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Void Star
Void Star
Nov 14, 2024 5:46 PM

Author:Zachary Mason

Void Star

Not far in the future the seas have risen and the central latitudes are emptying but it’s still a good time to be rich in San Francisco where weapons drones patrol the skies to keep out the multitudinous poor. Irina isn’t rich, not quite, but she does have an artificial memory that gives her perfect recall, and lets her act as a medium between her various employers and their AIs, which are complex to the point of opacity. It’s a good gig, paying enough for the annual visits to the Mayo Clinic that keep her from ageing.

Kern has no such access; he's one of the many refugees in the sprawling drone-built favelas on the city’s periphery, where he lives like a monk, training relentlessly in martial arts, scraping by as a thief and an enforcer. Thales is from a different world entirely – the mathematically-inclined scion of a Brazilian political clan, he's fled to L.A. after the attack that left him crippled and his father dead.

A ragged stranger accosts Thales and demands to know how much he can remember. Kern flees for his life after robbing the wrong mark. Irina finds a secret in the reflection of a laptop’s screen in her employer’s eyeglasses. None are safe as they’re pushed together by subtle forces that stay just out of sight.

Vivid, tumultuous and propulsive, Void Star is Zachary Mason’s mind-bending follow-up to his bestselling debut The Lost Books of the Odyssey.

Reviews

Sentence by sparkling sentence, Zachary Mason’s Void Star is [a fine] novel… Void Star is an aesthetic joy, with a chilling style often reminiscent of Don DeLillo.

—— Michael LaPointe , Times Literary Supplement

A computer scientist by day, Mason deploys serious literary chops in a cyberpunk escapade that should have the producers of Total Recall or Inception drooling… Mind-bendingly engaging and most definitely not for nerds only.

—— Jeffrey Burke , Mail on Sunday

An enjoyably driving techno-thriller with literary ambition, and as such it may be read as being in close dialogue with the work of SF demigod William Gibson, admirers of whom may see in this novel a lot of influence, even outright homage.

—— Steven Poole , Guardian

Void Star is an extraordinary novel. The hallucinatory beauty of the prose is matched only by the book’s velocity and mystery, and the story – of mortality, memory- and what it means to be human – holds all the force and power of mythology.

—— Emily St John Mandel

Zachary Mason's magisterial new novel is a passionate immersion in science fiction, sure to delight even the most hardcore devotees of Delany, Mieville, and Dick. The greatest speculative writing intoxicates and terrifies us in equal measure with the visions it offers, and in this Void Star is no exception. A dazzling book.

—— John Wray

One of the most richly complex novels of the year.

—— Chelsea Hassler , Yahoo! UK and Ireland

Highly ambitious: an epic tale of future alternative realities that straddles the genre line between high-tier science fiction and formally inventive literary fiction… There is at times a hallucinatory quality to the book, which shifts cleverly between dreams, simul­ations and digital hinterlands between life and death. But as well as being a philosophical work of speculative fiction, Void Star is also a sprawling multi-viewpoint thriller, in which individuals flee capture or death, battle rogue computers and corrupt humans, and traverse continents to seek answers… Mason, as both computer scientist and prose stylist, is well placed to render opaque concepts in ways that we not only understand but find beautiful.

—— Jonathan McAloon , Financial Times

An evocative whodunnit . . . an absorbing, heart-wrenching romance. This stunning tale about a house of secrets where everyone is guilty of something is both immersive and deeply atmospheric

—— Fabulous Magazine

With its vivid Cornwall setting and a house full of shadows, The Stranger has echoes of Daphne Du Maurier but its riveting in its own right

—— Red Magazine

A beautifully written tale of family secrets, loves and losses, set against the magical Cornish coastline. I loved it

—— Amanda Jennings

A fabulous twisting tale, so beautifully written that the pages practically turned themselves. I couldn't put it down

—— Liz Fenwick

A beautiful and intriguing page-turner, where the secrets of the past cast long shadows. Cornwall springs to life in vivid colour

—— Dinah Jefferies

Beautifully written and unputdownable. I loved it

—— Katie Fforde

An enthralling tale of secrets, the twists and turns will have you hooked to the very last breathtaking page

—— Jane Bailey, author of What Was Rescued

An atmospheric whodunit set in the Second World War

—— The Sunday Post

A beautifully woven, immersive story that completely transported me

—— Judith Kinghorn

With such vivid, mysterious characters and an atmospheric setting, the echoes of Du Maurier's Cornwall are on every page. Brilliant!

—— Emylia Hall

A wonderful, gripping, beautifully written book. From the first page, I didn't want to put it down - and by the second half I literally couldn't put it down

—— Katherine Webb

Beautiful and haunting, you'll struggle to put down this mysterious tale

—— Take a Break

Wonderfully atmospheric and utterly engrossing. I hardly moved until I had read to the very last word

—— AJ Pearce author of , Dear Mrs Bird

Take an isolated house, family secrets, a divine Cornish setting, the tensions of war and you have all the ingredients for a tale where the pages take on a life of their own. The Stranger is wound tight as a clock, ticking down the days leading up to the disappearance of a young woman. It will stay with you long after the last breathtaking pages turn

—— Kate Lord Brown

So beguiling that I truly didn't want it to end. A captivating novel that pulls you into another time and place

—— Penny Parkes

The novel is cinematic, and the vividness of the Cornish landscape and its history of smugglers and pirates add to its charm. An engaging page-turner with a surprising twist at the end

—— The Lady

Praise for The Girl in the Photograph

—— -

Rich and atmospheric, like Rebecca this novel casts an enduring spell

—— Rachel Hore, Sunday Times bestselling author

Full of slow-burning tension

—— Essentials

A sweeping saga of secrets and ghosts

—— Good Housekeeping

A well executed, brooding, creepy atmosphere

—— Sunday Mirror

A prickly story full of tension

—— Sunday Express

Spoils reeks of the fog and futility of war… It has its own blue-collar beauty as it tells its tale from three perspectives: a gay, female US soldier, an Egyptian jihadist and a US tank commander.

—— Donal O’Donoghue , RTE Guide

Brian Van Reet has firsthand combat experience to draw upon for this powerful piece of fiction, rendering it an intensely humane story, giving credible authenticity to the plot, and scenes presented to the reader… Enlightening, thought provoking and hauntingly mesmerising, I cannot recommend Spoils highly enough to anyone interested in novels about war and conflict.

—— Sharon Mills , Nudge

Every page brims with brutal authenticity.

—— The Mail on Sunday

Spoils bears eye-widening witness to valour, horror, violence, cruelty and absurdity.

—— Marcel Theroux , Guardian
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