Ensorcelled

 Ensorcelled by Eliot Peper is the 13^th Peper book that I’ve read and reviewed. Considering that I’ve read so many of his books, you might get the hint that I really like his writing. The title is a word I’ve not seen before, so I looked it up. In the past tense ensorcelled means enchanted, fascinated, or captivated. The reader was forewarned that magic was a part of the story.

The protagonist of this short novel, only 90 pages, is about a teenage boy who has been captivated by the gaming world. Games are what he thinks about, dreams about, and lives for. As a new game was about to be released by his favorite gaming company, he planned to be first in line to acquire the game, and then to spend all of his upcoming hours engaged in the play. Her expected to be ensorcelled once again in the game world. Then, he was stunned to learn that his parents had planned a family camping trip on the very day of the game’s release, and he could not talk his parents out of having to go along with them.

 

In total disbelief, this boy who was somewhat handicapped with regard to his social skills (whose name we never learn), went along to a remote camping site where two other families, friends of his parents, had already arrived. There were two other teenagers there too, Theo and Lenny. Lenny was a teenage girl who loved an adventure, apparently a trait that had gotten her into some troubles in the past. Theo was a high school kid to whom everything came easily, socially, academically, athletically. He was remarkably modest about his skills and he seemed to give everyone the benefit of the doubt. He was loved by all for his authentic personality, except for our protagonist who is horribly jealous of him. Theo was everything he was not. Theo and Lenny were great friends and obviously enjoyed each other’s company.

 

The book is told in the first person, and our main subject was also an artist, and he could avoid social engagement by disappearing to do some sketching. On the trip, he was fascinated by one particularly beautiful tree that was a ways from the camp. When Lenny decided she should help him actually visit the tree, without revealing her plan, she got him to go with her. The adventure involved a hike, a canoe ride, a swim in a cold mountain pool, and a treacherous rock climb, all done in the dark while parents were left bar behind, asleep in their tents. They got to the tree, and it was a beautiful experience, but on the way back down, tragedy struck. Lenny was badly injured in a fall. It was left to him to get them out of this mess, a task that he was sorely unprepared for. That’s when the magic happened for Lenny and our narrator. 

 

To tell the end of this beautiful story would be a spoiler I just can’t give away. My advice, buy the book and spend just a short time absorbing this great story. Peper strikes again. If you’ve not already read his work, then you are in for a treat.

 

Foundry by Eliot Peper #1577

 

Foundry is Eliot Peper’s 11^th novel and I’ve read them all for a good reason. I’ve enjoyed his characters and the plots. While that’s true about this book too, this one is remarkably different. Eliot reports that he awoke from a dream with the beginning of a story, and he decided he would use those lines to write his next book.

 

The author wrote, “It wasn’t that she was holding a gun to my head. It was that I could see the safety was still on. She thought I was completely at her mercy, which was what put her at mine.” This is a spy story, two spies, Adrian and Caroline. The two of them are locked in a room together but there’s only one gun. It’s a story about how semiconductors are changing 21^st century geopolitics.

 

Rather than have an outline prepared for where he would start the book and where he would take the story, in a Stephen King sort of writing system (and I’m not really a fan of Stephen King), Eliot started at the beginning of a dream and let the story develop from there. It was as if this incredibly creative man allowed himself to unleash that creativity in a way he had never done before, which led him to this fantastic story. It’s obvious from his writing that the author fully enjoyed the writing process in a way he had not with his prior 10 books. This novel gets my highest recommendation. If you’ve not read Eliot Peper, it’s time to get to it.

Reap3r by Eliot Peper

Reap3r is the 10^th novel by Eliot Peper, and I’ve read them all, reviewed all of them in this blog. His early novels were excellent stories, but somehow, he keeps getting better. This is a very fast paced story with a great cast of characters. The book starts with a murder in La Jolla, California, on the edge of the UCSanDiego campus, and it’s a techie murder at that. It seems that someone is knocking off all the key people who are behind an attempt to develop quantum computing, a company Peper called Q. On the one hand, the ultrawealthy Sansome Haverford had recruited some highly ethical people to form his company Human Capital, but on the other hand he and Paul Valery “wanted to create a rolling permanent record of everything on every computer system on the planet – a private irror of the entire history of the entire internet and every device that had ever connected to it so that he could reach back through time to dredge up whatever secrets the past might offer to tighten his grip on the future.” Paul had secret government connections which also provided unlimited funding for such work.

 

Sansome had a great sales pitch for his Human Capital as he continued to draw investors. He said, “At Human Capital, we don’t bet on technology…. We don’t even bet on companies. We bet on people…. We find the best people in the world, figure out what makes them tick, write them checks, and give them free rein to do what only they can do.”

 

One of the people that Sansome and Paul brought to the Q project was Luki Zubiri, a young Basque man who was a computer programing genius. On the one hand Luki knew he had a deal with the devil, but the devil was the only one willing to pay for the progress he knew he could make, “the scientific achievement of the century – an accomplishment to rival electricity, antibiotics, and the steam engine.” It was Luki’s plan to complete the project for Paul, but then decline to renew his contract with Q and give make the technology open source material, which he thought would only spur the revolution of computer technology. However, he did not understand that goal was something Paul would never allow.

 

Meanwhile, Peper introduces us to Devon Chaiket, a financially struggling podcaster of Rabbit Hole, who had the ear of the tech world. She had also created a following throughout the world, but unfortunately, her sponsorships were not keeping her afloat. Offers from Haverford of funding for her work were too good to be true, but she too was pulled into the matrix of the story.

 

Another key figure was Geoff Rossi, a biotech guy who had lost control of an artificial virus which got out of his lab. The virus, Bakunawa, had killed millions of humans before Geoff was able to create the very vaccine that rescued the planet from total disaster. He was funded by Haverford, and the vaccine was the source of Human Capital’s incredible wealth. It was Haverford that was able to suppress any information that would have revealed that the virus was a human creation and not a natural genetic event. But Geoff was killing himself with the knowledge by consuming massive amounts of daily alcohol. He simply could not live with the guilt of his mistake.

 

Luki was also struggling with the harm his invention could cause. As a Basque man, “He should have known to never trust an authority figure like Paul in the first place, that an alliance with state power ultimately brough the power of the state to bear on you.” Luki new that “Neuroscience showed that your conscious mind didn’t make decisions, but rationalized decisions your brain had already made.”

It's hard for me to classify this book. There’s a sci-fi aspect to it, and there’s certainly a murder mystery involved. There are big and evil forces with a team of calculating David’s that are determined not to let the bad forces win. There’s a historical aspect that takes the reader back to Darwin’s discoveries in the Galapagos Islands, spanning forward through newer scientific discoveries. In order to give this span some perspective, Peper included an ancient tortoise, Bernadette, who was alive at the time of Darwin’s writing and remained alive at the present time.

 

So, Peper has provided us with a new modern adventure, a group of great characters, and a fast paced compelling novel. This one is a 5-star read. It’s available on 5/18/22 and can be preordered now.

Veil

Veil is Eliot Peper’s  10th novel, and I read them all, so you know I’m a fan. His first three books have earned cult status in Silicon Valley since they deal with information that is familiar to that place. In this book, as he has in several, Peper writes about a near-future society which has evolved due to our current leaders’ inability or unwillingness to deal effectively with global warming. However, he does not leave us in a hopeless dystopian world, but suggests ways to deal with the science and political matters that should lead to a better world.

Peper writes about the Leon family’s involvement in all of this. Miranda Leon is the wonderful wife of Santiago, a brilliant but maniacal scientist, and they’ve given birth to Zia. Miranda dies due to a heat wave that killed 20 million, and Zia is sent to a special school for the wealthy and highly gifted students in Switzerland. This is where Zia finds a new group of friends  who become her family of creation rather than one based on her biology. Zia has become a master of saving people who have been trapped by the effects of climate change. The Maldives are underwater and there are almost no natural beaches left anywhere in the world due to the rising ocean levels. The earth’s population is being progressively driven to occupy smaller and smaller pieces of land. The massive storms that are occurring his damaging what’s left of our world.

Zia’s friend Galang has become a reporter of all that has gone wrong in the last 20-30 years, and he says to Zia, “After responding to natural disaster after natural disaster, you eventually start to realize that there’s no such thing as a natural disaster. There are only human disasters revealed by nature… The real disasters are poverty and shortsightedness.”

This is a quick read with both believable, full-bodied characters, and a convincing plot, leaving the reader with some hope that there’s a way out of our current climate mess.

Breach

Breach (An Analog Novel Book 3) is my ninth Eliot Peper book. Can you tell that I love his writing? This might be his best novel yet which means he has already passed a very high standard of near-future science fiction writing. This is the third novel in the Analog series. His protagonist is Emily Kim who we met in the first Analog novel, Bandwidth. This novel opens 13 years since the end of the second book in the series, Borderless. Emily has totally disappeared from Commonwealth, the company which controls the feed - the source of all knowledge and so much more. She is about to reappear in this new story. I strongly you to read the novels in order so that you’ll benefit from the character development. 

Normally, I’m not a sci-fi guy, but this story forces the reader to consider the pros and cons of our developing technology. I think this series is an appeal to industry leaders like Tim Cook, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jeff Bezos to consider possible outcomes of unregulated technical advances. Emily Kim is one of the most compelling fiction characters that I’ve ever encountered. The plot is gripping, and the good guys and bad guys are all real and believable. It’s a quick and exciting read, but start with Bandwidth.

Borderless

Following the blog’s new trial guideline, I’m keeping this review to a maximum of six sentences. This is a prepublication review, and I’ll add the cover art when it becomes available:

In February 2018, I raved about Eliot Peper’s book Bandwidth, and if you haven’t read that one yet, then you’re already falling behind this prolific author. Now, he’s about to release the next novel, Borderless, continuing this near future look at the power behind those who control “the feed,” access to the internet which has only become more critical to everyone, to every government, and every company world wide. Commonwealth is the company which now owns and controls the feed, and the company has decided to impose a carbon tax. Immediately, the carbon tax became de facto international law – no one could risk opting out, but many hated this new tax and many wanted to make such global decisions. As the overheated climate began to favorably respond to reduced emissions as the result of the tax, one might ask, what could go wrong? Have a look at this story because Peper just might be the hottest young author who is writing today.

Bandwidth

Bandwidth takes place in the near future at a time when the Internet has become even more integrated into the lives of all humans, and as a result, the corporations that control the digital feed control much of the world. Commonwealth is the company that has become the dominate provider of the feed and as a result has become the most powerful of companies. The company guarantees it’s feed to be totally secure. In order to maintain order as Commonwealth sees fit, they hired Apex which is the premier Washington lobbying firm. Apex sells it’s nearly always successful lobbying activities to the highest bidder, and their best agent is Dag Calhoun, a talented, athletic, charismatic man who has a combination of talents akin to such characters as James Bond, Dirk Pitt, Harry Bosch, and perhaps Jack Taylor.

In the course of doing his work for Apex, Calhoun has assisted powerful corporations to achieve their own selfish profit-motivated goals even if it is clearly to the detriment of the environment where severe weather conditions have dramatically increased. And what if the “feed” is not really so secure, so that the information that is provided to individuals is really manipulated by people with hidden agendas. So, there is a clear dystopian quality to this story – there are very clear good guys and bad guys, and I think you’ll enjoy the resolution.

Mostly, I want to comment about the quality of Peper’s writing – which is brilliant. Emily Kim was the character who challenged Dag to consider the negative impact his work was having on the world, and in a conversation with Emily, Dag says, “’Everything we do, everything we believe, everything we are, we think it’s ours to choose.’ His voice quickened, words rushing to get out. ‘But even something as inconsequential as wanting a lawn in front of our homes isn’t a true choice. It’s the product of a never-ending series of historical accidents. We take the world we’re bon into for granted. We imagine that we control our thoughts and dreams. We think we’re free to be who we want to be. But there’s this vast hidden architecture that shapes us, and we don’t even know it. It’s like we’re actors in a play who don’t realize we’re working off a script.’”

I don’t know anyone else who writes like this. Peper fills out his story with a great cast of characters who are believable. This is an intense and captivating story. Eliot Peper is my newest favorite author, so I invite you to check out his other five novels, a well as Bandwidth.

Neon Fever Dream

Neon Fever Dream is a fantastic story by Eliot Peper, his fifth novel, all of which have been reviewed in Men Reading Books, all of which I thought were excellent and unusual crime novels. Novel novels, go figure.

Asha Amarasuriya is a Ceylonese woman who was raised on a tea plantation in the middle of her island, having grown up in a highly protected and privileged situation. As an adolescent, she was mentored by Dov Cohn, in an Israeli system for close combat called Krav Maga. After working with him for several years, he suddenly disappeared without explanation. Asha found her way to the U.S. where she became a Krav Maga instructor. It was doing that work when she met a new student, Lynn Chevalier, an investigative reporter, who was working on a story about the darknet, the secretive side of the internet where really bad guys do their dealings.

Peper takes the action from the Bay Area to Burning Man when Lynn announced that she had an extra ticket, and Asha accepted her offer to travel there in response to a demand for her parents in Sri Lanka that she accept an arranged marriage. Peper’s description of Burning Man is incredible, and there was nefarious action going on behind the scenes there with regard to the darknet. It’s difficult to write more without giving away too much of the plot, but this novel has all the necessary elements - good and interesting character development and a fast moving plot. The secondary characters were equally good and helped with the story development. Given Asha’s martial arts talents, you can guess that some hand-to-hand combat occurred, and Peper knows how to write a fight scene. This story grabbed me from the outset with the introduction of Kelemete Koloi, a Tongan Crip from Salt Lake City.

I read Neon Fever Dream straight through, so if you take my advice and buy this book, you’re in for a treat.