Wilde Welt der Wörter

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?
Source: https://www.netgalley.com/catalog/book/142666

Opinion

First off – I wouldn’t have guessed that the Author isn’t female. The main character is written realistically, palpable and very rounded.

I wanted to read the book for some good near future sci-fi and an adventure. I got so much more out of it. Borderless essentially shows you the story of an immigrated citizen with a complicated past, that has to question her way of loving and protecting her new home – be it her own little sanctuary or the United States of America. You follow Diana through her journey and meet every side-character through her eyes. The writing is beautiful and it  brings the different relationships to live.

Knowing that you were being manipulated didn’t stop it from working.

Besides Dag, I got a good sense of the people in her life and I’m looking forward to meeting him in Bandwith.

[…] sketches capturing the multiyear fire  […] his enthusiasm was aedent, fueled by the guilt.

Eliot Peper seems to write very descriptively but less with adjectives and more through actions, which I liked a lot. The appearances of people seem secondary unless something is described in context of an action or a feeling it evokes. It’s an interesting story that feels like you’re slowly unearthing various layers of the story, the people and the ploys. While it is Sci-Fi everything feels realistic and I enjoyed seeing a catheter using agent who’s human and doesn’t go rogue with kung-fu skills.

Just like that Diana’s plan evaporated. She wanted to come back with a firm rebuttal, explain how she’d thought through every contingency. But the fact was, she hadn’t.

I joined her in a journey, starting out with eager nervousness, through all the turmoils of present and past and in the end was moved by few unremarkable words in a melancholic world, full of shit and beauty. Because life isn’t a fairy tale, but it writes the best stories. And the stories of this characters are rooted in real human emotions in all their complexity. Please get yourself some tissues for the epilogue.

Quotes

Our secrets define us.

Maybe she should have picked up more of that Dutch pragmatism. On the other hand, was pragmatism that had once rationalized the transatlantic slave trade worth cultivating?

There were few currencies as valuable as lies of omission.

But the people who used tools were the ones in charge, not the people who made them.

You have more borders and treaties and NDAs in your head than the fucking United Nations.

Sloppiness invited chaos. But maybe chaos was exactly what she needed.

America peaked in the final years of the twentieth century, its enemies defeated and its strength uncontested. My rule of thumb is that if a blowjob constitutes a national crisis, then you’re at the very top of your game.

The relentless metamorphoses could be painful and disturbing, but they also reflected a world in which change was the only constant.

Diana was a refugee again, a refugee from the world she’d built, from the life she’d created for herself.

“I was protecting you.” Her whisper was barely audible.
“I never asked for your protection – all I’ve ever asked for is your trust.”

We all have to start somewhere. Otherwise what’s the point?