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.

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

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.

I received an eARC of this book through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Watching a new voice in SFF flex like this incredible. I was reminded by the author bio that Nayler has an MA in Global Diplomacy, and worked in Central Asia, Russia, and surrounding countries for 20 years, and currently lives in DC. You can see the experience in this book. Readers who read his debut may be surprised by Where the Axe is Buried. His first novel and novella were both deeply concerned with animals, animal consciousness, those webs of interactions on a slightly more individual level. But reading this I found the through-line of Nayler's writing becoming clear: systems.

This book takes you by the hand and pulls you through a constellation of (unnamed, but guessable) places in Europe, seen through the eyes of myriad people thrashing towards one goal: change. Like various creatures caught in a web, they pull in their own directions but they do all, in theory, have one goal. With our birds-eye view we can glimpse the web, see the threads the tie them together, transfer the motion of one person through to another person. It's an intricate book, and one with many questions to ask. Some may walk away from it feeling unsatisfied, because Nayler, wisely, doesn't answer most of them. Can systems ever really change? What does it mean to end a regime? Isn't it really that power simply changes its mask, puts on a new guise the public is happy to play along with? What does it really mean to have responsibility? Is it individual or collective?

I'll be thinking about this book for a long time, just like Nayler's last and I'm thrilled I had the opportunity to read the ARC.

After reading two of his previous works, I can say that Nayler is an auto-read for me.
In a near-future, Nayler imagines a world in which most of the West is led by AI prime ministers that have been programmed through the basis of rationalization. This means that they are designed to do what is best for humanity’s success and prosperity, but this decision making does not place human’s happiness and individualism at its center. In contrast, a country known as The Federation is led by an autocrat who has cheated death by having his consciousness uploaded into a new host when his body has decayed.
The book itself follows a host of characters that oppose these regimes in different ways. The chapters switch through these characters and their individual struggles, which turn out to be shared.
Nayler’s political commentary is intriguing. It’s an exploration of how integral “the argument” is for human expression and societal progress. The argument ensures that people care, that there is a capacity for understanding and empathy and without it we are impoverished of that what makes us community.

The many characters connect well, and I felt invested in their stories. Excellent book.

Thank you to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, MCD for an Advanced Reader’s Copy in exchange for an honest review.

A fantastic read from Nayler per usual.

I was first introduced to his work last year, by reading his novella The Tusks of Extinction. While being an entirely different, stand-alone story, Where the Axe is Buried carries over the same themes: environment, politics, activism, technology, and morality.

The novel follows a large cast of characters, set in a near-distant future, mostly in a nation referred to only as ‘the Federation’, where an oppressive oligarchy has developed. Scientists have discovered a way to download and upload the brain of the President into different bodies as each one breaks down and dies. All citizens are under constant, specific surveillance that has removed all freedoms from everyday life. The effects of this kind of technology have taken hold all throughout Europe in different ways. Some more oppressive than others, all invasive.

The characters include Zoya, an activist and author in internal exile, living in a small house in the deserted taiga; Lilia, a student inventor who creates something with the possibility to change entire nations; her father, Vasily, a disabled veteran who ends up in a concentration camp; Nikolai, and personal doctor of the Federation’s president; and Nurlan, a parliamentary employee; and Palmer, Lilia’s boyfriend who finds himself in way over his head.

Though the cast is large and quite a hodge-podge of personalities and locations, each of character is driven towards the same ultimate goal: changing their circumstances, and the circumstances of their nation, in any way they can. Each shows resistance in any way they know how: small and large, covertly, or openly, all dangerous and life threatening.

Nayler manages to write something both surreal and near realistic at the same time. Nayler’s prose is well done, creating characters and a plot of great depth while still scratching only the surface of the world, leaving the reader with questions that lead beyond the last page.

Looking forward to seeing what he writes next!

My thanks to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for an advance copy of this novel of science fiction that looks at a future, a future not that far away, in which nations are beginning to fail, plots are thick in how and why to replace them, and people do what people do, try to survive in any way they can.

Science fiction has always been a great comfort to me. I loved to read about strange new worlds, and new life forms, dream about princesses needing rescue, robots solving crimes, and how wonderful the future could be. Science fiction is still a comfort for I feel that I am not alone in seeing how bad the future has become. Technology and social media are a noose around our necks, taking away privacy and freedom, while not giving anything in return. People have only become dumber believing everything they see and hear, not doing any research out of their own ostrich hole. And government has become more dystopian than even the worst naysayers wrote. The best of times, the worst of times. That guillotine is starting to look good now. Many books seem to see the way we are going and have portrayed that in their writings. Ray Nayler's view of the future might be the most prescient, and the most hopeful. Something I expect from this gifted writer. Where the Axe Is Buried is a novel of the future that sadly might be closer than we think about a world of AI governments, despotic leaders, schemes, counter-schemes, and humans resisting, and surviving.

The world is broken. The country of Russia is known as the Federation, a monolithic block that has channeled the ideas of Stalin into controlling its people, limiting their freedom, and having a President who can not die. The rest of the world has decided that leadership is hard, so have turned to AI, called PMs, to do the hard thinking for them. However some people want freedom more than be controlled. Zoya is an exile in the Federation who is approached to take part in a scheme that might take power away from the President. Zoya has lost her love, an eye, and her writings to the Federation so agrees. Lilla is also a woman trapped in the Federation, one who once got out, but came back to see her father. In London Lilla had created a new kind of technology, but trapped in the Federation she is unable to work, and as her life shrinks in many ways if offered a chance at freedom, freedom for everyone. Around the world things are falling apart the center is not holding, and as many are plotting to end the system, others are trying to not lose their power, and will do anything to keep it.

I loved Nayler's first book but this one is now my favorite. Both deal with a future on the edge, but while The Mountain in the Sea, dealt with conservation, this book is dealing with power, and how this power can be corrupted, and helpful. The book has a lot of characters, and a lot of plot, but Nayler is an excellent writer, letting the world unfold careful, never losing readers, and always leaver us wanting to know more. Nayler mixes technology, AI, smart bugs, with the human factor, people not wanting to be wrong, people helping others out of a sense of duty. And love. And lots of hope. The writing is very good, with lines that resound in the soul, something one does not expect much in science fiction. The characters all seem real. Acting, reacting to events in ways that make sense, not just to fit the plot.

I can't recommend this book enough. This is the third work I have read by Nayler, and I want more. The writing, the ideas, the use of language, the interplay of the characters. A brilliant read, and one that I will turn to a lot in the next couple of years.