Fiction Reviews
Where the Axe is Buried
(2025) Ray Nayler, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £15.99, trdpbk, 327pp, ISBN 978-1-399-62789-4
Where the Axe is Buried is set in a fictional, near-future Europe where many nations have 'Rationalised' their politics to artificial intelligence (AI) 'Prime Ministers' whose instructions are willingly followed by human politicians in the belief that AIs can 'think' beyond the near-term perspective of politics with the greater good in mind. And so we have the Federation (Russia) ruled by a dictator whose brain has been enhanced to run three times faster, but with a few problematic issues, and which is transplanted into a series of new bodies so extending his lifespan. He is currently undergoing a new regenerative cycle, this time undoing some of the enhancements of his last rejuvenation. This is all overseen by a reluctant Italian clinician who has to do the dictator's bidding.
The Federation also sees the surveillance state house-arresting a brilliant scientist, Lilia, who has developed a new type of mind-implanting technology. She is about to escape courtesy of a secret underground resistance.
Meanwhile, in a small satellite state – the Republic – to the Federation, a civil servant, Nurlan, is cowering in a government building while riots go on outside due to prohibitive energy price hikes the I Prime Minister has evoked. It is clear that all is not right with this AI that wishes to escape the confines of the machinery in which it is housed.
Like Nayler's debut novel – The Mountain in the Sea – Where the Axe is Buried concerns intelligence both biological (in this case human not just octopi) and artificial. Clearly, the recent real-world rise of large language models (LLMs) and AI is a highly topical subject that has garnered Ray Naylor's attention. Equally clearly, in the real world we have now idea how this technological revolution will play out and Ray gets around this by having different European states each have their own AI experience.
The novel is also prescient in that in the real world Russia's dictator, Putin, met President Xi of China and they were caught discussing biomedical life extension through transplants much like the Federation dictator in Where the Axe is Buried: life imitating art?
Also like The Mountain in the Sea, Where the Axe is Buried has a number of points of view that are mainly only loosely connected with each other; just a couple actually meaningfully entwine. So the book reads more like a set of thematic short stories set in the same fictional world rather than a straight, linear novel. While this enables the author to explore a good number of concepts and scenarios, it is likely to seem disjointed for some readers: readers have to put the work in. Having said that, for those that do stick with it, rewards are given.
Though I preferred The Mountain in the Sea (it set a high bar), Nayler with just three books in is most certainly a writer to watch. This one is more a political technothriller but the SF is very much there for aficionados even if this comes from publisher Orion's Weidenfeld & Nicolson imprint rather than their Gollancz imprint which is noted for being one of the top handful of homes for British speculative fiction. Why Orion has gone down the Weidenfeld rather than the Gollancz route is a little puzzling: perhaps they rate the story's 'literary' merits over its genre qualities? Either way, this is a solid SFnal offering, though this reader senses that the author is still finding his feet when it comes to plot presentation. However, I suspect when he finds his stride we will see some remarkable things from the man.
Jonathan Cowie
Steven has also reviewed Where the Axe is Buried.
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