bluefacedpixie

The Execution Channel by Ken MacLeod

Interrupted The Backroom Boys to take The Execution Channel on a trip.

Surprisingly good. I’m often surprised by Ken MacLeod – he writes clearly, wittingly and sometimes irritatingly Scottish. His irritations also sometimes roll over into technology (like his erstwhile peer Charles Stross) in this book but he mostly keeps it in check.

An alternate “now/future” book, not pleasant to the Americans at all and very correctly and righteously frustrated at the injustices of the “current/real” world at large. A spy thriller in many ways, with many unsavoury detail it sucks you in completely to the CIA, MI5, DGSE. A little overly complicated and confusing in the end; bluff, double-bluff, insinuation, mis-information and blow-your-mind-scifi keeps it from 4 star. It’s premise of disinformation worked against it a little in the end, or maybe that was the whole point. I’d read it again except for the fact the airport thriller nature of it is one of the pleasures it imbued.

Sometime in the last few years, Ken has become one of the current leading lights of contemporary Sci-fi.

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