3.5 stars

This is a fun, fast-paced thriller with the normal action and fighting. What's not so normal is the diverse cast, secret organziationS and mathematics enhanced fighting! The main character Cas is cold, calculated, and a mathematical genius. While Cas could also be described as an anti-hero, as she uses math to measure distance and angles, calculating everything to the most precise degree to ensure she's the one of the most bad ass assassins, she's also just a girl, vulnerable and prickly. Well written and already looking forward to the continuation of the story.

There are so many interesting aspects to this book, it's hard to know where to begin. Let's start with the fact that Zero Sum Game was listed in Crimereads as a one of eight "crossover" thrillers, because it combines science fiction and fantasy. Or that it was originally published in 2014 under a creative commons license. In fact, the whole series was. Which is good, because once you've read the first one, now re-published by Tor, you will be eager for the rest.

The heroine of the series is Cas Russell, a "geek's Jack Reacher." She's "scary good" at math, so scary good that it goes beyond the level of Sherlock Holmes' genius. She uses her math skills to win fights, plot escapes, solve problems. Her skill is so extreme that it is actually a superpower, making this story a crossover thriller-fantasy.

A good hero requires a good villain, and if the hero has a superpower, so must the antagonist. In this case Cas is up against someone who can reach directly into people’s minds and twist their brains into Moebius strips. Someone intent on becoming the world’s puppet master. How can Cas win when she doesn't know who to trust? When she doesn't even know for sure what she knows? When she doesn't know which of her thoughts are her own anymore?

This book was cinematic, which is one of my favourite things to be able to say about a book. That’s when you don’t just see the scene unfolding in your head—with what would equal thousands of dollars in special effects—but after reading it, you desperately hope someone does make it into a movie without screwing it up!

As the synopsis says, Cas Russell is good at math. A bit of a understatement, but you probably guessed that. It basically gives her the ability to dodge bullets, because she can tell exactly where they’re going to hit based on the angle of the gun barrel. She can take you down from across the room by whipping her cell phone at you. And boy can she parallel park!

The plot is a little convoluted. Sometimes that’s good, but with this one I just wanted to move past it and see Cas do some more amazing feats. I didn’t really know the stakes of anything or what the end goal was. That always makes me feel a little lost. Sometimes that’s good. But it didn’t work in this case. But, It didn’t stop me from turning pages.

The characters, even the ones without super-powered math brains, were intriguing. Each one had depths and secrets, some of which I still have no clue about. Their personalities—or lack of—came off the page. You want to trust the ones you should be able to trust, but at the same time, you’re not sure if you can. Even Cas herself.

I would equate this book to a really great popcorn flick with an amazing cast. There’s no plot twists to make your head spin or life lessons that will make you a better person, but who cares? Another gun fight is about to go down!

I’ve been thinking a lot about this review because this book was complicated. There is so much math in it that there were times when it was hard to follow.
Cas Russell is good at math. That’s an understatement, she kind of like lives math. Whatever happens, wherever she goes she sees everything in equations, numbers. That in itself seemed a unique idea for me. That’s what kept me reading.
I can’t say I particulary like Cas. Or any of the other characters for that matter. They just don’t work for me. And considering this is the first book in a series, that’s a big problem for me. So I don’t think I will read the next book in the series, but I must tell that the action was cool. The way Cas does her thing is amazing. So anyone who likes action should give it a try.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with a digital copy of this book.

Cas Russell has an almost supernatural way with numbers and math which she uses in her job as a retriever, someone who retrieves people or items for clients. During her current gig, Cas is sent to retrieve a early-20's woman from a drug cartel. Cas realizes that there is more to this retrieval than she was originally told and dives in head first to try to find answers, about the organization behind the scenes and about herself.

For the first 20% of this book, I hated it. I did not enjoy Cas as a character. I did not enjoy the action, as it was all laced with way too much math.

"Overlapping numbers scuttled across Rio's fist as it rocketed toward me, their values scrambling madly, calculations doing themselves before my eyes."

At this point I was rolling MY eyes. Then something clicked and I became more interested. This was a layered tale, one with sharp turns and a deeper mystery. Cas was joined in the story by Checker and Arthur, who became allies. I suddenly really wanted to know exactly what was happening and how it all fit together.

Parts of the book still dragged by for me, but overall I enjoyed the book. I won't be shouting its praises from roofs, but I wouldn't discourage people to read it, either. I may or may not read the sequel.

Originally, I DNFd this book after about 20% through. I had tried to read it, but it just wasn't catching my attention. Take that along with a minor reading slump at the time, and you've got a recipe for disaster. However, I wanted to give it another chance when I got out of my slump.

Zero Sum Game is an action-packed, plot-driven novel. Some things I found very intriguing were its focus on the grey morality of an organization and its focus on a character with possible Antisocial Personality Disorder. (It's never directly stated from what I remember, but it's heavily implied.) ZSG did an excellent job at presenting a true greyness -- showing both the good and the bad side.

Where the novel lost me a bit was with the individual characters. They seemed more like pawns to the plot. You've got Cas, the 1st person narrator, who is really good at math. Arthur, the PI, who wants to stop Pithica (the organization). And Rio, the person with APD. And for the most part, they're just...there. I found Rio to be a well-written enigma, but Cas and Arthur just fell flat for me.

That being said, the plot of this book is outstanding. While the characters themselves just didn't do it for me, the things that happen to them because of the plot made me keep reading past my original DNF point. A drug cartel bust that turns into a bigger conspiracy, that in turn turns into an even bigger one? Sign me up.

I re-read Zero Sum Game (I had read the previous self-pub editions) as background for an interview on Absolute Write. We are featuring the book at the top of the Absolute Write Forums (https://absolutewrite.com/forums/activity.php) the week of publication, and promoting the interview on our Facebook group, and on Twitter.

I received this book through the publisher via Netgalley.

I've read a lot of urban fantasies--somewhere over 130--and it's hard for me to get into a new series at this point. I feel like I've seen it all. While <i>Zero Sum Game</i> does utilize some familiar tropes, Huang twists them around in inventive, fun ways. Straight up, Cas Russell comes across as many urban fantasy heroines do: almost friendless, ruthless, profane, and good at killing, and in the course of the book, she does make some genuine friends and allies. However, Cas's power is pretty darn unique: MATH. She algorithms her way into being the ultimate killing machine. Her battles are especially fun because you never know how she's going to scrape through.

And oh yeah, there are a lot of battles because Cas has caught the attention of some pretty bad folks. When people with kinda-sorta-superpowers clash, the action is fast and intense. Huang explores the greater Los Angeles area and creates some serious collateral damage in the process. I tend to be good at predicting endings, but I was genuinely surprised at where this book went.

This is a very promising start to a new series, and I'm thankful I had the chance to read an early galley!

Actual Rating: 3.5 stars

A promising debut novel! This sci-fi/thriller follows a woman with a shrouded past and unheard of math skills that inform her fighting ability and general badassery. Cas Russell is a loner who works in retrieval- discreetly aquiring hard to get items for her clients. Her latest job involves rescuing a girl from a drug cartel, but what should have been straightforward ends up landing her in the sights of an extra-governmental organization and unraveling a deep conspiracy. Joining her along the way are a disillusioned cop-turned-PI, a disabled and funny computer genius, and her only long-time friend: a religious sociopath.

I think there are the beginnings of something very cool here. The book is action-packed, the world is fairly compelling, and the characters bring a fun mix to bear. On the other hand, I have a hard time suspending disbelief that math abilities alone would translate to excellent fighting skills (I feel like we're missing a piece that might explain that) and this sometimes feels a little heavy-handed in terms of dealing with morality. The PI takes issue with Cas easily deciding to kill enemies and she takes it to heart much more readily than I found to be believable. It felt like the author trying to force this issue of the morality of violence rather than leave it as subtext. I imagine that may resolve itself with more writing experience.

The ending is satisfying but also leaves you wanting more answers to who Cas really is and where she comes from. I think this could turn into a very solid series! I received an advance review copy via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

[this review will be posted on my blog, acquadimore.wordpress.com, on October 1, 2018]

Zero Sum Game is a sci-fi thriller and the first book in the Russell's Attic series. It follows Cas Russell, a mercenary whose superpower is based on mathematics.

I think this is the kind of story that would work perfectly as a movie. It's fast-paced and full of action, fight scenes and unpredictable twists - just the kind of thing I'd like to watch on a screen. Someone please adapt this, I need it.
As a book, it's not exactly my kind of thing, but I liked it anyway.

I'm not sure sci-fi thrillers are a genre that appeals to me, but I can't deny that I was really invested in the characters even when I wasn't finding the plot interesting. If you like this genre and you're interested in a story with magical mathematics and a diverse cast, I really recommend this. I decided to read this story because I want to read most books in which the main characters are women who are in some way scientists - and I ended up really liking Cas and the descriptions of her mathematical abilities, but the main reason this book worked for me were the character dynamics.

I loved Cas Russell's narration. Hotheaded, antisocial, not as rational as she think she is, flawed, one-woman army Cas Russel. I love her. And she's not too powerful for the story (reading about a character who solves things only with their superpowers would be boring), since the villain's power ends up being literal mind control.
I also really liked the side characters:

Rio was my favorite of the side characters. I never would have thought I would like a character who is basically a really religious psychopath, but he was a really entertaining one.
Arthur Tresting is a black PI, probably the most normal person in the group and would ordinarily be the sanest person in the room. Since sane people are easier to manipulate for the villain, that isn't always true.
Checker is the hacker. He collaborates with Arthur, is very good as disappearing, and has a sense of humor that often includes annoying others. I loved the humor in this book (another aspect that, again, would translate really well on a screen). Checker uses a wheelchair.

I loved them individually, but I loved them even more as a group. Powerful people working together against someone who's worse and reluctant friendships are some of my favorite things to read about.

Another thing I really liked were the questions this book raised about ethics and free will. I would have liked to see more of that.

While I did really like the characters and their interactions, I wasn't always invested in the plot. I think mind control makes the plot less interesting - when the villain can make everyone act like they want, there's an excuse for really unwise decisions that isn't only "because we needed a plot", but it doesn't make those decisions any wiser. It doesn't leave that much space for interesting character growth. Mind control also seems to make for a somewhat unsatisfying ending, but I can't explain without spoilers.

Thanks to a NetGalley ARC I've had this gorgeous piece of speculative fiction sitting in my tbr for long weeks. At the publisher's request, reviews shouldn't be posted more than two weeks before publishing date. My excitement and expectation levels were through the roof before I could finally dive into this amazing story.

This is a crime thriller with PNR elements.

🌟 Non-stop action
🌟 Utterly unique characters
🌟 Mind bending mystery
🌟 Great flow & pacing

I was so hungry for it that I literally inhaled this story. 5 stars for the cover and 5 stars for the title which are always the strongest selling points for me to pick up a book.

If there is any little thing I found lacking, it would be just a smattering of humor to lighten up the heavy plot. Other than that, it is perfect.

PS. for my romance loving reader friends --- there is no romance in this book. Sorry #notsorry ;-)

Pros: fast paced, protagonist is ‘good at math’, interesting characters

Cons:

When Cas Russell takes the job to ‘retrieve’ Courtney Polk from a drug cartel, she assumes it will be a simple job. Because she’s VERY good at math, able to calculate vectors on the fly, making her dangerous in a fight. But she didn’t expect her mentor Rio to be working for the cartel. And when the woman who hired her turns out to be more than she seemed, Cas discovers she’s become a target of a mysterious organization, one with people who also have super powers.

This is a fast paced read that took me two days to get through. There are so many twists that it was hard to put down.

It’s an interesting cast of characters, as none of them are really ‘nice’ people. They’ve each got their good and bad qualities. Cas is a morally grey individual, who has no problem killing but also has some lines she won’t cross. Despite being a psychopath I mostly liked Rio. There’s a Dexter feel to him, as a man who’s using his baser urges for what he perceives is good. Arthur Tresting balances Rio on Cas’s other side, being mostly moral, but willing to bend the law when necessary and pretending he doesn’t know about or see most of Cas’s casual crimes.

I loved that Cas’s ‘superpower’ is that she’s just REALLY good at math. Like, so good she can do multiple calculations at once and so dodge bullets and make fancy trick kicks to take out opponents. The fight scenes are surprisingly entertaining.

I thought the rabbit hole of secret organizations was handled well, as was all the self doubt brought on by Dawna’s influence.

I really enjoyed the book.

This novel was not for me. Its fast-paced, methodical and calculating writing style (and main character) sparked my interest at first, but I ended up losing interest very quickly. The writing started sounding amateur and overly dramatic, and I didn't quite care for the protagonist. It's a pity, because the plot sounded fantastic!

Acción, acción y más acción. Esto es lo que va a encontrar cualquier lector de Zero Sum Game, la obra de S. L. Huang, una obra que ha tenido una vida curiosa. Se trata de una serie que ha llegado a su cuarto volumen, todos ellos autopublicados por la propia autora, pero que ahora ha sido relanzada por Tor. Y no me extraña que la editorial le haya echado el ojo (y el guante) porque se trata de un libro con un ritmo trepidante que se disfruta enormemente.

Cas Russell, la protagonista de la serie tiene una peculiaridad. Es muy buena con las matemáticas. Cas es tan, pero tan buena, que es capaz de deducir cuál será la trayectoria de una bala por lo que nunca la verás fallar un disparo. Sabe perfectamente cómo conducir una moto a la máxima velocidad sin riesgo de sufrir ningún percance ni roce. El mundo se despliega ante ella como una serie de ecuaciones de inmediata resolución. Esto es especialmente útil para su trabajo como "conseguidora", rescatando a personas secuestradas o recuperando bienes robados. Esta descripción de sus capacidades es bastante cinematográfica y la novela en sí podría ser perfectamente el guión para una película de acción.

La novela no es un prodigio de prosa, ni falta que le hace. Las escenas de acción, tiroteos y persecuciones se presentan una tras otra sin apenas respiro, pero con ese toque especial de geometría y cálculo de probabilidades que le hace sobresalir sobre otros thrillers. De hecho, cuando se dejan de lado los espectáculos pirotécnicos es cuando la historia pierde algo de fuelle. Se podría considerar casi como una novela de superhéroes aunque en ningún momento se hace referencia a las especiales capacidades de algunos de los personajes como superpoderes (de hecho, no queda especialmente claro de dónde se sacan estas cualidades aunque hay atisbos de algo sucio).

Quizá la definición más compacta que se me ocurre para Zero Sum Game es diversión palomitera. Pero ¿a quién no le gustan unas palomitas bien hechas?

PD: Si queréis flipar un poco, echadle un vistazo a la biografía de la autora. Matemática, especialista de cine y en armas, además de escritora. Lo normal hoy en día, vamos.

Fast-paced, exciting action, intriguing characters, with enough left to the mystery to make me anxious for the sequels.

An enjoyable, action-packed read from beginning to end.

The pacing of this book is relentless, starting with the protagonist Cas Russell rescuing a client from a Colombian drug cartel, and then spiralling into insanity from there. Initially, it was hard to anchor my interest in the ongoing plot, but once the big bad was introduced and the cat-and-mouse chase ensued, it became much easier to lose myself in the pages.

The characters were, as a whole, fine although not particularly outstanding. Cas's extraordinary math skills were an interesting and surprisingly entertaining gimmick to read, and I did like seeing how she used it to fight and manipulate her environment. The scene where she maths out a way to adjust the acoustics so she can eavesdrop on a conversation was especially fun. Beyond that, there wasn't much to glom onto in terms of her personality and character, but I can see that changing as the series goes on, given the small threads the author leaves behind at the end.

I do like the protagonist's anti-hero characteristics—I just wish there were a few more introspective scenes so I could get a better understanding of her as a person and her core values. What little bit is discussed in the book has its moments of contradiction—which I actually love, because I don't think morality can be black-and-white, so I would've enjoyed reading a deeper exploration of the line she draws in her work. On that note, I do like how the author pins the main conflict of the book as being morally difficult to summarise. Both protagonist and antagonist display morally-good and morally-corrupt mentalities, and the question of whether the means justify the ends is toyed with.

I will say as someone who appreciates slower paced books with more introspective, slice-of-life scenes scattered about to process the characters and the world, this book failed to satisfy me. But readers seeking a fast narrative that never lets up would definitely enjoy this. A polished and easy-to-read effort for a debut novel.

If, like me, you enjoy plenty of action (and I mean plenty) in your books, then Zero Sum Game is the book for you. From page one, it's busy and intense, and there were definitely no points where I thought there was too much of a lull. So, all in all, perfect for me and my short attention span.

You might think, therefore, that I'd rate this book a lot higher than I have. Mainly, I didn't because, for all that the plot never let up, I had a little trouble always feeling sympathetic towards some of the characters, in particular Cas and Rio. I liked Cas, but every time she blithely insisted on asserting how much she trusted Rio and couldn't work with anyone who wouldn't work with him too, I had to roll my eyes. Because Rio is described as being a mass-murdering sadist. He is a psychopath (although apparently calling him this is crossing a line for Cas. And mass murder isn't? Okay). But Cas trusting him is supposed to be enough for other people to trust him too. So yeah. I could definitely see more where Arthur and Checker were coming from with this. Additionally, the plot somewhat revolved around Rio and I just couldn't side with him and Cas enough to actually care.

Then there was the little problem of how Cas just seemed to kill everyone who got in her way. I wouldn't mind so much if they were all genuinely bad guys but they just seemed to be anyone she categorised as impeding her. There was a part in the middle, when Arthur calls her out on this, where I thought here we go, here's going to be some soul-searching and character development, but it seemed to get dropped fairly quickly.

But lack of sympathy for characters aside, I enjoyed this book. It was an action-packed ride and definitely one I'd recommend if you're looking for a quick thriller to read.

Zero Sum Game was already on my radar in its previous, self-published incarnation, although it never made the leap from the ever-growing collection of Kindle Samples I keep around to inform potential purchases. This new version, published by Tor, has been revisited and polished up, and is now being released much more widely as part of the publisher's #Fearlesswomen initiative, bringing this unconventional superhero thriller to a bigger audience, and also to me.

Our protagonist Cas Russell is a mathematical genius, and a hired gun, but not in the way you'd expect. Far from being your average brains-over-brawn number crunching geek, providing support to a team from behind some giant, poorly lit computer display, her abilities let her calculate the trajectory of bullets, survive falls that should kill her and punch people much larger than her at just the right angle to drop them with minimum necessary force. Cas is extremely cagey about these abilities and keeps them very close to her chest, particularly as she lives in a world where she seems to be the only person who can do this kind of thing. However, after a routine extraction of a young woman from a Colombian drug cartel ends up leading her to an organisation led by someone with even more terrifying abilities, Cas ends up in the middle of a plot that's both more wide ranging and more relevant to her, personally, than she had realised.

The way Cas' abilities play out - and, almost as importantly, the way they don't - provides Zero Sum Game with its most unique and compelling facet. Our introduction to her capabilities is almost exclusively through her ability to manipulate real-world mechanics, giving her superhuman combat abilities and problem solving skills which allow her to, for example, move a series of random objects in an alley to manipulate the acoustics enough to hear a conversation happening in a distant room. This is all very cool stuff, and it absolutely sets the scene for Cas as an action hero subversion of the "maths geek" trope. In contrast, Cas' abilities to apply statistical analysis, while also developed in later chapters, take a long time to come to the fore, and importantly they never dominate the way the first-person narrative . Even when Cas does run the probabilities of what the people around her will do, it's embedded in interpersonal and emotional reactions to the situations she's in, and tends to come with a much lower rate of reward than her kickass physics-ninja skills. Cas is bad with people, but she's bad in a generally misanthropic way, not a "human emotions do not compute" way, and this makes for a more interesting character (especially for the purposes of first-person narration).

Cas is thrown into an action packed plot which kicks off right from the very first page and never really stops moving. I struggled with this in early chapters, as very little time is spent establishing the limited networks and sense of "normal" in Cas' life before these are ripped away from her in a Bioware Prologue-esque move, motivating her continuing interest in a case that otherwise doesn't hold much long-term appeal for such a self-interested character. It's not until the introduction of the big bad, and her own abilities, that I became genuinely invested in the main plot. Dawna Polk is basically a telepath, in the way that Cas is basically a superhero - while she might not be able to magically read minds, her ability to interpret psychological cues is so good that she's able to read everything a person is thinking and, even more terrifyingly, manipulate the impact that encountering her has on the memories and intentions of others. The uncertainty this brings to what's already a pretty tense plot is effective and chilling, and used to great effect both in the book itself and to set up hooks for the rest of the series.

Unfortunately, Dawna is a standout character in a story which doesn't really have any others. Even Cas herself is hard to like, and her characterisation is somewhat thin outside of the maths stuff, although some of the gaping holes in her background and motivations do make more sense towards the end. This is yet another book where I was frustrated by the gender balance: besides Cas and Dawna, the only other women turn up near the beginning and are pretty much just there as victims, and there's no non-binary representation. By far my biggest annoyance was Rio, Cas' only "friend", who is supposed to be a compelling sociopath-with-a-code and whose motivations and relationship to Cas come to the fore at several points in the plot. Unfortunately, Rio's main functions are to do horrible things that Cas constantly makes excuses for, and mansplain her own emotions and behaviours to her for her own good. I can't help but note that Huang did not need to make Rio a sociopath for this to be a plausible set of behaviours for him to exhibit towards a female protagonist, and the effect was far from endearing. Cas' other sidekick is Arthur Tresting, a Private Investigator who comes off better by virtue of comparison but is otherwise bland at best, getting upstaged by his bit-part hacker friend in the few scenes the friend gets to be in.

Ultimately, while I can certainly admire the elements that Zero Sum Game does well, for me the good didn't fully outweigh the things I didn't like about this story. Cas and Dawna both have highly compelling powers and are interesting characters in their own right (odd but ultimately justified choices on Cas' part aside), but the plot took a little too long to get its hooks into me, and the supporting protagonists were at best forgettable. For those who enjoy a higher rate of action, Zero Sum Game's calculation might work out more in their favour, but it's not likely to go down as one of my top reading experiences this year.

thank you TOR for a copy in exchange for an honest review!

Eloquent, fast-paced, and never predictable -- Zero Sum Game is a lovely book for those who like thrillers, sci fi, or just bad ass women. I sided with the bad guy quite a bit in this novel, which gives the reader an interesting moral quandary to work through. I wouldn't have made the same decisions the heroine did, but that's ok. It makes things much less black or white. Protagonist Cas Russell is unforgettable, especially because she isn't that likable for a main character, yet you still root for her (sometimes). Glad Tor chose to pick this one up for rerelease.

Cas Russell specializes in retrieval. With skills ranging from hand-to-hand combat to small arms to evasive driving, she is a force to be reckoned with... but what makes her special is an advanced working knowledge of all things mathematical. She has an equation for everything. The aiming vector for her snubnose, the results of algorithms to deduce the similarities of millions of seemingly random numbers... all immediate answers ready in her head.

When a new case spirals out of control, Who hired her and why? And who should she trust? The questions keep piling up and these blank pieces drive a narrative that is fun, exciting, and worth every minute of reading. All she can figure out is that her enemy has the ability to influence your every move with a psychic connection and manipulation that her allies will have great trouble competing with.

Zero Sum Game is a a novel with slick computer hackers, mathematical-enhanced fighting, and a rocking new character to follow on the hunt. Throw in some great original lines and you have a Marvel-esque action series worth following. This is a release with a new publisher, and it should get the buzz it deserves.

Thank you to NetGalley, Tor Books, and S. L. Huang for the advanced copy for review.