Information is power, and whoever controls the feed rules the world in this all-too-plausible follow-up to the science fiction thriller Bandwidth . Exiled from Washington after a covert operation gone wrong, Diana is building a new life as a freelance spy, though her obsessive secrecy is driving away the few friends and allies she can count on. When she’s hired to investigate the world’s leading techno capitalist, she unknowingly accepts an assignment with a dark ulterior purpose. Navigating a labyrinth of cutouts and false fronts, Diana discovers a plot to nationalize the global feed. As tech and politics speed toward a catastrophic reckoning, Diana must reconcile the sins of her past with her dreams of tomorrow. How she deploys the secrets in her arsenal will shape the future of a planet on the brink of disaster. Doing the right thing means risking everything to change the rules of the game. But how much is freedom really worth?
He's helped build technology businesses, survived dengue fever, translated Virgil's Aeneid from the original Latin, worked as an entrepreneur-in-residence at a venture capital firm, and explored the ancient Himalayan kingdom of Mustang.
This is book 2 but if you read book 1 you know it pretty much wrapped up it's story. However, some groundwork was laid so that we could revisit this incredible near-future world with follow up characters.
We follow CIA agent Diana as she's embroiled in intrigue and action in her quest to keep "the feed" safe from malicious hands. Great mystery set in a relevant near-future world.
Review ARC graciously provided by the publisher via NetGalley
Oh. My. This is so good. So so good. This is the kind of book you wait for... why? Do you like big premise books? Check. Do you like great writing that doesn’t get in the way of the story? Check. Do you like books where you can’t put them down? Check. Do yourself a favor and stop reading this and just get it. You won’t be disappointed.
When we last left the Analog series at the end of its initial entry, Bandwidth, that story was pretty well wrapped up, with the groundwork laid for a follow-up. I expected to drop back into Dag's life and follow him as he handled the ensuing situation. But Eliot Peper had a better idea. Yes, let's follow that lead, but let's look at it from a different angle. So instead of Dag, we're in the head of Diana, the former CIA agent Dag used to get intel and, as we left off Bandwidth, a promising romantic interest.
We may be in a near-future world where ecological disaster has caused tectonic shifts in society, economics, politics, and culture, and the entire world, beyond the borders of its nation states, relies on The Feed -- the internet structured as an amalgam of social media feeds, implanted into people's heads and into the electronics of, well, everything. But Peper never forgets that all else aside, what makes for good storytelling is character. And so Diana, who was an interesting supporting player in Bandwidth, becomes the firebrand protagonist of Borderless.
How does this play out? Imagine if you will a plot twist that requires Diana to get from San Francisco to DC despite a nationwide (worldwide) blackout, where all electronic technology has ceased to function, which because of The Feed means, as we've seen, pretty much everything. All Diana really needs to do to move the plot along is get into an airplane that predates all this technology, say a WWII-era fighter. So in the hands of your average action novelist, this would be one line or one paragraph -- Diana rode her bike to the marina, took a sailboat across the Bay, swam to shore, ran across the airport, and got into the Lockheed Whatever that was waiting for her. Simple enough, 'nuff said.
But Peper takes that one line and makes a whole chapter out of it. Nell, who provides all this for Diana, and who has been a peripheral presence to this point, gets to not only shepherd Diana to the plane, but to reveal her own character (perhaps in anticipation of becoming a major figure in a future entry, since she runs the establishment the series is named for, the bar/club called Analog). We also learn more about Diana in this chapter, even though this is already late in the book. Peper even has the wherewithal to add a couple of objective correlatives to help deepen the literary side of his action story, notably one about a peregrine falcon hunting a pigeon (he makes liberal use, and effective use, of objective correlatives throughout).
Folks, this is the stuff of good writing. And good writing elevates anything, even a good dystopian post-apocalyptic techno-action thriller like this.
Add to that some timely topics -- the ongoing debates about the role of social media in shaping our last election, the issue of net neutrality, and the globalization of society, culture, and commerce, with the concept of nationalism and borders inexorably heading toward anachronism (and currently the hotly contested subject of pushback) -- and you've got yourself one dandy series happening here. Looking forward to more, although the difference this time is that, while the story is brought to conclusion, there is no obvious loose thread leading to the next entry (well, there are a couple of possibilities, but nothing as direct as where we left off in Bandwidth).
Thanks to NetGalley for providing an advance copy of this book for review.
More action. More suspense. More intrigue. More of everything in the second installment of the Analog Series, Borderless.
It’s all about the feed and the clash and wisdom of two women—Diana and Helen—who keep the present, future and the ultimate destiny of the world in the fist of their attacks and counterattacks.
Because,
The feed was the information infrastructure that empowered nearly every human activity and on which nearly every human activity relied. A talisman that lent mere mortals the power of demigods. Doctors used it for diagnosis. Brokers used it to place bets. Physicists used it to explore the mysteries of quantum entanglement. Farmers used it to grow food. Kindergarteners used it to learn the alphabet. The feed was power, water, transportation, communication, entertainment, public services, relationships, industry, media, government, security, finance, and education. Without it the churning torrent of human civilization would cease.
Praise to Eliot Peper, the author of Cumulus, True Blue, Neon Fever Dream, The Uncommon Series, Bandwidth, and now another near-future thriller Borderless, the second novel in the Analog Series.
If you haven’t read anything coming from Eliot Peper’s super brain, correct that now and grab any of his book. His writing is intelligent, seducing, enchanting, like multi-colored waterfall cascading over the central core of your brain.
Read this: You were the center of gravity in a dance that you were observing but not participating in. And read this: When you owned your own decisions, you owned your own sins. And this: The overall impression it left was of something designed but not engineered, a marriage of botanical growth and human imagination.
And then read the whole of Borderless, not skipping a single word because you don’t want to shatter the glass ball of magical writing in front of which we bow our heads pleased and humbled.
Overwhelmed with the beauty and the rich texture of his writing style, I need to say this one last thing (or maybe two). Many great authors are out there but there are not so many great authors who are true artists. Eliot Peper is one of them.
Whether you are just a reader, a budding or established writer or an author, read Eliot Peper. Read him slowly and with tender care. Enjoy the process and LEARN.
You don’t want to miss the taste of the near future and live it now in your imagination before it will become real in a few years or decades; you don’t want to be excluded from the privilege of knowing one of the best composers of the written word who walks, breaths, dreams and lives in the same feed as you do. That would be a shame.
It has a great main character who has a really fantastic arc. She learns a ton from her experiences and shows a great deal of growth throughout the narrative.
The plot is interesting and there are some good, tense action scenes.
This book, like the previous one, is smart and has some really big ideas in it. I like this. It's something I don't see all that much of in many of the books I read, a lot of which sacrifice such ideas in the interest of keeping the plot trucking along.
But...I think the books slip into a tendency to pontificate at times, sometimes at the expense of slowing down the action too much. Much as I like the big ideas, there were times with this book where I was thinking, "Please, just get back to the part where things are happening."
So, yeah, my feelings are a bit mixed. I will read the next book, but I do wish the author would tighten his plotting a bit so that the cerebral parts don't drag down the pacing.
I was torn between a four and a five rating. This book was extremely good. And that was both its strength and its downfall. The heroine was extremely intuitive and creative. The villain was extremely power hungry and cruel. The kidnapping was extremely harrowing and exotic. The plot was extremely challenging. And the resolution was extremely satisfying. A little bit of extreme goes a long way, and by the end of the book my mind was ready for something a little more believable.
One side note. Read the Afterward. I sometimes skim these or skip them all together. But in this case, the Afterward may be the best part of the entire enterprise. Just as Diana learned the power of sharing her secrets, so Mr. Peper has given a powerful end note by baring his soul. It was extremely well done. :-)
The middle book in the Analog trilogy, Borderless continues to center on Commonwealth and The Feed, which is what Facebook and its newsfeed could have been, instead of becoming a complete dumpster fire of a garbage company with a product that, while useful at times, does incredible harm. Borderless is my favorite of Eliot’s works that I’ve read so far (Cumulus, Bandwidth, True Blue).
The writing is clumsy in a few parts but overall is a very fine effort, especially for this genre. While ostensibly a dramatic thriller, the pacing is relatively slow. But, Eliot more than compensates for that by deeply filling out the characters, especially the protagonist Diana, and seriously discussing the broader consequences of their actions.
For those of you who read and enjoyed the first of the Analog Series -Bandwidth - prepare for a sequel that is even better!
Eliot Peper weaves together an apocalyptic future and hard science fiction based on today’s headlines and then wraps it all together into a Detective/Espionage story. This would be more than enough to make his writing great but Peper’s genius really shines through in his characters. In this book, Peper brings back all of the characters from the first book and adds a few new ones. Diana, a character from book one, is the primary protagonist in book two and Peper has helped her to grow into the role.
In the Analog Series, the internet has evolved into “The Feed”, basically Google, E-Mail, Pandora, youtube, et. al. on steroids. All individuals, governments, and businesses are tied in and depend on The Feed in order to grow and survive. There is a saying that “every silver lining has a dark cloud behind it” so, of course, The Feed is vulnerable to attack and exploitation.
While this book is fiction, Peper builds on a number of significant issues in 2019 - immigration, political exploitation of the internet, climate change, governmental inaction, black ops, shrinking world borders, and economic disparity. In fact, because Borderless is so tied to current events, the storyline is both that much more believable and that much more scarily apocalyptic.
If you haven’t read the previous book in this series, STOP and read it first. While this book could be read as a stand-alone, you will miss so much of Peper’s genius if you start in the middle.
Fantastic near-term science fiction with a spy-thriller storyline. The playing out of the current corporate and geopolitical situation has a coherent scenaric perspective, without going into too detail. When is the third part of analog coming out!
The compelling core of most of Peper’s books for me is the relevance his near-term fiction holds to my current world. Borderless is no exception. I just finished the uncorrected proof and, again, was left creating solid connections to everything I am thinking about on a daily basis.
The main character, Diana, gets pulled through from Bandwidth - the other book in his Analog series - and after playing a supporting role in the previous book, takes center stage and drags you into a frenzied, believable, high velocity mission chock full of all the psychological struggles of a war-torn, immigrant / spy and all the complexities you can imagine would tag along with that kind of history.
And that’s really the best part - as you get to know Diana, she becomes another flawed but wonderful part of the harried world he’s already crafted in Bandwidth whose main characters also become part of the chase in a way that deeply connects you to all of the characters - as well as a few references to players from other great books he’s written. It’s those welcome references that remind you you’re just looking at a small, but incredibly enjoyable part of a much bigger world that Peper’s creating and everywhere you turn, it’s exciting.
Lovely prose, seemingly crafted with such care as if every word should matter.
Problem is this is a sci-fi thriller piece. It’s for page turning, not stopping to smell the roses.
I’m not a fan of the narrative keeping me in the dark as to what the plan is. Seems like a scam to just keep me interested. If I’m going to be in the main protagonists head, then you can’t keep majority of her plans secret.
Speaking of “her”, author not great at writing from a woman’s point of view. Add in her supposed cia background, totally made it unbelievable. She’s special ops, a spy, handles agents, assassinates presidents, etc. She James Bond without any of the mystique or charm. Fly a WWII era plane cross country solo to happenstance yourself into the whitehouse for a chat with the president during a lockdown? Suuuuuure.
Peper's second novel in the Analog series amps up the scope while continuing to add layers to primary and previously peripheral characters. I will say I thoroughly enjoyed reading Diana's story and love seeing how the author continues to evolve his craft. It is a wildly entertaining read that takes on a real-world significance as big tech and political structures quickly move towards a collision. It also takes on the theme of isolation, personal compartmentalization, and vulnerability in a way that is extremely fluid in a compelling narrative. I won't give away too much, but will say this is a very satisfying read with characters you come to care for and leaves you ready to dive into the #3 in the series to see what happens to this world and its inhabitants.
"How we do things shapes what we do." When you come to that point in the book, it's a declaration of a character's growth that they understand the importance of being intentional in their work, of understanding the consequences of their actions that manifest long after the decisions are made.
More than just being a good story, it's an important one. Eliot captures a number of trends - the declining faith in institutions, the growing power of non-state actors, the increasing reliance on technology in every corner of society - and weaves a compelling story throughout that asks essential questions.
Eliot's characters are fully realized - you feel each has their own rich story yet to be written - and their interactions feel honest in a way that many contemporary thrillers don't. Throughout the book, throw-away observations yield fascinating insights into who the characters are and what motivates them - creating a thoroughly immersive experience.
I loved reading this book. Eliot's at the top of his game.
I like to rate books i read by how immersed i get and also by how much they move me. This book accomplished both. While not necessary, it may help to read Bandwidth first. This is well written enough to stand in its own. As great as Bandwidth is, this is a step up. And the novels reflect the interconnected world we live in today taken farther. A future that is completely within the realm of possibility. Technology, given proper perspective can be good , but may we never lose sight of the pitfalls of becoming too dependent upon it. Enjoy!
Eliot does it again with another action packed near future story
Borderless picks up where Bandwidth leaves off as groups are more aware of the true power that the feed can possess on the global civilization.
This story is from Diana's viewpoint, who is a working as a freelance spy now that she has left the CIA. A subtle underlying story of the book is how Diana is trying to figure out how to avoid second-guessing herself, putting trust in others, all while battling mentors and others from her past. While she is dealing with her own internal struggles, she needs to stay sharp in order to put a stop to others taking over one of the worlds most important resources.
One of the things I appreciate about Eliot's books is the realistic characters, their struggles, and overall attention to detail. Even though the book is written in a near future time, he used tools at his disposal to map/chart out what the world would have looked like and the paths the characters could have taken.
Borderless continues and deepens the exploration of fake news, distributed power and the far reaching consequences of environmental degradation Peper began with Bandwidth.
This series is so timely and so well conceived that it could just as easily be describing our present as one possible near future. If you loved Bandwidth (like I did), you'll love the follow-up which is faster paced but manages to be just as serious an exploration of current real world challenges without losing the feel of a fun and thrilling adventure.
So close to a reality just short years ahead, or is it a recount of a reality we 're already entered? Regardless of your fluency or comfort with today's technologies, Eliot Peper's Analog books present a view of the underbelly, of the uses and misuses of advancing digitization toward which we are screaming. At both individual and societal levels there lie awakenings and cautions as we step forward, of both digital as well as analog. How you voted in this 2018 midterm may foreshadow the case for possible outcomes caste and nearly achieved in Borderless.
Borderless sucks you in as an adventure story but then segues into a tale of morality, human strengths and weaknesses as its heroine navigates through her own mind and a political labyrinth.
I really enjoyed the first book in this series, but this story had even more interesting insights and posed even better questions about society and the direction we are headed. I especially liked the afterword, positivity and progress!
Borderless. Eliot Peper's Analog trilogy continues the war between the establishment and the future. This is Diana's book: the freelance spy faces down her past and her present, to build a better tomorrow. Peper channels John Perry Barlow and declares independence.
Not only does Elliot do his research but he describes characters in a captivating and engaging way. He describes an interesting if somewhat bleak future that we're all likely to discover is closure to the truth than is comfortable.
I really enjoyed the new narrative perspective in this book. The author has an excellent command on how to craft meaningful character and it shines through the book!
Loved this fast moving and broad-thinking story. Big ideas permeate the action-packed plot. Occasionally a big idea got a little longwinded, but the action picked back up immediately. And I have to say, I love (spoiler alert) a happy ending, though the story will continue... Can't wait to read the next volume. (Book one was great, also!)
Eliot Peper's latest novel is gripping, thrilling, and highly relevant. Concerns of technology, data, power, politics, and privacy play out with Commonwealth, who run and curate the Feed. Rather than focus on Dag, Peper's latest focuses on Diana, an incredible protagonist written with skill and delicacy. Highly recommended reading. Edit
Second book in the Analog series. Was good to see the focus shift to one of the other characters, especially one I really liked from the first book
I really love Eliot's style of writing. In each of the other books I've read some of the lines feel like they have been crafted as opposed to just written (if that makes sense)
From a story perspective this was a good next step to go in. It took the political fallout from the previous book and ran with it
From my point of view I had similar feelings as with the first book. The technology aspect isn't really the point of the story. It's a political/spy story
That's normally not my kind of thing but the writing is good enough that I could still enjoy it
Will be interesting to see if there is a book three. There are plenty of places it could go
Another gem from Eliot Peper! I had been in a reading slump, no books seemed to hold my attention. Then I read Borderless! I'm a long time fan of Peper's books, and this is another great one! I love the pace, details, and stories. Borderless is a particularly timely look into government and corporate entanglement and then issues of how some of our largest corporations heavily sway, influence, or downright control aspects of our lives across the world. It's fascinating to think about and contemplate how this might play out for real. About the only downside to the book, is that it reads fast, and you're finished quickly, leaving you wanting more!