Silicon Valley dreams of itself as the realm of the future, a fifty-mile cradle between San Jose and San Francisco where the impossible is born. It’s here, after all, that so many of the gadgets and doo-hickeys foretold by Isaac Asimov and his ilk actually come to be. Unsurprising, then, that the genre of choice for recent fiction about tech companies has been sci-fi. The past half a decade alone has seen dozens of such novels, from the contemplative (Jennifer Egan’s The Candy House) to the satirical (Josh Riedel’s Please Report Your Bug Here; Dave Eggers’s The Every) to the bluntly dystopian (Rob Hart’s The Warehouse).

A new cluster of novels about big tech, though, have added to the subject’s standard fare of science fiction a helping of its nastier cousin, horror.

Colin Winnette’s Users, Daniel Hornsby’s Sucker, and Sarah Rose Etter’s Ripe find horror useful for its abiding interest in the vulnerability of the human body, that stubborn thing that no cloud-based consciousness engine can (yet) do away with entirely. In other words, the cybergothic provides a ready template for thinking through the physical toll of the virtual worlds that are rapidly swallowing contemporary life. From ghosts to vampires to sentient black holes, the monsters of this triptych are only slight exaggerations of our increasingly dissociated existences, asking what will happen to the husks we leave behind in meatspace.

[Note: Spoilers for Ripe, Users, and Suckers lie beneath.]

***

Users follows Miles, an amoral employee of an immoral company that designs exceedingly immersive virtual realities. In terms of technical sophistication, these in-brain experiences are several ticks to the right of what’s currently possible in 2023 (think Oculus plus mind- and memory-reading capabilities). The company’s profit motive, though, is thoroughly of our own era: users’ highly personal digital reveries conveniently provide the corporation with an endless wellspring of the most intimate consumer data imaginable—“unchecked want. Pure desire.”

Miles’s career, and the novel’s plot, take off when he invents The Ghost Lover, a highly popular virtual scenario in which the user is gently haunted by the spirit of an old flame. The game seamlessly marries Gothic creature with science fictional technology, “merging elements of real life with the impossible logic of the subconscious[,] … the extra-rational.” It is there, after all, in the locked basement of the unconscious, that horror thrives—and Ghost Lover asks whether we really ought to use science to open the door to that particular cellar. “If Miles had learned anything from working at a virtual reality company that invited users to build customized experiences out of the content of their dreams,” an early passage explains with unmissable foreboding, “it was that we all kept horrible parts of ourselves alive in the dark.” It’s a Gothic prophecy that Miles himself eventually fulfills when he unwittingly conjures an incestuous VR fantasy late in the novel.

Souls without flesh, ghosts are the original avatars, emblems of the Cartesian split that allows our minds to ditch our skin-bags and spend time “in” an internet shopping mall or the pixelated elsewhere of a Netflix show. Fittingly, disembodiment is built into the very architecture of The Ghost Lover: in order to play, the user lies down in a pod-like device called The Egg, which completely encases the player, hijacks their vision, and “move[s] and monitor[s] [their] body for them, allowing the user to fully engage with the potential of the company’s platform while remaining in an isolated, reclined, and passive state.”

The Egg’s emphasis on physical insulation—only a slight exaggeration of VR pod designs that already exist today—epitomizes the ways that entertainment technology severs us not just from our own bodies, but from those around us. Miles’s fate eventually takes this to its logical extreme, the novel’s conclusion trapping him indefinitely in the Egg and its imagined worlds. But sci-fi again proves a natural bedfellow to horror: the ghost as supernatural archetype also speaks to the online age because it is a figure of profound loneliness. From Beloved to Patrick Swayze’s Sam, the sad specter offers the living an impossible fantasy of communion with someone who is gone.

Miles’s ghost game is explicitly born of just such a wish fulfillment. As the novel progresses, he becomes increasingly estranged from his borderline sociopathic older daughter and cold wife. (The latter eventually brings their marital detente to a crisis by moving into their family’s basement with the architect who has been slowly remodeling their home into a disorienting, Udolpho-ish castle. Yowch.) A few months after his father dies—a loss that completes his isolation—Miles spends a rare weekend at home without his partner and kids. Soon, he begins to hear mysterious thumps in his bedroom walls at night, sounds that seem “supernatural, like something from beyond was trying to use the walls to communicate with him.” It isn’t long before Miles has dreamed up The Ghost Lover, a game for people who would rather be haunted than confront the reality of their solitude. The result is “a curiously infinite navel,” a self-generated and self-perpetuating fantasy of being wanted. An eternal scroll, in other words, for the extremely online.

***

Dissociation is also the emotional status quo of the tech world depicted in Ripe. Cassie, an employee of a Bay Area startup specializing in the innately sinister field of persuasive technology, has been followed since birth by a small black hole. This cosmic familiar is the definition of horror, concentrating all of the universe’s most ominous possibilities in one place: “danger, nothingness, mystery, evil, other dimensions, the unknown, the mystical void, death, the end of the world as we know it.” Yet within the novel, the hole functions less as a physical threat to Cassie than as an emblem of her depression. The Cassandra to her Cassandra, the hole grows and shrinks in proportion to her loneliness, singing her name with “the siren song of the void.” Like Winnette, Etter is more interested in the melancholic registers of the supernatural than in its abject terrors. (The two moods do sometimes converge, however, as in the string of gory suicides that Cassie witnesses in San Francisco and its surrounds, one-man protests of the region’s unlivable economic and spiritual conditions.)

Cassie increasingly outsources her feelings to her deep-space mood ring because she finds Silicon Valley so very inhospitable to them. “To survive here, I have split myself in two: my true self and my false self,” she notes. The reasons for Cassie’s alienation from the local culture are manifold: the workaholic koolaid that she must guzzle in order to pay her astronomical rent; tech conglomerates’ boasts of bettering the world while they in fact do little more than to turn user data into ad revenue; the screen addiction that gobbles up what little leisure time might have been spent on social connection, commuters’ “faces melting into their phones.”

In response to these and other miseries, Cassie’s chosen survival mechanism is the waking blackout, an elective numbness both to her immediate surroundings and to her body. During work meetings that toggle between mundanity and corporate malfeasance, Cassie keeps sane by mentally teleporting to far-off scenes: “a mountaintop, nimbus clouds, volcanoes erupting, galaxies colliding and combining.” Even the eminently physical experiences of sex and pregnancy succeed only in further separating Cassie’s mind from her body. When a pregnancy test comes back positive, “I expect something volent to happen inside of me …. No feeling comes. I want to cry or throw up, but neither happens.” It comes as little surprise, then, when the novel ends with a portrait of radical and voluntary disembodiment. Swallowed by a void, Cassie—like Miles, in the final pages of Users—abdicates from her flesh in an act that suggests both obliteration and her only chance at freedom.

***

Sucker also considers the physical abjection wrought by big tech, but carries out its critique by zooming in on the body rather than disappearing it. This is a story, according to narrator Chuck Grossheart, “soggy with blood (not to mention the other human juices: vomit, liquefied organs, incidental semen, some of those symbolic medieval humors, nervous sweat, and piss…).” Though the gore doesn’t rev up until its final chapters, Sucker’s recurring metaphors are the stuff of Giallo—not just blood, but also the heart (see: our anti-hero’s surname), and cancer cells. In Hornsby’s crosshairs are not just the real-life, secret body count behind so many of Silicon Valley’s luxury inventions (one thinks, for instance, of the injuries suffered by Congolese people who mine the cobalt needed for smartphone manufacture), but also the technorati’s obsession with using “‘technology [to] unlock … the full potential of their [own] bodies and minds,’” as the novel’s villainous entrepreneur brags. It’s a line that could have been uttered without irony by any number of the techies swept up in the current longevity craze.

Grossheart is the listless heir to an ill-gotten family fortune, dark money that gets him a job at an even darker institution: a Theranos doppelganger that aims to rapidly test and treat diseases with nanobots in the bloodstream. The eventual revelation that the outfit is being run by vampires—a self-anointed plutocracy that plans to “help” less brilliant humans by controlling their minds via nanobot—is not meant to surprise the reader. (If the novel’s title and cover art weren’t giveaways enough, there are plenty of other nods along the way to this lightly fictionalized tech elite’s literal and figurative bloodsucking, from bats that double as surveillance drones to technobabble investor pitches that glamour the listener.) Instead, the book’s dramatic tension comes from the main character’s willing obliviousness to the nosferatus in his midst, even as he falls more deeply into their clutches and unwittingly advances their plans.

Of course, the vampire is by no means new metaphorical ground for critiques of corporate America’s greed, or even that of Silicon Valley specifically. The bloody deeds of Peter Thiel (rumored), Elizabeth Holmes (confirmed), and the like are too creepy not to have already invited the analogy many times over in journalism and fiction alike. But Hornsby is unusually committed to the bit. In his simultaneously paranoid and plausible vision (The Crying of Lot 49 is a frequent touchstone), the conspiracy of wealth that rules the Bay Area sucks dry everything and everyone, from the underclasses of the poor and sick who desperately agree to participate in illegal lab testing, to the local arts scene (which, in a poisonous irony, must rely on tech funding to survive in a region that tech has made prohibitively expensive for artists).

Taken together, this trio of novels suggests that the physical and social dissociation increasingly baked into our technology makes for an ideal breeding-ground for moral indifference. Sucker, Users, and Ripe bring us tech worker protagonists who become responsible for monstrosity so gradually that they’re barely aware it’s happening. Hornsby, Etter, and Winnette differ chiefly in their degrees of optimism that the foot soldiers of big tech can—or even want to—disentangle themselves from such amorphous complicity: as Grossheart declares with disquieting pride in Sucker’s final line, “My chest was hollow. I had no heart. I didn’t need it.”

Ehh. I didn't love this one. I DID like the writing and that's the only reason I didn't DNF the book.

Honestly, it was a struggle for me to finish this one. I found the writing unenjoyable and did not really find the characters interesting enough to justify my time spent reading this book.

I DNFed this book. I unfortunately did not vibe with the writing style or the characters.. I was so bored throughout and I did not like any of the characters. The main character was insufferable and I could not read any longer after making its to 35%

Thank you to Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor & NetGalley for allowing me to read and review this book

Published by Anchor on July 11, 2023

Sucker is marketed as a satire, but it takes the form of a thriller that morphs into a horror novel. I suspect the horror is meant to be satirical, because vampires are only taken seriously by Bram Stoker fans and romance novelists. Unfortunately, the horror comes too late to distinguish Sucker from non-satirical thrillers that follow the same formula.

Sucker tells a story of corporate greed driven by a “secret society” that is controlling the world (or, at least, pulling the strings that matter to its members). Its members have an ability they describe as “the Gift.” Perhaps it is the concept of a secret cabal (common in thriller literature and far-right blogs) that Daniel Hornsby meant to satirize. Or perhaps he meant to mock Elizabeth Holmes, who famously bilked investors with promises of technical advances in medicine that they probably should have recognized as unachievable. Regardless of Hornsby’s intent, Sucker hews too tightly to the conventions and content of a traditional thriller to satirize effectively.

The story is apparently set in an alternate universe where the tech industry is centered in San Narcisco and Facebook is called GetTogether. Perhaps the changes were intended to assure that Holmes wouldn’t sue Hornsby. At the heart of the story is a young man named Charlie. Charlie is not a virtuous thriller hero. He’s a bit of a slacker. He’s self-centered and often self-pitying. He’s nevertheless interesting because his faults give him enormous room for growth. The plot of Sucker creates an incentive for Charlie to become a better person. Circumstances also give him the opportunity to remain self-centered. What choice Charlie will make fuels the story’s minimal dramatic tension. Given the artificial nature of the choice, I’m not sure many readers will care what Charlie does.

Charlie calls himself Chuck Gross but he was born Charles Grossheart, the son of a wealthy businessman. His father made a fortune in the oil industry by being evil. He pays lobbyists to disparage global warming so that his fossil fuel investments are not threatened by trivial concerns like destroying the planet.

Charlie uses a different working name so that he will not be disparaged as a music producer. He started his own label devoted to the rebirth of punk rock, appropriately named Obnoxious. His “noisy vanity project” is bleeding money, but he hopes a newly released album called Sucker by Pro Laps will improve its revenues. It helps that Thane, the band’s lead male vocalist, made the news by dying under mysterious circumstances. His girlfriend, the band’s drummer, now sings Pro Laps songs with the kind of grief that punk fans regard as authentic. Thanks to Thane’s suspicious death, Obnoxious might make money after all.

Before Thane dies, Charlie worries about paying his artists without going to his family for help. He accepts an invitation from his college friend, Olivia Watts, to join her business as a creative consultant. Mostly Olivia wants to exploit Charlie’s family name to attract investors to her business. The company claims it is engineering biological nanobots that will monitor and eventually cure medical problems as they arise, dramatically extending lifespans. Olivia’s true goal is less humanitarian. Olivia is the Elizabeth Holmes character in that her promised technological advances are untethered to reality. Perhaps Holmes, like Olivia, had “the Gift” in the sense that she had an unusual talent for persuading investors to follow her. I’m not sure that appealing to greed actually requires any persuasive talent, but the Gift is a key element of Olivia’s success.

Charlie is eventually approached by a whistleblower who has evidence that Olivia’s company is scamming investors by making overblown claims of success in its research. Charlie doesn’t know whether to believe the whistleblower or his old friend Olivia, although he eventually recognizes obvious signs that Olivia is manipulating him. The novel finally shifts into second gear when the whistleblower arrives, but it travels a long road in first before it reaches that point.

To foreshadow the conspiracy plot, Charlie encounters a symbol — an infinity sign with teeth — at odd locations on Olivia’s company property. Why is the symbol carved into a table leg? Who knows. Eventually we learn about “an ancient society of the world’s most intelligent and talented individuals, all working to bring about the evolution of humanity to something better, stronger.” Secret societies are ubiquitous in thrillers. I wish they existed so they could do something useful, although in most thrillers they are only interested in advancing the interests of their members. A society doesn’t need to be secret to advance that goal. The Federalist Society and Heritage Foundation, among many others, operate in the open to achieve their nefarious ends.

About two-thirds of the novel has passed before we learn the truth about Olivia. That truth made me wonder why I’d been reading about Charles’ obsession with his family and his little music company, none of which has much to do with the story’s eventual focus. I suppose the revelation is where the satire begins, the point at which a mundane story about a rebellious rich kid begins to emulate a thriller, complete with murders and chase scenes. Olivia acknowledges that her scheme will do something awful to test subjects, something that might appear “unsavory” to the uninitiated. I suppose that’s satire, as is Olivia’s notion of wealthy people who have “the Gift” leading a cultural and biological evolution. Perhaps the intent is to blend white supremacy with wealthy entitlement while poking fun at both of them, but the satire never grabbed me, never exposed anything that hasn’t always been obvious. Swindlers are bad? Global warming deniers are evil? Greed isn’t good? Oh really? A better title for a novel making those points without developing them into an exciting story would be Obvious Observations.

Some paragraphs of Sucker feel like padding. A diatribe about zebras and a description/discussion of various family portraits in the Grossheart mansion add little beyond word count to the story. Yes, the zebra eventually becomes a symbol of Charlie’s true essence, but only in Charlie’s deluded mind. Hornsby’s smooth prose kept me reading even as I continued to wonder how he planned to make an interesting story out of a secret society and punk rock and vampires. As satire, a vampire story doesn’t have the bite (no pun intended) of a proposal to eat children. Even with the addition of mysterious deaths and an Elizabeth Holmes clone, Hornsby never developed an engrossing story, whether it is classified as a thriller or a horror novel or a satire. I was ultimately disappointed that some decent writing and characterization failed to serve a stronger story.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

I hate to admit I had to restart this one several times and I still had some trouble getting into it. It’s not that it was bad. I actually found the writing to be quite good and I have to say I found the character of Chuck to be quite intriguing (if not entirely likable). I think my issue was mainly that I went in expecting one thing and ended up getting something fairly different, though in the end still enjoyable.

Chuck has always wanted to get out from his family’s shadow, to pursue his own passion/do his own thing, so he started a record label. Unfortunately it’s not as successful as he’d like and thus in order to keep receiving money from his family he needs to have a normal/ ‘respectable’ job, so when his old college friend Olivia offers him what is basically a do-nothing job with her startup biotech company (mostly to get some funding from his family) he doesn’t hesitate. But then he discovers things at the company aren’t exactly what they seem, leading him down quite the rabbit hole. I probably would have enjoyed it a bit more had I gone in with different expectations. But that’s on me. 3.5 stars. I’d like to thank Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor, and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review an eARC of Sucker.

https://www.amazon.com/review/RUZ7ARB5P42UO/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv

Charles Grossheart Jr. is masquerading as Chuck Gross. He is the owner of Obnoxious Records, an indie punk label without success or notable acts. He’s been coasting because his father is one of the wealthiest and most evil (according to Chuck) people alive. When his funds are threatened and he’s forced to get a real job, he seeks out his college friend Olivia who owns a biotech startup named “Kenosis”. It's pretty similar to Elizabeth Holmes’ infamous scam. Chuck becomes suspicious of Olivia’s mission, then this falls a bit off the deep end. Somehow this book managed to be infuriating and boring to me. Chuck drones on and on about how evil his upbringing was and sounds more entitled as the work goes on. He’s simultaneously disdainful and jealous of the people around him in a way that gives off the stink of his own inadequacies. I’m sure this book was supposed to be a satire with some elements of horror and normally that’s something I really enjoy. I just don’t think this was the book for me.

Special thanks to NetGalley and Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor for permitting me to read this work prior to its release.

What's the deal with Olivia and Kenosis? Charles- aka Chuck- needs to prove to his father that he's got some business smarts even though his record company is flailing around so he aligns himself with Olivia, an old college pal who has a burgeoning start up. The situation might well remind the reader of Theranos and Elizabeth Holmes but there's something darker here, Chuck is not a likable character and I never found myself rooting for him. This is more than a little snarky and requires a knowledge of pop culture and Silicon Valley (at times it felt a bit too inside baseball). Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC, For fans of literary fiction,

I DNFed this book. I unfortunately did not vibe with the writing. I was so bored throughout and I did not like any of the characters. The main character was insufferable and I could not read any longer. I was 30% in and nothing even happened yet.

I wasn't sure what to make of this novel in the first 50 pages or so. It's the story of a billionaire's son who's trying to distance himself from the family name and reputation by running a punk record label, but is forced to take a more legitimate corporate job. The company he works for, however, isn't exactly what it seems. You need to get past the halfway mark for the plot to pick up and become more engrossing. There's definitely a "what the hell is going on?" feel for both the reader and protagonist. I'm not entirely satisfied with the ending; things were wrapped up pretty quickly without a real explanation as to how things happened. I don't regret reading this though, as there are some thought provoking elements regarding the control of the wealthy and biomedicine.

This book just didn't connect with me, which is a crying shame because I LOVED Daniel Hornsby's previous novel. His writing style felt different this time around. It's like a ghost writer wrote this for him instead. Also, the plot felt too on the nose. You can tell it's loosely based on Elizabeth Holmes and the cable series, Succession. There was nothing original or creative about this novel. He basically just borrowed from previous source material I listed above and called it a day. I have not given up on this writer because he is talented, but this book was a major letdown.

Sucker by Daniel Hornsby is a witty and thought-provoking novel that takes a sharp look at the corrupt and selfish nature of the ultra-wealthy. The protagonist, Chuck Gross, is a character that many readers will be able to relate to, as he struggles to define himself outside of his family’s immense wealth and influence.

Hornsby’s exploration of the biotech industry is fascinating, and the author does an excellent job of weaving science fiction elements into the narrative. The novel raises important questions about the ethical implications of scientific progress and human experimentation, and the consequences of unchecked corporate greed.

The book is well-written, with sharp dialogue and a fast-paced plot that keeps the reader engaged from the opening pages. Hornsby has a knack for creating memorable characters, and the supporting cast, including Chuck’s punk rock friends and the enigmatic Olivia Watts, are all well-drawn and interesting.

Overall, Sucker is a smart and entertaining read that is sure to appeal to fans of science fiction, satire, and social commentary. Hornsby’s writing is clever and insightful, and the novel is a timely reminder of the dangers of unchecked corporate power and greed. Highly recommended.

This is a story about what happens when the ultimate nepo baby crosses paths with startup culture.  Chuck Gross is the scion of one of the richest men in America, who made his billions from activities that Chuck would prefer not to think too much about.  Chuck is trying to make his own way in the world through a punk music label he founded -- albeit one that is funded largely by his family's money, not that he's let anyone who works for the label know that.  But when Chuck's father threatens to cut off funding for the label, Chuck must get a "real job" (read: a job that his parents respect).

Just in time, one of his closest friend's college reaches out and offers him a position at her company.  Olivia Watts is not just any friend -- she dropped out of Harvard to create a company called Kenosis that promises to revolutionize health care through a device that is implanted in people and can identify right away when someone is sick so they can seek immediate treatment.  The technology almost seems too good to be true, but Olivia has secured major investors, huge contracts, and a ton of publicity.  So when she asks Chuck to be a creative consultant, it seems perfect -- he'll have a job that will get his father off his back working for one of his good friends.

At first, everything goes smoothly -- Chuck does not have much to do, other than accompanying Olivia to some meetings and, as it turns out, getting his father to invest.  But as he spends more time on the Kenosis campus, he starts to get the sense that things are not quite as they appear, between secret labs, employees who vanish or end up dead under mysterious circumstances, and testing that seems to go awry.  Chuck begins to wonder if Olivia is just a scam artist or if there is something even more sinister going on -- and how far he is willing to go to find out and, if necessary, stop her.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book!  Chuck is hilarious, eager to mock his own circumstances and social set while also reluctant to give up the security that his family's wealth and status provide him.  This makes him a keen observer of the communities of which he is a part, and the book is a sharp examination of the 1 percent (or really the .1 percent), technology and tech companies, the cult of charismatic founders, and what it takes to succeed in a career in the arts.  The scenes between Chuck, his parents, and his brother and descriptions of their family life often had me laughing (including an unlikely but truly hysterical account of zebras, his father's pride-and-joy).  The book's slightly fictional world of "San Narcisco" and major tech companies were also an insightful and enjoyable skewering of their real-life counterparts.  And the mystery driving the story kept me guessing even as, based on parallels to real-life events, I thought I knew where it was going.

Strongly recommended!

Sucker is a satire following Chuck Gross - the son of an extremely evil billionaire. Chuck runs a music label, but is forced to get a job to avoid being cut off. He joins his old friend Olivia at her biotech company (extremely reminiscent of Elizabeth Holmes). Soon after, though, people start disappearing and Chuck finds many strange things in the large corporate campus.

This novel was a lot of fun. Chuck is a bit infuriating, and we hear his point of view, but I thought he had some pretty solid character development. The supernatural aspect ended up being actually a bit underwhelming - I wanted more! Overall though, I had a lot of fun with this one.

I just couldn't get into this. I apologise to the author and publishing house who sent me a copy. It just didn't seem real or believable, with the style written as if it was for a screenplay. I think all the characters seemed like pre-existing characters in other books/films, offering no new insights. There will be a mass audience for this sort of thing, I'm sure. Just not for me. I had to put it down and move on.

I requested this one because it might be an upcoming title I would like to review on my Youtube Channel. However, after reading the first several chapters I have determined that this book does not suit my tastes. So I decided to DNF this one.

I'm sure many people who are smarter and more patient than me will greatly enjoy this book. I had trouble staying focused on it, and the pace was very slow. I ended up DNF'ing at 22%.

Clever concept, however the main character was so unbelievable and unlikable that I just could not get into the actual story and had to force myself to pick it up. Thanks to NetGalley for the chance to read and review this book.

Thanks to NetGalley and Anchor for an ARC of this title.

This was such a fun romp once I realized what was coming down the road. The main character is the right kind of terrible, just oblivious enough to what's about to happen that it's delightful watching the dominoes fall into place until it's too late to stop them from falling.

If I had one complaint, it's that the start on this book is slow, and right when it feels like it's all systems go, abruptly stops when I wouldn't have minded things going a step further in terms of the plot. Leave them wanting more, yes, but at least give me a little more of a denouement!

As someone who grew up in Silicon Valley, I regard tech novels with a great degree of skepticism. So often, to me at least, they smack of young, starry-eyed believers who have come to California for the dream of changing the world or free snacks or company parties headlined by Katy Perry or 300k/year salaries. And then, when those novels turn to their inevitable conclusions: that the party in Menlo Park or Cupertino or San Francisco isn't all it's cracked up to be, there's a moral superiority to it all, a sense that they've done it, the author has finally pulled back the curtain.

The thing is, California has always been a mirage. And tech is one of its shiniest promises. Those books always make the mistake of believing the hype in the first place.

Daniel Hornsby's SUCKER, however, gets it right. He gets it so right, in fact, I found myself sending friends who still work in tech uncorrected proof quotes and laughing out loud. This novel is razor sharp, delightfully dark, and so funny you will find yourself snorting (I did). But most of all, Hornsby has crafted a wonderfully smart novel. With a brilliant voice and razor sharp tone, Hornsby does what so many have failed to do--he shows tech for what it is and he does it with force. I absolutely loved this book.

And the teeth on the cover? Perfect.