Monday, October 7, 2019

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Null Set by S.L. Huang



Null Set is the second in S.L. Huang's Cas Russell series (after her "Zero Sum Game" - reviewed here), her sci-fi action thriller series featuring her mathematical genius Cas Russell.  As I mentioned in my prior review, the series was originally self-published and is now being republished by Tor with substantial edits - for example, this book was originally the fourth book in the series, and has now been substantially rewritten to serve as the second book.  My elibrary actually has a copy of the self-published second novel, and it was mad tempting to me to pick that up even though its continuity wasn't going to match anymore.  Which should tell you how much I was looking forward to this novel.

And Null Set does not disappoint, as it keeps the breakneck pace of its thriller predecessor, with excellent characters and a plot that features some pretty fantastic situations for our heroine and crew to deal with.  Even better, it takes a plot element from the first book - a really interesting moral dilemma - and explores it in even greater length through the plot in a really interesting way, and adds further depth to that element.  So yeah, I really love this series and can't wait for the third book (originally meant to be book 5) coming out next year.  And I may actually pick up the old book 2.....

Spoilers for Zero Sum Game follow, beware:

----------------------------------------------Plot Summary----------------------------------------------------
Cas Russell and her allies - PI Arthur, Computer Expert Checker, and Administrator Pilar - have been trying to clean up the mess they made in the world, or at least in L.A.  By taking down (temporarily) the massive underground organization known as Pithica, which was using underhanded methods like telepathy, mind control, and murder to ensure a certain level of peace in the world, Cas and her friends have unwittingly caused the rise of criminal and violent elements around the globe.  And so, Cas has been trying to do what she can to reduce the damage - at first, by taking on a child trafficker in L.A., but then, upon reflection, by using her math skills and discarded technology to try and affect people's minds in a more subtle way.

But in the midst of all of this, Cas is herself not alright.  For Dawna Polk, Pithica's psychic, gave her a parting gift, a command to remember a past Cas didn't even realize she'd forgotten.  And these memories seem to be causing her mind to break (and her mathematical abilities to fail) at unpredictable moments, as Cas realizes that she might've been someone completely different once.  It seems that Cas's mind may only hold up just a little bit longer, just maybe long enough for one last attempt to fix her own wrongs.

Until her distress and her manipulation of LA bring down the return of Cas' longtime ally Rio, the most deadly religious psychopath of it all, who will stop at nothing to both save Cas.....and to stop her.  Assuming the criminal elements of LA don't get their chance first.
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Zero Sum Game introduced us not only to Cas Russell, the mathematical genius who used her supernatural calculating ability to perform actions basically impossible for normal humans - like calculating the trajectories of bullet ricochets for trick shots in a jam for instance - but also to a world where other superpowers exist: in particular, telepathy and mind alteration.  And it raised a moral question for our heroes: is a global system that ensures a certain level of peace in the world by forcibly altering peoples' minds and, when that is not enough, through occasional murder really an ethical wrong worth destroying - especially when destroying it will result in a huge spike in violence and crime around the world?  This is not a new ethical dilemma for science fiction, but Zero Sum Game introduced it in interesting fashion, and in the end of that book, our heroes decided that "no", such a system could not stand.

But the series in this book is not willing to let our characters off the hook for their decision, and the implications for others it presented.  And so Null Set not only revisits the consequences of that decision: a massive crime wave in LA, and around the world, with many more innocents harmed in the time since the last book than would've been expected, but revisits the question.  For Cas' solution to the problem is a different attempt at mental manipulation, although on a different scale and more generalized.  Is that really any better?  And the plot of this book examines that in fascinating fashion, and doesn't quite come up with a full answer.*

*Another book I read last year which examined a similar sort of dilemma, Robert Sawyer's "Quantum Night", was less of a thriller and more of an idea piece and yet did not explore these ideas as well as this book, which again is also a fast-paced thriller.

All of this works through the lens of our main heroine once again, Cas Russell.  The other characters in this book are, for the most part, underdeveloped (more on this in a bit), but Cas is utterly terrific as a heroine - I mentioned in the past book that she's more than a bit sociopathic (but not quite psychopathic....barely), but here she's megalomaniacal as well: believing that her supernatural math skills give her the ability, and duty, to right all the wrongs in the world that she has caused.  Combined with her mental break, as well as her feelings towards her friends and toward her own sense of self, it leads her to some truly incredible actions and (bad) decisions, which left me gasping for breath.  It all leads the reader through a tense as hell plot to see if A. she'll survive; B. her actions will do some good or be stopped; and C. if it will all end up being worth it, and if she can get through it all without sacrificing someone she really cares about.  And it allows Huang to set up a hell of a cliffhanger for the next book, one which makes me want that book now while also being a perfect ending to what happens here.  It's not really a spoiler to say we're not done with Cas Russell just yet, and there are very few characters I've read in the past few years of whom I want so much more so quickly.

Still, as I mentioned above, the other characters in the book are kind of underdeveloped, which hurts the book a little bit.  This is most notable with two of them: Arthur, Cas's PI friend who was a major character of the first book, and Pilar, a new character introduced here.  Arthur seems to lose all initiative of thought in this book, which is weird after how strongly he disagreed with Cas' methods in the first book, and barely has his own identity here - even after something he seriously cares about goes horribly wrong.  Pilar is perhaps the clearest example of this book's transformation from book 4 to book 2 - she was apparently introduced in one of the original books 2-3, and if she was so introduced, what happens to her here as well as her friendship with Cas would have a lot more impact.  As it is, it doesn't quite ring as powerfully as it could have since it and she comes a little bit from nowhere.

Still, the pace of this thriller, its amazing main character, and how it deals with the moral questions it provokes make it one hell of a book, and I highly recommend it.  Can't wait for book 3.
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