I will admit - I gave up on this book for a few weeks. I was enjoying it well enough, but something about it seemed to drag. I finally picked it up again and finished the rest of it in just a couple of days. Ultimately, I'm glad I picked it back up. The book has a pretty strong sci-fi edge and, while I'm not immensely familiar with the fields he presents, the sci-fi certainly seems plausible enough. I was (and still am) a bit on the fence about the characterizations. On the one hand, I felt like the characters were multi-faceted and interesting, but on the other hand, sometimes the characters felt a bit "off" in a way that I can't quite put my finger on. Overall, I really enjoyed the story and the lessons it has to teach. I'll definitely consider picking up more by this author. ( )

Another description starts out by telling us this is a thriller for people who don't normally read thrillers. I agree. There's not enough tension or dread to make this a true thriller and there's way too much introduction and back story to keep things taut. As a result, by the time the action picks up speed it feels rushed and tentative. The consequences of Eva's scheme aren't intensely portrayed in terms of what people lost, the havoc, the violence and the ultimate consequences. Those things were touched on, but too lightly to have much impact for the reader. There are too many ratholes of information for me to call it a thriller and so that's why I was disappointed in the delivery.

Overall it's well-written with very few typos for an inexpensive ebook (I got it free one day from Amazon). From what I understand, it took the author some years to write and a lot of effort went into humanizing his villain. I didn't like her though. The usual excuse of bad parents is not enough for me and I thought she was a major asshole all of the time. The tiny bits of normal human she doles out aren't enough to redeem her. And as if readers need some counter-balance to the assholes, I thought Marta and Jim's sappy little love story (complete with 1st-time sex scene, virgins the both of them) was a bit sickening in parts. The cutesy little nicknames in Spanish made my eyes roll way too often. As individuals I thought they were good enough characters; not too off the rack, but not ostentatiously weird either.

The technology is advanced and while I still don't understand what the hell is meant by 'subvocalizing', I thought the idea of highly integrated computing very interesting. Not quite as interesting as nano-tech, which is basically the foundation for the rest of the plot, but plausible considering how married to our mobile devices we're all becoming. There's a reference at the end of the novel about a nano-technology pioneer envisioning a future where self-replicating nano-bots would break down the structure of all matter on Earth and turn it into what he called gray goo. That bit reminded me of what happened in Blood Music by Greg Bear, only his nano-bots were biological, not mechanical. Same kind of thing though. I wonder if it was a nod to Bear.

To sum up, if you don't really like thrillers, but you like technology and psychological underpinnings for madness and evil deeds, check this out. It's not perfect, but it's not horrible either. ( )