In a far future on Earth, many societies are run by “rationalized” AI leaders. Eastern Europe is a hold out with draconian leadership dictating the social scores of its citizens, which determine who can eat, work, and move about their communities. An ensemble of characters from across these societies tell a story about the true will of humanity, what it means to dissent, and how we relate to each other.

Read. This. Book. It is absolutely going to be up for all the major SFF awards. It’s inventive, engrossing, and ultimately hopeful.

Ray Nayler creates an extremely eerie, yet plausible world in Where the Axe is Buried. The governments of the world are "rationalized," aka. run by AI leaders that may or may not know what's best for their citizens.

As always, Nayler drops you right into the action, so you immediately feel both immersed and curious about the world he's created. The most compelling characters are Lilia and Zoya. And the most terrifying were the Federation's president and it's head of security.

Where the Axe is Buried is an extremely timely novel about humanity's desire to break free from authoritarianism. I couldn't help but draw parallels between current events and this novel while reading.

My favorite moment in the book involves someone talking about wanting to douse individuals who claim to be apolitical and subsequently light them on fire.

If you like political thrillers mixed with sci-fi elements this book is for you!

I received an advance review copy from NetGalley/the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Just some grammatical errors I noticed:
-Loc 2124, 3 sentence, “than” should be “then”

-Loc 2378 “and are they are still working?”

-Loc 2932 “the could access it remotely”

I enjoyed this book. I think Nayler is finding his voice and his sophomore novel is really proving it! I docked because the multiple POVs were very difficult to keep straight (this is very common with Nayler). I love the concept of the dioramas and the plot was really engrossing. I look forward to reading Nayler’s next work. My review can be found https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6874162622

So this book is a lot like the movie Glass Onion where the main character quickly realizes that everything is very dumb. This book is meant to be a deep discussion between the totalitarian surveillance state (a la the USSR) vs a technological surveillance state (a la the US/Five Eyes). But once you make all the connections between the allegories and realize the characters act on rails it's a very boring and dumb book. The main 'villain' does a whole Blofield reveal and then we're left wondering what happens to some characters. Hell one character literally is described as a blank canvas and quickly dies once his plot armor is gone.

Not very good. I'm disappointed.

I DNF’d this at 50% as I found it quite slow and not what I was hoping for after adoring ‘The Mountain in the Sea’.
I think that this was just not the book for me.
A shame but I am still keen to see what Nayler does next.

Han pasado ya muchos años desde que asistí una mesa redonda en la que participaba mi querido amigo Elías Combarro titulada “La reseña es política”. Si esta afirmación es cierta de por sí, aún lo es más cuando hablamos de un libro con una carga política tan importante como Where the Axe is Buried.

Esta es una novela sobre refugiados, sobre poder, sobre sistemas que se perpetúan a sí mismos pero, sobre todo, es una novela sobre resiliencia. No se dan nombres sobre los países en los que están basados la federación, la ciudad-estado y los distintos regímenes donde tiene lugar el relato, pero no hace falta, porque todos sabemos a quiénes se refiere Nayler. Es un libro tremendamente frío y cerebral, lo cual hace que sea un poco difícil entrar en él, pero el mensaje que nos hace llegar es tan duro como certero, avasallador como un derrumbamiento.


Desde distintos puntos de vista asistiremos al desarrollo de los acontecimientos en un futuro cercano, donde el poder de casi todos los países está en manos de Primeros Ministros que son Inteligencias Artificiales que aplican sus despiadados algoritmos para hacer más eficiente el sistema, en una especia de extrapolación de la inteligencia artificial marítima que ya vimos en The Mountain in the Sea, pero con mayor capacidad de influir en las vidas humanas. La resistencia es fútil. Y qué decir del Presidente que se perpetúa en el poder a través de clones convenientemente cambiados para que parezca que hay progreso, cuando solo hay inmovilismo. Se ha llegado a esta situación por la pasividad de las masas y también por cierto hartazgo con los sistemas probados hasta entonces, con los que nadie estaba contento.

Ray Nayler es un gran conocedor de la situación geopolítica actual, especialmente de Rusia y sus exrepúblicas socialistas y no pierde la oportunidad de hacernos ver que el sistema actual es corrupto y se tambalea, pero no sabemos cuál sería la solución más idónea. Como digo, los personajes mediante los que expone sus ideas muestran una apatía casi contagiosa, han bajado los brazos a base de darse cabezazos contra la pared. No se puede decir que el libro ofrezca esperanza ni respuestas, por que no lo hace, pero sí que nos da material para la reflexión. Si me permitís la exageración, es un libro con mucha más ciencia que ficción, con unas importantes reflexiones sobre el camino que estamos tomando con las inteligencias artificiales, pero también con especulación sobre dónde nos están llevando los políticos en la actualidad. Creo que se trata de una lectura imprescindible y está llamado a ser una de las obras del año.

In the authoritarian Federation, there is a plot to assassinate and replace the President, a man who has downloaded his mind to a succession of new bodies to maintain his grip on power. Meanwhile, on the fringes of a Western Europe that has renounced human governance in favor of ostensibly more efficient, objective, and peaceful AI Prime Ministers, an experimental artificial mind is malfunctioning, threatening to set off a chain of events that may spell the end of the Western world.

As the Federation and the West both start to crumble, Lilia, the brilliant scientist whose invention may be central to bringing down the seemingly immortal President, goes on the run, trying to break out from a near-impenetrable web of Federation surveillance. Her fate is bound up with a worldwide group of others fighting against the global status quo: Palmer, the man Lilia left behind in London, desperate to solve the mystery of her disappearance; Zoya, a veteran activist imprisoned in the taiga, whose book has inspired a revolutionary movement; Nikolai, the President’s personal physician, who has been forced into more and more harrowing decisions as he navigates the Federation’s palace politics; and Nurlan, the hapless parliamentary staffer whose attempt to save his Republic goes terribly awry. And then there is Krotov, head of the Federation’s security services, whose plots, agents, and assassins are everywhere.

Following the success of his debut novel, The Mountain in the Sea, Ray Nayler launches readers into a thrilling near-future world of geopolitical espionage. A cybernetic novel of political intrigue, Where the Axe is Buried combines the story of a near-impossible revolutionary operation with a blistering indictment of the many forms of authoritarianism that suffocate human freedom.

This is another hit from one of the best upcoming science fiction writers. I loved his first debut novel about the octopus', and loved his Tusks of Extinction novella even more. This was a great folow up to both of those. Fast paced, fun and very scientific, but told in a way that even simpletons like me can understand it. The techno thriller is alive thanks to Ray Naylor. I think him and Blake Crouch are going to have to fight it out for the heir apparent to Michael Crichton

This ended up being a hell of a ride. There's a lot going on here, to the point of there almost being too many POVs to track across all the intersecting threads, but at its core it's a story of change and what people are willing to do to enact it. It just also happens to feature using dioramas to implant thoughts in a subject's head, AI Prime Ministers and hellish social credit implementation, a President who's been reimplanting his consciousness in successive bodies, and the woman he exiled decades ago for the book she wrote about the world as it is now. Masterful plot work, and absolutely one of the books to read this coming spring.

Thanks to the editors at Farrar, Straus and Giroux for letting me read an advanced reader's copy through Netgalley.

I am very happy to have the chance to read the book before it's out!

This is a timely science fiction novel that deals with themes of AI and politics in Russia. To say more would be a spoiler, but I can say it is very much worth reading and listening to what the author hast to say.
Ray Nayler is a relatively new author, I started following him after reading some of his short stories in Asimov's. He has a background in foreign relations and knows the world beyond the USA. This shows in his writing which has a sensibility for different cultures.
I suffered with his characters in their impossible situations, trying to do the right thing more often than not.
This is not light reading. There are more questions than answers.
Like in Nayler's previous novel The Mountain in the Sea, I hoped the main point of view characters would interact more towards the end. But this is a minor point, the novel has many interesting ideas that will stay with me and I definitely recommend it.

This was such a good book! I loved the concept and the futuristic idea of people taking over bodies to keep their power. it was a strange idea but honestly I could see it happening. I liked the plotline and the pacing of this book, it kept me entertained throughout reading!

Thank you to NetGalley, the author, and the publisher for this complimentary ARC in exchange for an honest review!!

This was a fascinating concept for a scifi novel, it had that feel that I wanted and enjoyed from this type of book. I enjoyed the idea of someone using new bodies to keep their power. The plot has that concept that I wanted and enjoyed in the genre. I was invested in what was going on in this world and thought the characters were everything that I wanted.

this book has left me reeling. in a good way.
the chapters are told from the perspectives of our main characters, which sometimes cross each other.

there’s two elements that i found the most interesting. disclaimer - i am not knowledgeable about all topics and geopolitical aspects that have served as inspiration for this novel, so i will speak of what i know. as a person with russian heritage and family that lives there in near poverty but still blindly and actively supports the regime, or shrugs in apathy, the tale of zoya hit close to home. as someone who has not seen that part of the family in years, lilia was relatable to me. nayler also touched upon the topic of refugees and their worth, depending on their home country. does a refugee from an agressor state deserve pity? in general, i felt like „where the axe is buried“ presented a pretty accurate account of the way russia has been functioning.

„In the years that followed, Zoya and her allies would come to understand that they would never win. Their resistance to power was purely symbolic.“

„And when the West makes their accusations,“ Krotov said, „we accuse them of lying. And we repeat our own lie to them again. Forever.“

these parts of the book reflected the feeling of helplessness that i see in russian speaking anti-authoritarian communities. what can be done against such a system? in „where the axe is buried“, the author describes an ending so not in tune with the bleak starting situation, it gave me whiplash. for that, i am deducting one star.

the second aspect i found interesting was the setup and fall of the PMs.

„We mystified the public with the idea that the machines were intelligent, maybe even conscious, when they really were nothing more than incredibly advanced statistical calculators, designed to give us the kinds of solutions we needed them to give.“

the next person that says „oh let me just ask chatgpt“ to my face will get slapped with this book. the gen ai craze is costing me my last nerve. that is all i will be saying on this matter thank you :)

one last thing - the book was well written, i really enjoyed naylers style. however, my knowledge of the russian language and folklore did help me out at multiple points. if this book is meant for people unfamiliar with russian, perhaps it would be smart to include a glossary. i feel like some small but interesting aspects of the story would be lost otherwise.