Thursday, March 28, 2019

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Bohr Maker by Linda Nagata




The Bohr Maker is the first novel in Linda Nagata's "Nanotech Succession" series, which consists of a series of stand-alones dealing with stories involving nanotechnology and related concepts/ideas.  Nagata's upcoming novel "Edges" and its "Inverted Frontier" sub-series is set in the same universe as this series, and I had a chance to read that book early (and reviewed it on the blog here) and really enjoyed it.  Edges was not the typical book I enjoyed, in that it was very concept-focused instead of character focused, and yet I really found myself enjoying it. As such, I was really interested in checking out the other Nanotech Succession novels to see how they measured up.

And the answer is: pretty damn well.  The Bohr Maker actually is a bit more character focused than Edges was, with two rather interesting and enjoyable leads (the third "lead" is not quite as good).  And like Edges it contains some really interesting ideas and concepts which it makes good use of.  The result is a very enjoyable novel that I'd recommend tracking down if you can find it, and I will definitely be trying to get the sequels at some point.


----------------------------------------------Plot Summary------------------------------------------------------
In the future, technology and nanotechnology has changed the world, with people to wondrous things via this technology, such as sending "ghosts" of oneself elsewhere in the world/solar-system to interact with things/people via nano-tech aided VR, even to the point of interacting with the material world.  But the most powerful global government, the Commonwealth, heavily restricts the use of this technology to prevent people from changing too much of what is "natural."

Nikko Jiang-Tibayan is a perfect example of something "unnatural" - created through special dispensation - he was genetically modified to have organs that adapt to vacuum, but due to the laws involved in his creation, he knows that his body will deteriorate as soon as he reaches 30, leading to his death.  Desperate to save himself, he enacts a plan to obtain the most dangerous and illegal nanotech - or "Maker" - ever created, the "Bohr Maker," which has the power to manipulate matter and minds at a level otherwise unheard of, and even more dangerously, contains an AI at its heart to change whoever obtains it to become fully able, and willing to use its massive powers.

But Nikko's theft goes wrong, and the Bohr Maker winds up in the body of a woman named Phousita, a woman from a poverty stricken slum outside of the Commonwealth, who struggles to survive with the people she has made her family.  Not knowing what is happening to her and suspecting magic, Phousita uses the power to try and help those she cares about, but the Commonwealth and local police aren't about to let her run loose for long.  For with the power she now possesses, and her own innocence, they know that she can and will change the world.....
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The Bohr Maker is filled with interesting scifi concepts (bordering on cyberpunk I guess, but given the lack of hacking, I'm not sure it fits the genre) and makes strong use of most of these concepts.  Like in Edges, we have the concept of travelling to different places via "ghosts," a process made possible by the fact that most humans in this universe have nanotech-derived "atriums" allowing them their own private VR world.  And of course the atriums themselves have greater applications and allow the book to delve into more concepts it would take too much time to explain.  And then there are the "makers" - the nanotech that is used to actively create and alter physical and chemical matter for various purposes (with the ultimate maker being the "Bohr-Maker" of course).  Nagata excellently uses these concepts to create interesting and often surprising twists throughout to always keep things entertaining.

But as I mentioned above the jump, the difference between this book and Edges for me is that The Bohr Maker has a couple of really well done and interesting characters.  We bounce around between perspectives from chapter to chapter, with the most chapters being dedicated to main characters Nikko and Phousita, although antagonist Kirsten and secondary character Sandor get more than a few chapters as well.  And I liked most of these characters quite a bit, with them each being more developed than I expected.  Nikko's desperation to live but hatred of what he has to do in order to do that, as well as his own creativity in his methods makes him rather easy to root for, for example.  Phousita is a wonderful character - a great example of how someone kept in ignorance and poverty of the advancements of tech can change and react when suddenly given the utmost power over it, with the things she's done in the past and the people she's dealt with feeling very real and often very tragic.  And even Kirsten is a pretty strong antagonist - not in a morally grey sort of way (you will hate her from her first introduction and that won't change throughout), but in a way that makes her a dangerous adversary who is interesting to see work.

And then most of the secondary characters (Nikko's father, Fox or Phousita's friend/companion Arif) are really well done three dimensional characters in their own compelling fashions.  I suppose the only weakspot among the cast is Sandor, who fulfills the annoying trope of "privileged character who was shielded from the realities of life outside his bubble and is horrified but what he finds" and is kind of annoying as a result, and doesn't do enough on his own to actually be of interest individually.  But he's the exception and not the rule.

The plot isn't perfect and often can get confusing - like in Edges, the book prefers to introduce concepts/ideas without much explanation, trusting the reader to figure it out from context, and it doesn't always work, and the conclusion gets perhaps a little confusing in and of itself.  But in general, it works to form a pretty thrilling story from beginning to end, before coming to a satisfying conclusion (despite the confusion).  I'm definitely going to try to track down the sequels to this book, although that'll probably involve me purchasing them at a time I don't have so many library books.  This one though is definitely recommended (and again, is stand-alone,so no pressure to track down those sequels)
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