Zeroes by Chuck Wendig

This looked appealing as a hacker/thriller book, but in retrospect it doesn't hang together very well. Too many plot holes and improbabilities. The author has really done his homework and some of the characters are well developed, others less so. HUGE amount of profanity.

Having BBS's start to come online during my childhood and then seeing the movie Wargames when it first came out, I've always been fascinated by the possibility of Artificial Intelligence becoming a reality. Wargames posed the question of what could happen if the government ever handed the keys over to such an intelligence or what could happen if such an intelligence grew smart enough to take those keys away from the government on its own. While fascinating, it was also frightening.

Over the years, we've seen advances in data transfer speeds (no more dial up, pokey modems), worldwide connectivity (hello, internet of all things), hacking (in all of its glorious forms), the mapping of the human brain, neural networks, nanotechnology, quantum computing, and certainly not least–Artificial Intelligence (Google, NSA, CIA, other Alphabet Soup organizations run by Uncle Sam).

This book poses the question of what happens then you combine all of these advances into one system with the initial purpose of protecting the US, but not being able to remove the one human trait of ego. The result is truly terrifying.

If you enjoy science fiction that has its roots planted in reality (a future and hopefully impossible reality), then this is definitely a great book for you to read. It doesn't waste too much time pandering to those that have no knowledge of modern technology. There's plenty of suspense, intrigue, and action. And it was very well written. It truly grabbed my attention right from the first page and I had a difficult time putting it down when I had to.

Chuck Wendig did a great job here and I hope that he writes more books in the same genre.

UPDATE: I just discovered that Chuck Wendig has released book #2 in this series less than a week ago. It's called “Invasive”. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27213152-invasive

I found the first page a bit off-putting with all the partial sentences; and now that I think about it, why were they there? The rest of the book was well structured.

Also, I can't remember how that opening scene tied to the end? Did the plot get caught up with it and then move beyond? Maybe it did and I was just too caught up in the creepy twist. Intriguing science but creepy! I'm praying we don't have people with those ideas but frightened they really are in places of power.

I'm not so fond of 3rd person perspective because I want to know why the heck Reagen did an about face a quarter of they way into the story? It never said!

Meh. The book was fast paced, but so much so that it felt like a cheesy thriller movie. The plot was essentially Terminator with some “hacker” stuff sprinkled in at the beginning. Typhon is identical to SkyNet—I mean, come on. The author tried to bring a diverse cast to the book, but it felt forced and artificial, with all the characters feeling cookie-cutter.