Null Set, A Cas Russell Novel, by S. L. Huang (Tor)
I loved S. L.
Huang’s Zero Sum Game, and Cas
Russell, whose superpower is her ability to make lightning-fast mathematical
calculations. She works at such irregular and occasionally dubiously legal jobs
as tracking down missing persons, and enjoys an uneasy but devoted friendship
with psychopath, Rio. At the end of the first book, a world-wide mind-control
conspiracy had been defeated after many struggles and reversals. Null Set picks up where Zero Sum Game left off, with Cas and her
gang facing rising gang violence, the result of eliminating the aforementioned
mind control, and she herself beset by newly resurfacing memories of a previous
personality, and a telepath bent on trying to help her before whatever was done
to her to give her those memories kills her. Confused? So was I, for much of
the story.
Alas, Null Set feels like either a sequel that
author hadn’t planned on or the flabby middle book of a series. Cas spends way
too much time agonizing over this or that, tormented by fragmentary memories,
unwilling to ask her devoted friends for help, and in general not accomplishing
much. When she hits upon a solution to the looming gang war, she only ends up
having to undo it because if people are now unable to feed off each other’s
anger, they are equally immune to sharing hope. Suicide and addiction rates
skyrocket. I found myself wondering what the point of it was, since we would
end up right back where we started.
It felt as if the
ideas and plot of a novella or maybe an even shorter novelette got stretched
out into novel length. I’d loved feisty, independent Cas in the first book, but
now found her indecision, unwillingness to trust anyone, and general crankiness
annoying. Even her very cool mathematical genius couldn’t compensate for the
loss of sympathy as a character. There’s supposed to be a third book, but I
think I’ll skip it and consider Zero Sum
Game as a nice, tidy stand-alone.
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