Print SF @lemmy.ca Underwaterbob @lemm.ee 1y ago

Daniel Suarez' Kill Decision Killed Me

The title's a bit dramatic, but I was having trouble coming up with a good pun or otherwise.

Hot on the heels of his Daemon and Freedom duology, Suarez cranked out this near-future, techno-thriller in 2012. Which I'm sure made a lot of sense given his success with the former. Unfortunately, it fails to live to up to the non-stop, dumb fun of his first couple of releases.

Where Daemon and Freedom found glee in speculation of near future tech changing the face of the planet, this one is dour to the core. Some shady operation is making drones that kill people autonomously. Some other shady operation sets out to stop them. It's hardly spoiling much to say they (at least partially) succeed in spectacular fashion through a series of larger-than-life set pieces involving copious gunfire and car/plane/drone/boat chases. There's no comedy to be found here, intentional or otherwise. D&F at least had the utter ridiculousness of its happenings to alleviate the constant severity. This one ain't got that.

The characters are as cliche as they come. Hyper-competent super secret agents, scientists, engineers, and shady business people. A couple of them even fall in love, though thankfully the sex is limited to a line of text: "They made love." I really wouldn't want Suarez to push his writing chops too far in that direction given his proclivity for over-the-top action and technological exposition. Both of which are here in quantity.

Overall, I wouldn't call it a bad book. Just an entirely predictable, fairly mediocre one. It comes in pretty short around 300 pages or so I'd imagine if I had a hard copy. The technological stuff is dry, plausible, and not poorly written if you're into that. The action is well done, if somewhat less plausible, and keeps things moving.

3/5 autonomous killer drones

2 comments

Kill Decision was my introduction to Suarez a couple of years back and I actually found it to be pretty enjoyable.

It's not particularly interesting if you're already an avid SF reader but I think the folks who gobble up mass market miltech thrillers would probably enjoy it quite a bit (and let's face it, historically that market segment is more profitable than most hardcore SF.) If I had to guess I'd say it's aimed squarely at teens and older men, I know my dad would probably enjoy it, and it's well executed if you view it through that mass market lense. I'd definitely recommend it to my relatives with more of a mainstream fiction appetite.

For the hardcore SF crowd though? It's reasonably well written and paced, hits all of the expected tech thriller tropes and while it doesn't have any surprising new ideas the plot is still decently engaging. I wouldn't be surprised if one of the streaming services optioned it for a 6-10ep tech action thriller, it's got that sort of appeal.
- Yeah, it's not boring or badly written. Just cliché and predictable. It could make a decent TV series.