Tuesday, May 12, 2020

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Critical Point By S. L. Huang




Critical Point is the third* novel in SL Huang's Cas Russell series of SciFi thrillers, after 2018's Zero Sum Game (reviewed here) and 2019's Null Set (reviewed here).  I've really loved this series: it's a series of SciFi thrillers following her protagonist Cas Russell - a mercenary whose superpower involves an incredible ability to use math for instant calculations (of trajectories, explosions or whatever).  And as each of the first two books proceeded at a breakneck pace, they also dealt with interesting themes about choice and free will and when the ends may or may not justify the means, as our heroes face up against foes willing to take drastic steps to get what they want.

*This series was originally self published, and this novel would've taken place 5th in the old self-published chronology....except Tor picked up this series before Huang could publish the equivalent of this novel in the self-published chronology.*

 Critical Point continues in this vein, once again being a breakneck thriller that poses some interesting questions about these themes as things get worse and worse for our protagonist, Cas Russell.  And it's so damn good as it does so, making it incredibly hard to put down - I did not mean to finish this in one night, but I couldn't help myself.  Our protagonist - the very much sociopathic math genius/mercenary Cas Russell - once again finds herself facing multiple conflicts which threaten not just all of LA, but her friends, and her sanity and her reactions to it all make her such a tremendous character to read from start to finish.  I cannot wait for whatever the next book in this series will be.


-----------------------------------------------------Plot Summary----------------------------------------------
Cas Russell is surviving.  She's undergoing psychic therapy on a weekly basis to prevent her past life from killing her with the same psychic - Simon - who ended that old life.  She even has a freaking office.  Things are not good, but they are as normal as they can be for her.  And it's driving her crazy.

But right before Cas is scheduled to have an appointment with a new client, a teenage girl walks in to the office.  And not just any teenage girl, but Arthur's daughter Tabitha - part of a family Arthur, the closest thing Cas has to a friend and partner, has never told her about.  Even worse, Tabitha's there because Arthur is missing.  And just as Tabitha leaves, the new client arrives, a bit nuts.....and Cas' office blows up.

To figure out what's going on, and to possibly save Arthur, Cas will have to discover the family Arthur hid from her.  Even worse, she'll have to rely on the resources she has that she cannot trust, such as the man who once killed her.  But her investigation will lead her not just to Arthur's past, but the past of her friends, and the past of her own that she no longer remembers....and in order to save everyone, to save the people she thought were friends but clearly didn't trust her, she may have to cross all the lines and become the person they feared she might become......
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Cas Russell is sociopathic.  I mentioned that in the last review and it's a major element of this book: she has issues understanding normal social behavior and, while she understands the concept of right and wrong and wants to do right (hence why I labeled her a sociopath and not a psychopath), she's not generally clear on what the line between the two is....and more importantly, when she has a goal she wants to accomplish, she isn't particularly picky about what actions she takes to accomplish that goal.  In the last book (Null Set), for example, she takes actions that border extremely close to those of the style of the antagonists she direly opposed in the first book, and while she was mildly conflicted about whether she was right to do so, she only relented upon the whole thing being blown up by Rio.  And Cas knows this is the case and tries to mitigate this part of her nature, but that's kind of hard for her....and as a result she kind of relies upon her friends, especially Arthur to be her conscience.

Here's the thing: this isn't just a realization a reader like me has - it's also something the other characters know: and so we have a major theme of this book, as Cas discovers her friends - the people she trusted to be her allies and her conscience - do not trust her as a result.  Arthur hid his whole family - an ex-husband and 5 kids; Checkers hid his past; even Pilar hid the fact that she left the crew (temporarily) to get out of the danger of Cas' orbit.  Naturally, this hurts Cas badly, and it distracts her quite a bit as she attempts to figure out what's going on here.  And it also makes her even more inclined towards leaning towards extreme methods to get where she needs to go in this book - not only is Arthur not present to push her off those paths, but her hurt at that distrust spins her away from even trying to imagine his feelings on the matter.

What does all this mean for this book?  Well, it means that in this SF Thriller, Cas Russell really goes off the rails repeatedly in new and interesting ways as she attempts to first find Arthur, then figure out what the connection is between the antagonists and her and Checkers' pasts, and then to try and stop them.  For a series who has always had a major theme of means vs ends, it's anothr fascinating exploration of that theme: while Cas doesn't go as far on a global scale as she did last book in terms of using dangerous means, her individual means here are pretty damn drastic and maybe not quite on the side of good.

But hey, this is a book where our math-genius heroine is going off against foes who have faces that are literally designed to provoke primal emotions like fear, trust, or anonymity in anyone who sees them.....and oh yeah, who are hiring a genius bomber to blow up anyone in their way.  These circumstances keep the book fast paced and on the edge at all times - we never slow down to examine the above themes, they're always there as Cas and everyone else are either in or just about to get into another shady situation.  It's a tremendous accomplishment for a thriller, and where a lot of other novels fail, to be able to pull off constant excitement, with the action and Cas' math tricks, while also hitting these themes hard through Cas's behavior and the actions/feelings of the other characters.  And in an equally impressive feat, Huang manages to pull off all of the above while still developing Cas and the other characters even further and guiding this series forward.

So yeah, Critical Point is utterly tremendous, great action and great characters, hitting upon interesting themes (which I've tried to be vague about here so I don't spoil) without ever slowing down and being near impossible to put down.  The only fault in the book is that it can get a little confusing in how quickly i read through it between two characters with similar physical traits/alterations, but a large part of that is due to my reading speed more than anything so it's hard to fault it.  Yeah you should be reading this series.
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