This was a very fun listen. It had (very) speculative neuroscience, nerdy grad students, buddhism, post-human special agents, "uploaded" scientists, lots of actions and plot full of exciting twists and turns. The narration was very good. I'll definitely be listening to the other two parts of the trilogy. ( )

Fantastic. Cannot wait to start the second book. ( )

This story hijacked my brain. I was not sure Naam could take it as far as I thought it needed to go.

Ha.

Boy could he.

As soon as its sequel came out, I read it too. I've pre-ordered the completion of the trilogy (Apex) because the second one (Crux) was even better with even more complexity!

If complex stories scare you, don't let that stop you here. The author is capable of doing the neurological priming you need. :) ( )

Wow, what a trip.

In this book, humans can be modified, giving them extra strength, and the technology of the near future in this setting has allowed them to do this.
But along with some of the modifications, especially for combat "personnel," comes unknown threats, as in the threat Wats has that he will develop cancer.
"the lump on his forearm was red, agitated. It's stood out against his dark skin. Wats rubbed at it. It felt hard, hot to the touch. Skin peeled away under his fingers. He was bloody underneath. He peered at the uncovered tumor. Deep within it he could almost see the broken strands of DNA, his chromosomes fraying like split ends, giving birth to the cancers that would eat him. Another lump caught his attention. Another. His wrist was covered with them. His hands. His arm. In horror he ripped open his shirt. Red, angry lumps were growing on his chest, on his belly. They were rising, expanding, spreading as he watched, covering him...
Wats jerked awake.
Breathe. Breathe. Early morning light was filtering in through the windows.
Not the cancers. Not yet."
For now, this was only wat's nightmare. However, he has been warned that it could become very real.

Since the Reagan era began it, and we have all become dumbed-down zombies, keeping our heads down, and our eyes trained on the screens...
"The Chandler act (aka the emerging technological threats act of 2032) is the opening salvo in a new War on Science. To understand the future course of this war, one need only look at the history of the War on Drugs and the War on error. Like those two manufactured "wars", this one will be never-ending, freedom-destroying, counterproductive, and ultimately understood to have caused far more damage than the supposed threat it was aimed at ever could have.
Free the future, 2032"

After the government picked up his companions at the party outside the hangar at moffett Field, what was the only one who escaped. He swore to himself that he would save cage. He has followed him across a continent, and an ocean.
Kade and cataranas are invited to a party where the drug Nexus, combined with another drug that enhances empathy, will be provided for participants. Wats sits, unbeknownst to party goers, one floor above, eavesdropping in order to make sure that Kade is safe.
"Wats sat cross-legged one floor above Kade and Cataranes. His weapons were at his sides. Chameleon-wear made his still form difficult to pick out from his surroundings. A heat capacitor attached to his combat suit slowly siphoned off the excess warmth his body produced, keeping him from boiling in the infrared blocking garment. The data fob felt hard and cool against his chest.
His radio had picked up bursts of encrypted chatter twice tonight. The commandos were near. He wasn't sure where, but they were near.
It was a relief to feel the party below drift towards sleep. His nodes were in strictly receive-only mode. It was hard to get a good Nexus connection that way. Two-way feedback was necessary to synchronize, to get a clear transfer of concepts.
But he caught enough. The night had affected him powerfully. He was a part of the Buddha too. He was the dark mirror of a bodhisattva in his own way. He was the opposite of the enlightened teacher. He was one who would risk rebirth in darkness and ignorance, ever further from Nirvana, so that others might have their chance at peace and enlightenment.
He wondered if, in a past life, cataranas had been one of those as well."

From the author's afterword:
"Finally, the Nexus backdoor that Kade and Rangan code on the airplane is based on a very real hack created by Ken Thompson, one of the inventors of the Unix operating system, that gave Thompson and his colleagues a backdoor into every copy of Unix that existed for several years. That hack went undiscovered until Thompson revealed its existence in a public lecture, after all versions containing the back door were gone, more than a decade later."

This is a wonderful book, about a drug called Nexus, that modifies human brains, modifying them in order for a human brain to communicate directly with another's mind.
The government is trying to stop anyone from using it, because they fear they will not be able to control it, and make money out of it.

I think my Goodreads friend aPriL will have gotten more out of this than I could, with her experience with computers. I do not know any programming, and I know less than the average young person does, about computers. However, if you don't understand those parts of the book, where there's computer commands and they're talking about computer "stuff," there's still plenty of gist to be got out of those parts, by context.
This is part of a three-book series, and I already have the second book coming from the library. ( )

This has a little of everything - action fighting, philosophy, human interaction, a little sex here and there, but so far, it's not really excelling at any of them, to me. It seems like it's trying to push certain ways of thinking about what it is to be human, and whether we should embrace the ability to become super humans or cloned humans.

So far, it's still hard to tell who are the good guys and bad guys. One group is the US government fighting against drugs that give people more power. They come off as realists in the beginning, but toward the end, they begin to look like tyrants.

On the other side are scientists and idealists who think only good will come from their efforts. They seem a bit naive to me, so far. All in all, it's got the flavor of the Star Wars movies, except that the force is a sort of drug, called Nexus.

I think the second part will tell whether this is an exceptional or so-so book. ( )