Where the Axe Is Buried

This near-future world has fallen into dystopia, but most people don’t realize it. The Russian Federation has turned to outright tyranny under a quasi-immortal president, while the Western democracies have turned over control to the Rationalization policies of AI-based Prime Ministers. Observing this world from the perspectives of an old Russian activist, a genius young cyberneticist, a bureaucrat seduced by an AI, the people caught up in their lives, and a shadowy group of operatives who don’t even know their own motivations, readers get a slowly forming picture of a spider at the center of a vast web, determined to either save or destroy humanity before it’s too late. But it’s already too late, as even when warring factions bury the hatchet, neither ever forgets where that axe was buried. This near-future, borderline dystopian geopolitical espionage thriller tells a story of authoritarianism run amok even as it hides in plain sight and is set against by shadowy forces that have the best intentions but the worst methods of carrying them out.