I rarely give a book five stars and I did for this one. I did not do it because it is a perfect book. It has rough edges and incongruities. I did it because it was a fascinating and challenging read in a way that has become very rare in speculative fiction. It won the Locus Award for SF in 2025, because it should have. And it was not nominated for many other major awards because the Hugo and Nebula nominators have traveled a path of renominating the usual suspects writing comfort novels and retreads (sorry, "retellings").
The basic form is a thriller that builds incredibly quickly. Boldizar takes an idea--that our consciousness is always lagging our actions--and spins up a premise for an action novel. The protagonist can very accurately predict the future within about 5 seconds. Boldizar uses this to explore how people, men in particular, make decisions to escalate violence. There's a lot of great stuff on the law, on military training, and political machinations.[It is important that you don't read this if you're considering reading the book. A whole lot of the enjoyment comes from not being able to anticipate the ending, but I have to discuss it. The book does not have a happy ending. It has a logical one. That's an incredibly daring choice. I kept waiting for some way that he was going to pull the chestnuts out of the fire, and he didn't, really. Nor did he really leave room for a sequel. From the last paragraph and line of the book we know how the next one would end, and Boldizar would be seriously challenged to come up with a way to even make it interesting. (hide spoiler)]
I am one who enjoys leaving some suspense for my next reading session, but I struggled to put this one down and when I did, I didn't sleep well. If you like SF you will love this book.
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