Where the Axe is Buried by Ray Nayler

“Roll over, George Orwell: This post-apocalyptic dystopia makes Airstrip One look like a summer camp . . . A richly detailed evocation of a grim future that is, sadly, absolutely believable.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

 

All systems fail. All societies crumble. All worlds end.

In the authoritarian Federation, there is a plot to assassinate the President, a man who has downloaded his mind to a succession of new bodies to maintain his grip on power. Meanwhile, on the fringes of a Western Europe that has renounced human governance in favor of ostensibly more efficient and peaceful AI Prime Ministers, an artificial mind is malfunctioning, threatening to set off a chain of events that may spell the end of the Western world.

As the Federation and the West both start to crumble, Lilia, the brilliant scientist whose invention may be central to bringing down the seemingly immortal President, goes on the run, trying to break out of the vast web of Federation surveillance. Her fate is bound up with those of others fighting the status quo around the world: Palmer, the man Lilia left behind in London; Zoya, a veteran activist imprisoned in the taiga, whose book has inspired a revolutionary movement; Nikolai, the President’s personal physician, forced to navigate the Federation’s harrowing palace politics; and Nurlan, the parliamentary staffer whose attempt to save his Republic goes terribly awry. And Krotov, head of the Federation’s security services, whose plots, agents, and assassins are everywhere.

Ray Nayler launches readers into a thrilling near-future world of geopolitical espionage. Where the Axe Is Buried combines the story of a near-impossible revolutionary operation with a blistering indictment of the many forms of authoritarianism that suffocate human freedom.