2014 action/SF, first of a series. Cas Russell is a retriever of
missing things in a world of action and adventure. Naturally, her
latest job is going to get terribly complicated.
This series has a complicated publication history. This version
that I read was self-published and released under cc-by-nc-sa-4.0, and
was followed in the "Russell's Attic" series by Half Life, Root of
Unity, Plastic Smile, and Golden Mean (which may not actually
have been released). Then Tor picked it up and re-released this book
in edited form under the same title, as the first of the "Cas Russell"
series, followed so far by Null Set (a rewritten Plastic Smile)
and Critical Point (a rewritten Golden Mean); books 2-3 of the
original series are apparently slated for the same treatment at some
point. But anyway, on with this book.
Cas has supreme mathematical ability: she can trivially work out where
not to be in order to dodge bullets, casually toss a ball so that
it'll bounce several times round a room and hit someone in the back of
the head, or rearrange flat surfaces around a neighbourhood to make a
parabolic microphone for eavesdropping. Clearly this power also needs
supreme perception and muscular control, not to mention a complete
lack of such mundane things as chaotic air motion, but one just has to
accept this, particularly when it becomes time to define what it
can't do. It feels rather more like a superhero-comic or
television-series power than the sort of thing I usually read about,
particularly the way Cas doesn't appear to know or care how she got
this way.
Cas starts off rescuing a Californian nobody from a Colombian cartel,
and things rapidly become twisty, with psychopathic allies (we're in
what John Rogers called "Crime World" here, so nobody is entirely a
good guy) and kindly enemies… and at least one more superpower. The
action is decent, though Cas gets hurt a little too much for my
personal taste; what there isn't is any real kind of resolution,
either to the immediate threat (team evil is hurt but not out of the
game, and each side will be leaving the other alone in future) or to
the question of Cas's Mysterious Origins. There are considerations of
mental integrity which warn me that there will be unreliable narration
in the future, if it's not here already.
On the other hand Cas's narrative is an interesting place to be,
particularly in her relationship with Rio, a sociopathic torturer
who's found God and now only tortures bad people. (His reputation is
bad enough that everyone else on team good is repelled by the idea
that she might be working with him.)
I liked it, but I didn't love it. The moment-to-moment stuff is great,
but I felt very much let down by framing and especially the ending;
all of a sudden the narrative changes from a story that might be
complete in itself to the pilot episode that introduces the series and
sets up some of the long-term plot elements, but definitely wants the
reader to tune in next week and find out what happens.
It's OK. I'll probably read more. But I'd recommend it only with
caution, and say that you should stay clear if you don't like
unexamined premises and incurious protagonists.
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