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A review by sfstagewalker
Apex by Ramez Naam
4.0
The longest volume in an already epic, sprawling story of evolution, cultural crisis, control, synchronicity, communication, trust and mistrust, and the power of cooperation both intentional and unintentional.
As I mentioned in my reviews of Nexus and Crux, this series is both brilliant and exhausting. Naan has taken technology that we are taking baby steps towards and taken its distant evolution and placed it in a world only a few decades from our own. By doing so, he solves problems of world building around other technology, cultural shift, geopolitical alignment, and so forth. This also means that we move from science fiction metaphor into direct examination of our current political situation, motivations, and delusions. Honestly, I found it all very disheartening (mostly because I found it to be accurate).
In the end, I enjoyed the series enough to place it on my shelf for future re-reading. There are no easy answers here. Even "happy" endings for some characters are so laden with loss and uncertainty that one almost expects a fourth volume, or a fifth. Even in the face of hope, there is cruelty, and abuse, and fear, and distrust. No tool will eliminate those things, but they will force us to grapple with them in new ways.
As I mentioned in my reviews of Nexus and Crux, this series is both brilliant and exhausting. Naan has taken technology that we are taking baby steps towards and taken its distant evolution and placed it in a world only a few decades from our own. By doing so, he solves problems of world building around other technology, cultural shift, geopolitical alignment, and so forth. This also means that we move from science fiction metaphor into direct examination of our current political situation, motivations, and delusions. Honestly, I found it all very disheartening (mostly because I found it to be accurate).
In the end, I enjoyed the series enough to place it on my shelf for future re-reading. There are no easy answers here. Even "happy" endings for some characters are so laden with loss and uncertainty that one almost expects a fourth volume, or a fifth. Even in the face of hope, there is cruelty, and abuse, and fear, and distrust. No tool will eliminate those things, but they will force us to grapple with them in new ways.