The setting is a dystopian London in the 2070s or so. Climate change has wreaked havoc on the environment, central government has weakened and splintered, big corporates are stronger than ever, biotec has evolved to scary levels, and AI is closer than ever to self awareness. Our heroes are young people trying to find hope in a hostile world that reminds them again and again how hopeless everything is. They grab at every opportunity to try something new, from playing music that excites them, through little daily joys, and, finally, to making an effort to make big change happen, even if the chances of it working are limited.

The book is a masterpiece - perhaps the best thing I read this year. It sits somewhere between Stephenson's Snow Crash, Bacigalupi's The Water Knife, Vandermeer's Veniss Underground, and Hamilton's Mindstar Rising. All of this is suffused with the author's great gift at storytelling. The richness of worldbuilding is astounding - there are so many ideas that the mind boggles. While not at the same level of sophistication as Brunner's The Sheep Loop Up, it's definitely in the same neighbourhood. The story is almost frantic in its energy levels. The characters are all complex, multi layered, and emotionally rich. The narrative is compelling, interesting, and, more than anything, has a bigger picture message about our environment, the need for hope (even when the struggle might be futile), and the importance of not giving up.

I absolutely loved it. I recommend highly to any fan of the authors I mention above, and anyone looking for a dose of hyper intelligent dystopian cyberpunk. I recognise that it's not an easy read for some (neither are Stephenson, Vandermeer and Brunner, to be fair), but those readers who like this sort of thing would absolutely adore this book.

My thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with an early copy of this book in return for an honest review.

I have to say I really couldn’t get into this book and actually gave up reading a quarter of the way through. I was really disappointed as I had high hopes for this read but I just couldn’t get into the story.

This one was a struggle for me. While I appreciated the cyberpunk(ish) vibe, and some interesting world-building and imagery, the story itself seemed to stall. There is a certain cool factor about kinetic writing and punchiness of it all, but ultimately the story lacks direction and substance.

Really loved this book and honestly surprised at the low ratings it seems to be garnering on NetGalley.

This is exactly the sort of eco-punk cyberthriller that we need in this day and age - a story that wrestles with the _why_ among collapsing governments, rising seas, inhuman corporations, and so much person loss. We all struggle with feeling depressed ('black') some days and Extremophile doesn't judge or question that. We see enough greed and cruelty in the story to understand that the forces we're up against are juggernauts, rolling in cash and treating people like disposable test subjects.

And yet. Green gives us a core group of characters we can care about - their foibles, their bass-shredding transcendent gigs, their comraderie, their crimes. We follow Charlie as she struggles with the loss of her family and mentor, her complicity in pushing the boundaries of science, and her overwhelming despair at the state of the world. But always there is something pushing her forward, and at the end we are gifted with some small shreds of hope that explain why we get up each morning and fight again. Like werewolf punks howling at the moon, we lift our heads and shout at the void, and clasp hands and keep going.

Sadly this was a DNF for me.

The cover and the description immediately drew me in, and I was excited to start reading, but I found the writing style difficult to connect with and story didn't get going enough to pull me in.

I loved the cover design on this book and had read great things about Ian Green's writing, so was looking forward to reading it. My initial impress ion was Wow! I loved the rawness and the energy of the initial scene and, although a little thrown by the lack of quotation marks (which I consider a cross between affectation and laziness) I was willing to overlook it because I loved the rhythm of the writing. Unfortunately, the story failed to hold my attention and I, reluctantly DNFed.
I was supplied with an advance copy of this book in return for an honest review. All opinions are my own..

I'll certainly be reading more Ian Green from now. THis is written in a style that never gives you a break, it is frenetic, and takes bold chances. Sometimes the writing style is a bit distracting, but I found it to be fantastic as it guided a long a story about a punk band in a cyberpunk future involved in eco terrorism. It doesn't always come together but this is a story that doesn't let up and it certainly kept me amped throughout.

The cover to this is what drew me to it. It’s wonderful and eye catching, exactly what’s needed.
However, the book just didn’t live up to my expectations, after reading the synopsis and deciding it sounded like my kind of thing, it just didn’t quite deliver.
I struggled to get into the story, read a lot of great hitting paragraphs, which on their own was fine, I couldn’t quite get a flow whilst reading it.
I wouldn’t rule out trying the author in future, but I’m sorry to say, this one wasn’t for me.

Thank you to NetGalley and Ad Astra for my digital review copy.

I had to DNF this within the first 5 chapters.

This is a shame as I really wanted to actually immerse myself in this world, however there are no quotation marks used around the speech in this novel. I thought it could have maybe been a fluke in the first chapter, but by the time I got to chaper 4 and I realised there would be no quotation marks aorund speech, I realised I could not continue on with this book, which is a shame as I thought I would really enjoy this.

Struggled with this one. I like the grubby futurism, the cyberpunk vibe etc. Some interesting world building and imagery too. But after a while I realised that the story just wasn't going anywhere. The jagged and punchy prose is cool but all flash and no substance. Too many characters and not enough plot.

I recently read a book that I found quite challenging. Despite being initially attracted to it due to my enjoyment of the author's previous work, I struggled with the slow pace of the plot and the writing style, which made it difficult for me to grasp the concept and caused some confusion. Keeping track of the characters was also a challenge for me. Although I usually enjoy dystopian stories, it took me a long time to become engaged with the characters and the structure of the book. While I prefer not to give negative feedback about books, providing honest reviews is part of the responsibility that comes with having access to advance reader copies. I am sure some readers gonna enjoy this book lots but maybe it wasn't the right time for me to read it

I was intrigued with the concept of this book, but ultimately it didn’t live up to my expectations. I found the plot hard to get into and struggled to stay engaged. The writing was brilliant though, and the characters were interesting enough. I wouldn’t rule out reading more by the author in the future.

La primera vez que oí hablar de Extremophile a Ian Green enseguida pensé, este libro lo tengo que leer. Y es que últimamente las mayores alegrías en el campo de la ciencia ficción me las estoy llevando con los autores que especulan con la biología, justo lo que Ian, con su doctorado en epigenética clínica (que he tenido que buscar lo que es porque una da para lo que da) lleva al extremo en esta novela.


Nos encontramos ante una novela de futuro cercano, situada temporalmente en Londres el 2043, pero un Londres asolado por el cambio climático y un 2043 que no dan muchas ganas de llegar a vivirlo. El mundo se divide en facciones, los verdes que creen que todavía hay posibilidades de salvarlo, los azules que solo buscan su propio beneficio y los negros que ya lo han dado todo por perdido. La protagonista de la historia es Charlie, una biohacker punk que lo mismo te da un concierto de lo más hardcore que te crea un sistema experto que es la envidia de muchos científicos (ya sé que el término sistema experto está muy denostado, pero es el que se utiliza en la obra). Un grupo extremo de los verdes se pone en contacto con ella para cumplir tres misiones, muy a lo Héroes: Kill the Ghost, steal the flower, save the world.

El resto es un libro con acción desenfrenada, manipulaciones genéticas extremas, malos muy malos y punk. Green da muestras de una imaginación malsana cuando vemos las perversiones que los genetistas son capaces de llevar a cabo si el precio es el adecuado, estamos hablando de virus que consigue que se licuen todas las células del cuerpo y no es, ni por cerca ni orilla, lo más depravado de lo que seremos testigos.

Ciertamente la prosa no es de lo más pulido del libro, con algunas reiteraciones cansinas en algunas palabras, pero creo que el interés creciente en la trama y en la resolución final de los conflictos hace que se pasen por alto estos defectos, así como algo del maniqueísmo de los personajes.

El cambio entre puntos de vista está bastante equilibrado, si bien Charlie se puede considerar la protagonista del libro, el resto de personajes también van aportando su granito de arena a la narrativa. Me atrae especialmente el personaje The Mole (¿la topa?) con un pasado aterrador, a la que se le impusieron unos cambios tan radicales que se aleja de la especie humana. Simplemente fascinante.

Además, la crítica a la sociedad corporativa hipervitaminada que solo busca el beneficio es de flagrante actualidad, con atisbos hacia el futuro al que se encamina la propiedad intelectual y la investigación científica. Aunque el libro intenta insuflar algo de optimismo en el nuestro futuro, la lectura del capítulo final recuerda demasiado al final de una de las obras maestras de Disch, no indicaré cual.

A late 21st century London is at the blunt edge of climate change. Members of the band Horse Theory scrape a living, gigging and blogging. They are contacted by an eco-terrorist group The Heavy Mob to carry out a series of jobs for revenge.

It’s a powerful premise and the future world with Winter heatwaves, frequent pandemics, disconnected by technology is brilliantly realised. Where the novel falls down is in its lack of focus, it flits between POV’s and the villain is a little too extreme to be truly delicious.

There’s also a lack of focus in the narrative. The novel seems to want to be about being in a band, an ecological novel, and a hard SF novel all at the same time. I would also point out the odd idea that has been used in other novels.

However, to cut the author some slack - this is his first SF novel. Next time round, he can be less expansive, more incisive and the results will be much better. It’s published by Head Of Zeus on November 12th and I thank them for a preview copy. #extremophile

DNF

The concept of a kind of biopunk thriller set in a dystopian future sounded interesting enough for me to want to request an ARC when I saw this in my recommended section on NetGalley. Unfortunately, this might be my worst read of the year.
I couldn’t even give you a proper description of the plot if I tried as I was far to distracted by the nails-on-chalkboard writingstyle. It’s often something I can get past if the story is decent: not in this way.

The writing is clearly going for an urban/gritty tone to convey how cool and gangster our protagonist are. The result is a jumble of dialogue that reminds me of poorly written game-dialogue… think Forspoken meets GTA.
Additionally, I’ve done you a favour and counted the amount of times the word “fuck” is used. 368. It’s 368 times. In a 315 page book…

Utterly unreadable.
There is an audience for this book, but I’m obviously not it.

Thanks to NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Dnf'd at 51%.

I feel literally awful that I dnf'd Extremophile, but I can tell that I'm not the target audience of this book.

The plot moved too slowly for my enjoyment and the writing style caused confusion. I found it hard to keep track of the characters, and I struggled with visualising the world-building. I also have a personal pet peeve regarding books that don't include " " quotation marks around dialogue, because I struggle to read them. All-in-all, dnf'ing this book was very much a it's not you, it's me move.

That being said, I definitely think that there is an audience for this book. If you feel passionately about finding new forms of sci-fi, futuristic literature not set in space and/or environmentalism, Extremophile would be a good suit for you.