I checked this book out from the library because I saw the sequel was available on Netgalley, and I love the
Gone series by this author. The science geek in me really ended up enjoying this book. While really we get to know several of the characters throughout the book, we really have 2 central characters. First is Noah. His brother came back from the military and had gone insane. We kind of begin with Noah going to visit his brother in the mental hospital. His brother is mumbling lots of things that don't really make sense, including the word "berserk". Sadie is the other kind of main character. Although we don't really start out by meeting her, but by meeting her father and brother as they are flying to a business meeting, in Japan I think it was. On their way something happens to the plane, and it crashes in a stadium. The exact stadium that Sadie just happens to be at while she is on a date. Sadie's family is rich, in fact her father's company is heavily involved in nanotechnology. Both Sadie and Noah get recruited into the BZRK organization of hackers/nanotechnology experts to help defeat an organization called Nexus Humanus and their evil plan to take over some of the world's leaders in order to further their plans for mankind. Both sides have the same types of technology. Nanobots which can get inside and spy or at least attach the biots. Biots are nano-organisms created from actual pieces of a person, and then they become a part of that person to the point that whoever they came from can then see through their eyes and control them. The problem is this is that they are a part of you, and to lose them, well it is like a part of you actually dies, and it can drive you crazy. Just the training of going down to that tiny level can be stressful. There are all kinds of things that are freaky looking when they get that small. For example, a lot of times the biots try to get into the brain through the eyeballs, but on everyone's eyelashes are tiny creatures called Demodex. And while they are kind of frightening at the size they are compared to the biots, really they aren't dangerous at all.
Other characters are the evil twins, conjoined twins, Charles and Benjamin Armstrong who run the Nexus group. On their side is one of the best "twitchers" as the people who do this are called, and he goes by the name Bug Man. Vincent is one of the good guys, but he is an interesting character as he has an actual medical issue that he can't feel pleasure.
So we've got Noah trying to do something to make up for what happened to his brother, and Sadie who is now alone in the world, with a chance to get revenge for her brother and father. In BZRK, everyone takes a new name, Sadie chooses Plath from the basic rules given to her, and then Noah is named Keats.
I can see that for some this book may be way too technical, but that is kind of what I really liked about it! And reading all the descriptions of what things looked like at that small of scale was kind of cool. I could totally see a movie out of this, but only if someone who could afford awesome special effects did it, so that they could make this stuff look as real as possible.
