, #2) by Patrick S. Tomlinson

Trident's Forge is the second book in The Children of the Dead Earth series by Patrick S. Tomlinson. I really loved the first book in the series, The Ark, because it was a fast-paced, funny mash-up of mystery-thriller and post-apocalyptic science fiction. It's sequel is a very different book, but with several familiar characters from the first book returning: Bryan "The Zero Hero" Benson, his wife Teresa, their former nemesis Chao Feng, and Bryan's sidekick Pavel Korolev.

Trident's Forge is set three years after the events of The Ark and now the 30,000-member strong remnants of humanity are settling down and surviving on the planet Gaia. It is more than 250 years after a black hole destroyed Earth and forced humanity to abandon our home planet and seek another. The planet we found is inhabited by aliens the humans call Atlantians (and who call themselves the G'tel). I didn't get a good image of the G'tel in my mind's eye but one interesting move by the author is to give the reader point-of-view chapters from the perspective of one of the aliens. The alien in particular, named Kexx, is a "truth-digger" which is an important role in G'tel society (sort of a cross between a religious leader and academic/intellectual). Because the aliens have three genders (although this is not really fully explained that well), Kexx uses the pronouns ze and zer instead of she/he and his/her to describe zer fellow Atlantians. 

Tomlinson has a way of combining action scenes with comedic situations that remind me of John Scalzi (Redshirts) and Wesley Chu (The Rebirths of Tao). I don't know if this is a compliment or a dis (your mileage may vary) but I intend it as a positive recommendation.

The reason why I loved The Ark so much was that the stakes for the characters were so high ( all of humanity is on one ship and the villains want to blow it up with nukes!) and one problem I had with Trident's Forge is that level of tension is not repeated. Yes, Benson is put in one incredibly dangerous situation after the other (and is actually declared dead at one point when his heart stops) but I never believed for a second that the Zero Hero would bite the dust. Thus I think Tomlinson realized he needed to find dramatic tension in different ways and he tried to do so by complicating the political situation at Shambhala, the main colony city for the former Ark residents, with a surprising assassination. 

The best part of Trident's Forge for me is in the interactions between Benson and the aliens as they uncover a sinister plot to exploit the planet Gaia and learn (grudgingly at times) to overcome their differences and suspicions in order to cooperate and survive against common enemies. 

I do love mash-ups, and Trident's Forge has a melange  of a plot combining alien first-contact, frontier intrigue, colony politics, fast-paced action, quirky and irreverent humor and some (minimal) mystery/thriller elements. I am definitely looking forward to the third book in the series, but I hope it is set far enough in the future that maybe Benson is no longer the main character. I also hope that we get a resolution about whether the black hole that destroyed the Earth was a deliberate act and if so, we get to meet those aliens. Now that would be raising the stakes!

Title: Trident's Forge.
Author: Patrick S. Tomlinson.
Paperback: 448 pages.
Publisher: Orbit.
Date Published: April 5, 2016.
Date Read: June 11, 2016.

GOODREADS RATING: ****. (4.25 STARS)

OVERALL GRADE: A- (3.67/4.0).

PLOT: A.
IMAGERY: A-.
IMPACT: A-.
WRITING: B+.

2016 HUGO AWARDS: My Selections For Best Novel

The 2016 Hugo award nominations close on March 31st. Since I was a member of the 2015 Worldcon and helped to select last year's winners, I have the right to submit a nomination ballot for the 2016 Hugos. The main category I am interested in is Best Novel. My nominations for the Hugo Award for Best Novel are:

• The Dark Forest by Cixin Liu
• Nemesis Games by James S.A. Corey
• Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson
• The Rebirths of Tao by Wesley Chu
• The Providence of Fire by Brian Staveley

This was a hard list to compile. There are several other books which could easily be on this list, which basically represents what I think are the best works of speculative fiction released in 2015 that I read. For example:

•  Ancillary Mercy by Ann Leckie
• Seveneves by Neal Stephenson
• The Skull Throne by Peter V. Brett
• The Ark by Patrick S. Tomlinson
• The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins

It will be exciting to see the final nomination list in early April. Last year they were revealed on 12noon on April 5th.

BOOK REVIEW: Time Salvager by Wesley Chu

Wesley Chu is probably best known as the author of the well-regarded Lives of Tao trilogy. I only discovered this series earlier this year but devoured them quite quickly and enjoyed them a lot. One of the nice things   about discovering the series in 2015 as that all three books of the series were out and available to read, with the final book, The Rebirths of Tao coming out in 2015.

Amazingly, Chu has published not one but two books this year. This second book is Time Salvager, which is the first book in a new trilogy. The Tao trilogy is an action-packed speculative fiction (with YA tinges) set in a near-future where two groups (the Genjix and the Prophus) of human-alien symbionts called Quasings are engaged in a violent, no-holds barred battle against each other for control of planet Earth. Time Salvager is very different; it is still science fiction but this book is a dystopian, time-travel thriller.

Time Salvager is primarily the story of James Griffin-Mars, a chronman, i.e. someone who is doing important work to serve humanity by risking his physical and mental health by repeatedly going back in time and grabbing energy sources and materiel that a war-weary and technologically-static Solar System needs to survive. The other main character is Elise Kim, a 21st century biologist who was in charge of a United Nation-sponsored project to investigate and potentially resolve a curious algae bloom which is starting to devastate Earth's oceans.,

The dystopian setting for Time Salvager  Chu has dreamed up here is quite compelling (and very depressing). Basically, in the future humanity has lost the ability to innovate and produce enough energy and resources to support itself so the accepted plan for survival basically involves cannibalizing the past in order to support the future. And for most of humanity on various outposts in the solar system (and particularly on Earth) life is grim. The back story for how things got to be so bad by the 26th century would make an excellent prequel. We get bits and pieces of that story (various references to wars and global disaster) as the primary plot involving James and Elise develops in this book.

Chronmen by training and selection are borderline personalities and James bears this out. He repeatedly hallucinates and is wracked with guilty dreams. Elise is from 2097 (still hundreds of years in the past from James' present) and has a fresh (and horrified) perspective on the dystopian hell that Earth has become. (The world's oceans have LITERALLY gone to sh*t and many, many of the world's metropolises have been destroyed by war, disaster or human strife.)

 Besides the setting, the other aspect of the book that I found most compelling was Grace Priestly, the inventor of time travel. She is depicted as a feisty old (and lascivious) biddy. Another strength of the book was the villains. There are many evil corporations and their evil minions are doing Very Bad Things. As he demonstrated previously in the Tao books and again here, Chu is excellent at writing bad guys. He's also quite good at writing people who are working with the bad guys but realize at some point they are on the wrong team, so they are at least nuanced in their "badness." You want to hate them but then they do something surprising so you aren't so sure.

There are aspects of  Time Salvager  that I really did not like, the most notable of these is the inclusion and depiction of the Efren, the tribe of people that Elise and James run into in the ruins of Boston. I don't know why but none of those scenes worked for me whatsoever. It just seemed very patronizing that Elise shows up and can convince the Efren that she can save the planet. Why would they believe her? And why would James? I understand that for plot purposes we need to give Elise a mission to accomplish in the future and a way for James to get over his social maladaptiveness but The Efren subplot really didn't work for me at all. I almost found it borderline offensive, in fact, because basically they are treated as noble savages.

Anyway, another aspect of the book that I really liked a lot was the internal conflict depicted in the time-travel organization and I liked the action/fighting scenes. (Chu is also quite good at writing hand-to-hand combat and other fight/action sequences.) No wonder he won the 2015 John W. Campbell award!

Overall, Time Salvager is a pretty fun book, with some thought-provoking depictions of a dystopian, corporate-dominated future for Mankind, populated by characters that you will probably have strong feelings about (both positively and negatively).

Title: Time Salvager.
Author: Wesley Chu.
Paperback: 384 pages.
Publisher: Tor.
Date Published: July 7, 2015.
Date Read: July 12, 2015.

OVERALL GRADE: B+/A- (3.50/4.0).

PLOT: B+.
IMAGERY: A-.
IMPACT: B+.
WRITING: A-.

2015 HUGO AWARDS: The Puppy Slates Are Overwhelmingly Rejected!

The 2015 Hugo Awards were given out on Saturday evening in Spokane Washington and the results were eye-opening, to say the least. Because of the Puppy kerfuffle (where two different cohorts of "fans" successfully coordinated efforts to place on the final Hugo ballot works and people using criteria different from mere merit and quality) I discovered that I could register and vote for the 2015 Hugo winners myself and did so.

In the end, even though there were only a few hundred ballots to nominate works, there ended up being 5,950 voters for the award winners.

The biggest news was that in five categories where the Sad Puppies/Rabid Puppies had successfully managed to completely fill all 5 slots on the ballot, the option of NO AWARD was deployed by a significant majority of voters. In the history of the Hugo awards there had been previously been a rand total o five NO AWARD winners and in one evening that tally was matched. The categories in which this occurred were: Best Novella, Best Short Story, Best Related Work, Best Editor (Short Form), and Best Editor (Long Form).

The second biggest story was that the Best Novel was won by Cixin Liu for The Three-Body Problem, which was my vote for the winner of this most important category. This was historic, because it was the first time an Asian man had won the Best Novel AND it was the first time a translated work had received this honor. Additionally, the two nominees associated with the Puppies, Skin Game by Jim Butcher and The Dark Between The Stars by Kevin J. Anderson both ended up below NO AWARD in the final tally (which is where I had placed them on my ballot, along with the 2nd place finisher The Goblin Emperor).

Best Novel (5653 final ballots, 1827 nominating ballots, 587 entries, range 212-387)

• The Three Body Problem, Cixin Liu, Ken Liu translator (Tor Books)
• The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison (Sarah Monette) (Tor Books)
• Ancillary Sword, Ann Leckie (Orbit US/Orbit UK)
• No Award
• Skin Game, Jim Butcher (Orbit UK/Roc Books)
• The Dark Between the Stars, Kevin J. Anderson (Tor Books)

What lots of fans and observers are trying to figure out is exactly what are the relative sizes of the four groups who participated in the Hugo voting: Rabid Puppy supporters, Sad Puppy supporters, Anti-Puppies (like myself) or neutral voters. Right now the estimates seem to have the two Puppies groups at about 10% of the total each with the anti-Puppies roughly at 50%.

Also, since the Hugo award administrators release the vote counts for the Top 15 nominees in each category, we can also know exactly which works and people were left off the ballot because of the Puppy slates from this winter. Author Tobias Buckell has released the list of what the Hugo ballot would have looked like without the intervention of the Puppies. Here's the alternative history Best Novel category

Best NovelAncillary Sword by Ann Leckie
The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison
The Three Body Problem by Liu Cixin
Lock In by John Scalzi
City of Stairs by Robert Jackson Bennet

City of Stairs is a very interesting urban fantasy novel (which I haven;t yet reviewed but I intend to, as well as rad the upcoming sequel, City of Blades when it is released in 2016.) For some reason the Puppies hate John Scalzi with the passion of a thousand dying suns (probably because he's smarter, makes more money and is more popular than any of them) so they are probably pleased they denied him another Hugo nomination. (Scalzi's win of the 2013 Hugo for Best Novel for Redshirts is often cited by some of the "head Puppies" as What Is Wrong With Science Fiction.)

Another point people have noticed is that the Puppies prevented Andy Weir, the author of the best-selling science fiction book of the year (The Martian, soon to be a major motion picture starring Matt Damon directed by Ridley Scott) from being nominated for the non-Hugo for best New Writer called the John W. Campbell award. Instead that went to my choice Wesley Chu!

There were a whole bunch of word written about the Hugo awards before they happened, K'm sure there will be a whole lot written now that they have happened. It is likely that the Puppies will try to repeat their domination of the award nominations in January 2016 but there are now nearly 6,000 people (like myself) who are empowered to make our own nominations and try to blunt their desire to blow up science fiction's most prestigious award.

Happily, it is likely that technical changes to how the nominations are calculated will go into effect for 2017 year, since two proposals were passed at the recent Worldcon business meeting that are designed to blunt the impact of slates on the Hugo nominations. But until then, the fight will go on.

However, in the fight between the forces of good and evil, Saturday's results at the Hugo awards was a big win for the good guys who support inclusion and diversity (and playing by the rules).

2015 Hugo Awards: Voting Closes Today; Here's Excerpts Of My Ballot

Despite the coincidence that today is National Mutt Day, my final ballot in the 2015 Hugo Awards is delightfully Puppy-free. If you don't know what the heck I am talking about, go here and read up.

Anyway, here are my votes for the important categories of Best Novel and Best Dramatic Presentation (Long Form and Short Form).

Best Novel 

1. The Three Body Problem, Cixin Liu, Ken Liu translator (Tor Books)
2. Ancillary Sword, Ann Leckie (Orbit US/Orbit UK)
3. NO AWARD
4. Skin Game, Jim Butcher (Orbit UK/Roc Books)
5. The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison (Sarah Monette) (Tor Books)
6. The Dark Between the Stars, Kevin J. Anderson (Tor Books)

It should not come as a surprise that I placed the two books that got onto the short list due to the Puppy shenanigans below NO AWARD. I tried to read all the nominees for Best Novel and simply could not finish The Goblin Emperor and The Dark Between Stars. I did not expect to like Skin Game but I actually did enjoy it, even if it was the 14th book in the Harry Dresden books.  I think it was clever and engaging, but I wold rather no award get the nod instead. Actually I should be clear that I did not rank The Dark Beneath The Stars sith, I simply left it off my ballot completely.

My reviews for The Three Body Problem and Ancillary Sword can read at the link. I thought both of them were excellent works, with Three-Body really harkening back to late Asimov for me, while Leckie's second book was slightly less interesting than her blockbuster debut. That said, I fully intend to buy and devour both follow-ups to these books (The Dark Forest and Acillary Mercy, respectively) when they come out.

Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form 

1. Interstellar, screenplay by Jonathan Nolan and Christopher Nolan, directed by Christopher Nolan (Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros. Pictures, Legendary Pictures, Lynda Obst Productions, Syncopy)
2. Guardians of the Galaxy, written by James Gunn and Nicole Perlman, directed by James Gunn (Marvel Studios, Moving Picture Company)
3. The Lego Movie, written by Phil Lord & Christopher Miller, story by Dan Hageman, Kevin Hageman, Phil Lord & Christopher Miller, directed by Phil Lord & Christopher Miller (Warner Bros. Pictures, Village Roadshow Pictures, RatPac-Dune Entertainment, LEGO System A/S, Vertigo Entertainment, Lin Pictures, Warner Bros. Animation (as Warner Animation Group))
4. Edge of Tomorrow, screenplay by Christopher McQuarrie, Jez Butterworth, and John-Henry Butterworth, directed by Doug Liman (Village Roadshow, RatPac-Dune Entertainment, 3 Arts Entertainment; Viz Productions)
5. Captain America: The Winter Soldier, screenplay by Christopher Markus & Stephen McFeely, concept and story by Ed Brubaker, directed by Anthony Russo and Joe Russo (Marvel Entertainment, Perception, Sony Pictures Imageworks)
6. NO AWARD

I saw all of these movies, and my reviews can be accessed at the link. I don;t usually review movies that I see on television (i.e. not at the theater) so that is why The Lego Movie and Captain America: The Winter Soldier do not have full reviews. My favorite movie of 2014 was Interstellar; I admit I am a full-on fanboy of Christopher Nolan. Edge of Tomorrow was surprisingly good (especially for a Tom Cruise movie!) but The Lego Movie astonished and delighted me in its cleverness.

Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form 

1. Game of Thrones: “The Mountain and the Viper”, written by David Benioff & D. B. Weiss, directed by Alex Graves ((HBO Entertainment in association with Bighead, Littlehead; Television 360; Startling Television and Generator Productions)
2. Orphan Black: “By Means Which Have Never Yet Been Tried”, ” written by Graham Manson, directed by John Fawcett (Temple Street Productions, Space/BBC America)
3. Doctor Who: “Listen”, written by Steven Moffat, directed by Douglas Mackinnon (BBC Television)
4. NO AWARD
5. The Flash: “Pilot”, teleplay by Andrew Kreisberg & Geoff Johns, story by Greg Berlanti, Andrew Kreisberg & Geoff Johns, directed by David Nutter (The CW) (Berlanti Productions, DC Entertainment, Warner Bros. Television)
6. Grimm: “Once We Were Gods”, written by Alan DiFiore, directed by Steven DePaul (NBC) (GK Productions, Hazy Mills Productions, Universal TV)

I'm a huge fan of the Game of Thrones adaptation and since Season 3 have been blogging every episode. There is no question this is the cream of the crop. I binge watched Season 1 and Season 2 of Orphan Black and am not a card carrying member of the Clone Club but I am a fan. (The actor Dylan Bruce playing Paul is one of the best looking guys on television!) Doctor Who is barely my cup of tea any more but I would be fine with them winning an award even though I am not completely sure that I saw the specific episode in question. I have to admit that I have never seen an episode of Grimm and although I have seen parts of The Flash it does not interest me (I'm sort of surprised there was no Marvel's Agents of Shield on this list.

John W. Campebell Award (Not a Hugo)

1. Wesley Chu
2. Kary English
3. NO AWARD

I have read and enjoyed the four books by Wesley Chu I read this year. I think he is an exciting author to watch. The Tao series is an incredible work, one I hope that he returns to soon or that Hollywood realizes that it there is even better Chu-related work than the one they have already optioned to become a movie.

For the other categories, like Best Novella,Best Novelette, Best Short Story, Best Graphic Story, Best Related Work and others you will just have to guess. Suffice it to say, Noah Ward appeared more than once!

Wesley Chu's Time Salvager May Become Michael Bay Movie

Wesley Chu's latest book Time Salvager is not released until tomorrow, is getting very strong reviews and it has already been optioned to become a Hollywood movie by a big name Hollywood director known for his (generally awful) box-office blockbusters. tor.com is reporting about a deal where Michael Bay (Transformers) will direct a film for Paramount Pictures based on Chu's Time Salvager with the author set to be an executive producer.

Chu is the author of the Tao series of books that I read and positively reviewed earlier this year. I think those books would make an excellent series of movies (or better, a TV series). Anyway, I have no idea how Hollywood works. Regardless, I am looking forward to reading Time Salvager when it comes out tomorrow. (It's on sale at Amazon.com for half-price today!)

REVIEW: The Tao Series (Books 1-3) By Wesley Chu

Wesley Chu is a new science fiction author I discovered this year after The Other Half got me one of his books from my Amazon Wishlist. That book was  The Lives of Tao. I had put it on my wishlist because I read this blurb about the book:

When out-of-shape IT technician Roen Tan woke up and started hearing voices in his head, he naturally assumed he was losing it.  

He wasn’t. 

He now has a passenger in his brain – an ancient alien life-form called Tao, whose race crash-landed on Earth before the first fish crawled out of the oceans. Now split into two opposing factions – the peace-loving, but under-represented Prophus, and the savage, powerful Genjix – the aliens have been in a state of civil war for centuries. Both sides are searching for a way off-planet, and the Genjix will sacrifice the entire human race, if that’s what it takes. 

Meanwhile, Roen is having to train to be the ultimate secret agent. Like that’s going to end up well…

It turned out that I liked the first book so much that I devoured it and its two sequels on Kindle within a week! Chu has an easy, breezy style that is very readable and engaging. Additionally, the setting of the books is incredibly compelling: alien entities called Quasings have apparently been occupying humans and influencing humanity's history for eons. Many historical figures of note (Genghis Khan, Galileo, Plato, etc) were able to have an extraordinary impact on the world because they were in constant contact with an advanced alien intelligence. There are two competing factors of Quasings, the Prophus who want to have a symbiotic relationship with humans whom they view as equals and the Genjix who view humans as insignificant hosts and Earth a planet that they intend to colonize and control by any means necessary.

The Tao series consists of three books (The Lives of Tao, The Deaths of Tao and The Rebirths of Tao), which are very different in composition, narrative and impact but they all share Chu's engaging, fast-paced, action-packed, humor-laced writing. This is the best feature of the books, and hopefully will lead to Chu being recognized with the prestigious John W. Campbell award at the 2015 Worldcon this year. Even if he doesn't win, just being nominated should expose many other potential fans like myself to his excellent work. It should also help that he has released two books in 2015 (the third book in the Tao series, as well as a time-travel thriller called Time Salvager which is not set in the Tao universe at all, an indication of the young author's versatility and potential longevity.

The Lives of Tao is primarily a story of redemption starring Roen Tan, a sci-fi nerd's everyman who is overweight, shy around women and stuck in a job he hates at the beginning of the book whose life  is irrevocably changed when he gets accidentally merged with the alien Quasing intelligence named Tao. From that moment on (which happens pretty early in the book), we are thrust into a fast-moving story that is propelled by the escalating war between the Prophus and Genjix that involves tactics and weapons reminiscent of a violent spy thriller. I enjoyed The Lives of Tao a lot, even if as a married gay guy I did not fully identify with Roen's struggle (amusingly well-documented by Chu in the book) to transform himself from a straight geeky slob with self-esteem issues to a fit, deadly agent fighting for the Prophus cause. For example, there are many pages of description of the hard work and training and dieting that Roen is subject to in order  to improve himself and change his life; in the end I was still somewhat doubtful about the rapidity with which Roen progressed from schlub to stud. (Then again should one really be quibbling about "realism" in a book that has a premise which involves nearly immortal alien beings that can occupy and communicate symbiotically with human brains?) I really enjoyed the interaction between Roen and Tao as they get to know each other and work together to try to contribute as best they can to the fight against the evil Genjix. I like the fact that Chu also shows us that the Prophus side (whom we as human readers are expected to identify with since Tao is a Prophus member) has its problems and deficiencies as well as giving us first-person perspectives of the villainous Genjix (who believe that Quasings are superior, god-like beings and human lives are expendable). While the book celebrates mindless fun, so that even when Roen does actually "get the girl" in the end, this does not mean that everyone lives happily ever after. It is the nuanced portrayal of several issues like this in the book generally and the Quasings specifically which lifts The Lives of Tao into being more than just an exciting, enjoyable read.

If you have not read The Lives of Tao I encourage you to do so before continuing to read this review because spoilers follow.

BEWARE! SPOILERS! STOP READING IF YOU HAVE NOT READ BOOK 1!

BEWARE! SPOILERS! STOP READING IF YOU HAVE NOT READ BOOK 1!

The Deaths of Tao continues the story several years after the events of the first book.
Roen has separated from his wife Jill (one of the girls he was lusting after in The Lives of Tao) and now they have a 5-year-old kid named Cameron who lives with Jill's parents in a suburb of San Diego while Jill (along with her Quasing Baji) tries to implement the Prophus agenda as the chief of staff to a United States Senator in Washington, D.C. However, Roen is not only persona non grata with Jill but also with the Prophus hierarchy overall. In the intervening years since the events of The Lives of Tao the war has not gone well for the Prophus side, and they are not happy that Roen took matters into his own hands and went rogue in trying to suss out exactly what is the evil end game of the Genjix. The second book in the Tao series is a more adult, complicated work; this can be seen in the expanded list of important characters: the Genjix human host named Enzo, who has been bred and trained to be the perfect human vessel for Zoras, one of the oldest and most respected Quasings; Jill and her Prophus Quasing Baji; and Jill's bodyguard Marco. In addition, the second book resonated more strongly with me because the stakes involved are so much higher. In the first book, the primary tension was about discovering whether our protagonist (Roen) would succeed or not. In the second book, there are multiple protagonists with competing plans and in addition to discovering which team (Enzo and the Genjix or Roen/Jill and the Prophus) will succeed because the fate of the Earth and humanity depends on the result. The action is ratcheted up to a fever pitch while the body count goes up and up so when we get to the end I was literally both rushing to turn the page but also afraid of what would be revealed about the fates of my favorite characters. And that, in a nutshell, demonstrates just one of the many ways The Deaths of Tao effectively engages the reader and makes this a book you will be happy that your read.

If you have not read  The Deaths of Tao  I encourage you to do so before continuing to read this review because spoilers follow.

BEWARE! SPOILERS AHEAD! 

STOP READING IF YOU HAVE NOT READ BOOK 2: THE DEATHS OF TAO!

BEWARE! SPOILERS AHEAD! 

STOP READING IF YOU HAVE NOT READ BOOK 2: THE DEATHS OF TAO!

The Rebirths of Tao continues the story a decade after the events of the second book The Deaths of Tao. Roen's near-death experience at the end of The Deaths of Tao means that he is no longer a Quasing host, because while he was clinically dead Tao was able to exit Roen and enter his son Cameron, who was just a kid at the time. In The Deaths of Tao Cameron is now fifteen-going-on-sixteen with all the incumbent teenaged angst that brings. Roen is the first known human to survive losing a host but with Jill's "hail mary" move of revealing the existence of the symbiotic alien intelligences called Quasings to humanity as a whole things have gotten bad for both the Genjix and Prophus Quasing factions as the governments of the world have used Genjix-developed monitoring technology to hunt down and either incarcerate or exterminate human hosts with Quasing symbionts. The Genjix are still in a stronger global position in their war with the Prophus, with control over most of the world's powerful countries (China, Russia, Western Europe) while neither Genjix nor Prophus controls the United States and all Quasing vessels are considered  enemies of the state. The years between the books have been rough for the Tan clan (although it looks like personally things between Jill and Roen are better than ever since they have been raising their child together and they are still happily married). Because the family consists of two Quasing hosts, they have been essentially on the run for most of Cameron's life, especially considering that the Prophus have essentially lost their war with with Genjix. (I think  that some television show or graphic novels depicting the events that happen between the books in the Tao series would be an engrossing story. Wesley Chu, call your agent!) The stakes in the third volume are larger (and smaller) than those described in the first two books. It's become clear now that Tao is the real main character of the books, not Roen (although since Roen and Tao were inseparable in the first two books it was easy to conflate the two). On the larger scale it becomes clear that the Genjix are working on plans that will irrevocably change the relationship Quasings have with humans and the planet Earth. On the smaller scale, since Tao is now inside and interacting with Cameron and there are wide swathes of the book that read like Young Adult (YA) fiction as Cameron tries to navigate high school and hormones while he is also being trained and prepared by his three adult caregivers (Jill, Roen and Tao) to be a future Genjix agent (and a responsible adult). Chu conducts these scenes in a way that makes you think he has a strong future ahead of him if he decides to enter the YA market full bore but for an adult sci-fi fan like myself these sections might drop you out of the narrative flow. This is the first of  two not insignificant quibbles I had with The Rebirths of Tao. The other aspect of the book that I felt was a potential mistake by the author was his inclusion of faux Tao-like thoughts in Roen's stream of consciousness. Basically, even though the decision was made to separate Roen from Tao in The Deaths of Tao the author still made use of Tao's wit and wisdom to help Roen in the third book through the device of "memory." In my mind this is unfair. It's like killing off a character in one book only to revive them in the next. In the grand scheme of things this is a minor quibble. The Rebirths of Tao has numerous strong action scenes and again it is enlivened by having access to first-person accounts from the Genjix side although this time it seems that is done just to demonstrate how purely evil and misguided they are. The book ends on a note which satisfactorily resolves a number of plots but definitely leaves room for more stories involving (most of) these characters. This is a good thing, because I would love to spend more time with Tao and friends in the future!

Title: The Lives of Tao.
Author: Wesley Chu.
Paperback: 464 pages.
Publisher: Angry Robot.
Date Published: April 30, 2013.
Date Read: May 24, 2015.

OVERALL GRADE: A- (3.67/4.0).

PLOT: A-.
IMAGERY: A-.
IMPACT: A-.
WRITING: A-.

Title: The Deaths of Tao.
Author: Wesley Chu.
Paperback: 464 pages.
Publisher: Angry Robot.
Date Published: October 29, 2013.
Date Read: May 30, 2015.

OVERALL GRADE: A/A- (3.83/4.0).
PLOT: A-.
IMAGERY: A-.
IMPACT: A+.
WRITING: A-.

Title: The Rebirths of Tao.
Author: Wesley Chu.
Paperback: 512 pages.
Publisher: Angry Robot.
Date Published: April 7, 2015.
Date Read: May 31, 2015.

OVERALL GRADE: A- (3.75/4.0).
PLOT: A-.
IMAGERY: A-.
IMPACT: A-.
WRITING: A.