Adam Rubenstein and Sunil Rao have been nemeses and reluctant partners since their Uzbekistan days. Adam is a seemingly unflappable American Intelligence officer and Rao is an ex-MI6 agent, an addict and rudderless pleasure hound, with the uncanny ability to discern the truth of things—about everyone and everything other than Adam. When an American diner turns up in a foggy field in the UK and is followed by a mysterious death, Adam and Rao are called in to investigate. In a surreal, action-packed quest that takes Adam and Rao from secret laboratories in Colorado, to a luxury lodge in Aspen, to the remote Nevada desert, the two begin to uncover how and why people's fondest memories are being manifested and weaponized against them by a spooky, ever-shifting substance called Prophet.
Much of the book is really about the chemistry between the main characters ... An ambitious first novel from this duo—I can’t wait to see what they come up with next.
A fast-paced techno-thriller, with a high body count, zippy dialogue and an intriguing central mystery ... Macdonald and Blaché manage to fold in powerful reflections on loss and trauma. The balance of the lethal actualisation of happy memories with the sensitive, believable way the two main characters are shown processing their unhappy ones makes this novel a cut above the usual techno-thriller fare. H Is for Highly Recommended.
A trippy, philosophical science-fiction novel with the pacing of a thriller and the pulse of a romance ... The novel betrays its origins as a kind of welcome distraction for its authors, but there is more than enough going on for it to tick that box for plenty of readers too.