Deception Well

The Nanotech Succession #2

by Linda Nagata

In a war of belief, faith is a virus, and it’s spreading fast.Remnants of an alien nanotechnology infest the surface of the planet, Deception Well, giving rise to deadly plagues that make the Well uninhabitable—or so most believe. Jupiter Apolinario saw it differently. He believed the planet was host to an ancient, alien mechanism of transformation meant to embrace all life forms in an ecstatic communion. Jupiter disappeared on the planet along with a handful of followers, though whether they were taken by death or transcendence, no one could say.Ten years later, Jupiter’s son, Lot, stands at the center of conflict. Like his father, Lot has a seductive presence, and a charismatic nature that seems more-than-human. People are helplessly drawn to him. Their faith in him is strong and their numbers are growing, but Lot is beset with doubts about his father’s teachings. So he sets out to learn the truth about Jupiter, about his own powerful calling as a prophet, and about the real nature of Deception Well, where a razor-thin line divides bliss from damnation.Enjoy all four books of the Nanotech Succession, a collection of stand-alone novels exploring the rise of nanotechnology and the strange and fascinating future that follows.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Speculative Fiction, Space Opera, Science Fiction Fantasy, Ebooks, Fantasy

420 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

About the author

I'm a writer from Hawaii best known for my high-tech science fiction, including the near-future thriller, The Last Good Man , and the far-future adventure series, INVERTED FRONTIER.

Though I don't review books on Goodreads, I do talk about some of my favorite books on my blog and those posts are echoed here. So I invite you to follow me for news of books and many other things. You can also visit my website to learn more about my work, and to sign up for my newsletter.

Reviews

[Khalid Abdul-Mumin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Deception Well is the second stand-alone installment of the Nanotech Succession series and it starts off long after the events of the first book, The Bohr Maker, in which the events were set on a near future earth.

It's the far future and humanity has expanded along the Orion arm and has met with remnants of an alien weapons ships, the Chenzeme, hell-bent on the destruction of sentient entities.

This one tells the story of a young man, Lot, with strange and charismatic powers that come of age in a city called Silk atop a space elevator over a world named Deception Well where the surface is off limits and strange entities inhabit it. An excellent hard sci-fi with strong elements of Nanotechnology and Space Opera; thought provoking big ideas from Linda Nagata as per usual. Highly recommended.

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[Bonnie · Rating 2 out of 5]

My least favorite of the Linda Nagata Nanotech Succession/Inverted Frontier books I have read recently. Not much about the digital personas, subminds, or saving of personalities. In general the technology and future of these books remind me of friendlier (and earlier!) Alastair Reynolds or Peter F. Hamilton, but this one did not engage me.

Confused by:
1) Many of the terms. Gnomes, Governors, different types of Makers, cult virus, neural virus, Chenzeme virus, Chenzeme plague, wardens, Communion, Charismata, real people, real real people, multiple spaceship personas… For a while I would go back and try to figure out what the things were, but later I just did not care enough to go look, and kept reading without understanding things. Definitely wanted a glossary.

2. As a societal/human problem I recognize that people do join destructive cults (Jonestown etc.) but on an individual level, I did not see why people in this book: Lot, Gent, Alta et al, would want to “join the Communion” meaning that they themselves would cease to exist.

3. Why did the authorities of Silk, the city at the top of the space elevator, not just let the people in Jupiter’s group go down to the planet? The authorities thought it was dangerous, but if this group wanted to hang themselves, why not just let them? especially with resource shortage in the city. Also, why didn’t Jupiter just land the ship directly on the planet instead of invading Silk? The ship later crashed herself into the water anyway. Maybe that was explained .

I did like
* the Ados (adolescents, people under 100 years of age) wanting to change the voting age to be lower, so they would have more political power.
* the story of Lot, Urbane, Gent and Alta descending the elevator cable down to the planet.
* Ord! the little biomechanical doctor robot who followed Lot around on his tentacles. “Smart Lot, good Lot. Eat now!”

[Peter Tillman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thoughtful extrapolation + good storytelling. Her best yet, I thought in 1997.

The backstory: 3,000 yrs have passed since "Bohr Maker" (her first novel). Humanity has spread thru much of the galaxy, but interstellar contact is limited to sublight ships. There are dreadful Chenzeme war machines loose, still fighting the war which destroyed that species long ago. Much of humanity lives in the Hallowed Vasties, huge Dyson-spheres. Nanotechnology permeates everyday life, and permits people to live for centuries.

The novel is set on Silk, a sealed habitat atop a space elevator on the strange & isolated world of Deception Well. Silk was resettled by refugees from Heyertori, a world sterilized by a rogue Chenzeme swan burster. The city was deserted when they arrived, but full of human bones. The refugees thought the Old Silken were killed by a plague from the planet. They sealed off the beanstalk and live in comfort, but supplies are running low & they have no way to leave - they were dumped after a contract dispute with their sentient greatship.

Silk is attacked by followers of the prophet Jupiter, who believe they can attain ecstatic Communion on the planet's surface. Many of the cultists are killed, apparently including Jupiter. His son Lot survives, and he struggles to accept his father's legacy, and to discover the true nature of the Deception Well....

The novel is a fine combination of top-notch tech-speculation and traditional storytelling. It has a couple of sags that could have been cut, but I'm nitpicking. If you haven't tried Linda Nagata's backlist, "Deception Well" would be an excellent place to start.

[Review written in 1997. VAST, the next in the series, was my favorite as of 1998. I should reread both of these.]

[Peter · Rating 3 out of 5]

The city of Silk hangs in the sky 200 miles above the planet Deception Well, a planet full of biological complexity believed to be fatal to anybody who descends the space elevator. And yet the citizens of Silk can't got anywhere else, stranded there for generations.

Lot is the son of a charismatic prophet who went down to Deception Well, hoping to find communion there rather than death, and many of his followers still believe he's down there and will return. Lot doesn't know what he believes... but he does know that he has the same ability to influence minds and that something needs to be done.

This is set in the same universe as The Bohr Maker, although a significant amount of time later, and you can read it alone if you wish to, although it may help to understand a few of the concepts, and the ending has a little more resonance having read the earlier book. I also didn't like this as much as The Bohr Maker, so maybe it'd be a good idea to start there for that reason alone.

That's not to say this is a bad book. I liked it, and there's a dizzying array of ideas and concepts here, some which again seem ahead of their time, with more recent books dealing with a few of the same themes and getting more recognition for it. It's a dense and complex book. Unfortunately, I think that complexity does come at the expense of plot, it's just not as entertaining as it might be... in fact, for much of the book there wasn't anybody or group I was rooting for, they all seemed to be in the wrong. Which isn't a flaw itself, good books can exist with no characters you want to win, but it needs to be that much better to pull it off, and here, it doesn't quite reach that level, the characters are a little too flat and their ethically troubling decisions never seem adequately addressed, nor does the story build to any kind of particularly satisfying conclusion. It reads like a book where the author got so caught up in the ideas the story was based on that they lost sight of the story itself in trying to explore them.

I will be continuing to the next book in the series, Vast, eventually, which I've heard is much better.

[Kai · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a slog for me, almost dnf. Very confusing story with a lot depending on speculation about the motivations of either long gone species or unfathomable ship minds. And what the hell are the Hallowed Vasties and why are they even important - I didn't get it. And the list of concepts and ideas is long that make shorter or longer appearances but are never really explained. Bonnie's review says it all.

[Ellen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some interesting concepts about achieving Communion. Plus finding deep satisfaction in community faith, united by the chemical, charismatic abilities of a young adult Lot, long in the shadow of his powerful father.

But this a book where you have to work very hard to pay attention. There are uncountable conversations in the first 300 pages, which don't seem very important on their own. Finally there's the major action, where chances a r e taken and faith is truly tested.

[astaliegurec · Rating 2 out of 5]

Yes. Linda Nagata's "Deception Well" is weird, slow, and filled with contradictions. But, the biggest problem is the whole family of logic elephants in the room. From almost the very start of the book until its very end, you're annoyed with structural issues. But, you've also got to contend with the constant nagging question in the back of your head related to the core plot: why didn't/don't the powers that be (TPTB) just let those people go down to the surface of the planet? Those people are nothing to TPTB. In fact, they're worse than nothing: they're invaders. Why not just let them go down to what TPTB are sure is certain doom? That decision leads to a whole lot of baby elephants that keep nagging at you:

- if TPTB want to avoid deaths, why do things that lead directly to the death of most of them?
- if TPTB want to save them, why keep them as permanent refugees?
- if TPTB are worried about what the main character will do, why not just let him go down to the planet?
- if TPTB believe absolutely that they can be re-born from their own metadata (to an extent one main character will let his body be killed so he can transmit said metadata to a different location and only have one instantiation), why don't they just record the main character (to salve their consciousness) and toss him out an airlock?
- if TPTB are afraid of reactions from whatever's down on the planet, why fire weapons down there?
- if TPTB want the main character to come back once he's out of reach, why ask him when there's not anything he can do about it?
- if TPTB want the main character's help, why do they beat him about the head and shoulders and otherwise torment him?

It would have been nice to have all those elephants removed (as well as the structural problems (especially the slow pacing)) since Nagata might have been able to focus some attention on her weird universe and explain it better. But, the way this is written, I'll have to rate it at a Pretty Bad 2 stars out of 5.

[Tomislav · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is one in a very loosely related sequence. #3 and #4 share characters and plot concepts, so those should be read in order. The order of the others doesn't really matter.
1) Tech-Heaven (1995)
2) The Bohr Maker (1995)
3) Deception Well (1997)
4) Vast (1998)

Lot is a young man on Silk, a post-human city which exists on the side of a space elevator above the world Deception Well. He comes to realize he has inherited a biological capability to influence people through a chemical biological process. It is as if he is destined to lead a cult such as the one his father had, crashing his community of followers into Silk, where they have not assimilated. The novel is an exploration of a sophisticated world of biological, cybernetic, alien, and fusion post-humanity, that leads Lot to take on some aspects of his father. The writing is hard-going, with fundamental concepts shifting as new evidence is revealed to the characters. The closing of the book is a partial conclusion, but with many world-building concepts left open. If you got this far, you will be reading the sequel as well.

[Jesse C · Rating 5 out of 5]

Radically different from the first book. Make a big timeline jump. Lot is such a fascinating character for exploring ideas of free will vs biological heritage. The ending coming full circle with Nikko showing up was wild . I really like how Nagata doesn't stress too much about the "how" of the tech instead dealing with the impacts. Reminds me a lot of Peter Hamilton's from a decade later (yup, she got there first again). Assuming this level of technology, what sort of crazy things might a human civilization be capable of.

[Jamie Rich · Rating 4 out of 5]

Deception Well(The Nanotech Succession #2)by Linda Nagata

The second book in the trilogy, and just as good as th first!
We have a new future, and some new characters to drive the plot. And the plot gets driven right off a cliff! What would happen if you could not help making people love you? What would you do, and how would you do it? And that's just one of the many issues to be dealt with in this revolution!

[Brandon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not a direct sequel to the first book, there's a lot of missing time between the two which made this a little hard to get into at first. But it ended up being an awesome story about nanotechnology, brain enhancement and alien technology.

[Zeta Syanthis · Rating 4 out of 5]

I genuinely don't know what to write about this book, other than is being really trippy and somehow really terrifying re: free will???

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good but hard for me to describe the total feeling of the book. Basically it's a coming-of-age story of a young boy Lot who grew up in a kind of cult of personality where everyone venerated their leader Jupiter. But Lot is not just a regular person in the cult, rather he shares something with Jupiter: sensory tears near their eyes which enable them to sense and manipulate the feelings of others around them (hence the cult).

The story starts with Jupiter's group arriving at the planet Deception Well and breaking into the platform at the top of the elevator that runs all the way from the planet to the atmosphere where small ships can dock. Lot, being small, helps them break in by crawling through the ventilation shafts (and almost choking on dust--thank you author for the realism that there is freaking lots of dust in those shafts and that what they show in movies with people crawling through what look like brand spanking new dust-free shafts is ludicrous!) in order to open the door from the inside. The group is trying to make their way down to the planet because Jupiter says that they can achieve nirvana or something like it down there. But they are attacked on their way to the elevator cars and most of them don't make it. Lot ran away and was found by the people who live in the city of Silk, which is attached to the elevator shaft high up above the clouds. They say that anyone who goes down to Deception Well dies so they are actually trying to save Jupiter's group from that fate.

Years later Lot is a young adult and has resisted all of the Silkens attempts to remove his sensory tears so they keep an eye on him in case he tries to stir up trouble. Then the story settles down into a description of life in the city of Silk and Lot's life there. In that society you are not considered an adult (they use different wording) until you are at least age 100! Lot and his group of young people are called Ados, short for Adolescents. Note: people have self-healing and can live to be hundreds of years old, so to a 300 year old a 20 year old is just a puppy.

Eventually Lot and two of his friends decide to find out the truth for themselves about Deception Well and sneak away from the city and repel down the elevator shaft (hundreds of miles, yikes!) to the planet's surface. I'll stop here to avoid spoilers.

I think I like this book better than the first book in this series. Lot is an intriguing character. He grew up on a ship then is captured as a young boy and put through years of medical and psychological things to try to get him to become a normal human being like the Silkens. Then he's set free but has a small robot minder which can inject him with a sedative if Lot becomes too angry or acts up. So he has to live his life in the balance of finding out who he really his and how his sensory tears work with trying to appear to be a good boy and fit into society. I really feel for him, he's a fish out of water and trying to survive and also trying to find out what is really true of what the Silkens have told him of Deception Well and Jupiter's fate (they say he's dead but Lot thinks he's still alive down on the planet). Lot's best friend Urban is immune to the sensory tears (and I don't remember an explanation for why that was) but is loyal to Lot anyway. Other friends of Lot's seem to be friends due to his tears. Oh, and the tears and not automatic, Lot has to use them but once used something settles into that person's brain and stays there unless the person fiercely resists it.

An interesting read and it gets kind of weird later on and, like the first book, I had the sense of someone trying to communicate something from a foreign language. I'm not quite sure I understood what the author was getting at. But maybe that's just me. Anyway I'm off to read the third book which is a direct sequel to this book.

[Worms · Rating 4 out of 5]

Damn, what a book. How to even describe it?

First half - 3 out of 5 stars
I absolutely loved The Bohr Maker and it's one of my favorite cyberpunk books ever. That said, I was really disappointed to find that Deception Well has nothing to do with it beyond the occasional use of the words "Makers" and "Atrium".
The beginning of Deception Well is rough. Between the extreme density of the text-- tons of worldbuilding + extensive use of jargon (the weird names don't help - Deception Well, Swan Burster, Hallowed Vasties, wtf...), and writing that relies on repeated forced obfuscation to build and veil a series of larger mysteries, it's a tough read. I didn't find the narrative to be terribly engaging either; it felt overly Dune-esque: chosen-one teenager who can bend people to his will via the power of the voice, er, i mean "charismata", who was created to lead his displaced people to freedom through revolution; eventually things get to a point where the jihad, er, revolution are going to go on with or without him.
The first half of the book is focused around learning about the main character Lot who is in the middle of the conflict between the young and old people on the world of Silk. The old people fear his chosen one status, while the young people want him to be their savior and lead them into power. Mild political thrills ensue. This plot does not feel like it requires the amount of density the text delivers, so its rather sloggy.

That said...

Second half - 5 out of 5 stars.
About 60% of the way, the story takes a sharp turn as Lot and his crew descend into Deception Well and get away from the politics and revolution. Once the exposition finally kicks in, Nagata tosses us one wild, epic idea after another. She'll introduce something massive and mind blowing (dyson spheres around stars that contain a humanity that has become a single consciousness) only to then indicate that's only a small part of an even larger and more interesting idea.

Oh that alien weaponry? The prophet stuff? The Communion? That's only the first layer. It just keeps getting deeper and deeper.

Suddenly, all that dense stuff the reader had to slog through in the first half makes sense and becomes necessary to understand the larger ideas at play. Plenty of very interesting things are explored here. Can't really get into it without spoilers, but the story gets deep into: (human) consciousness, ego, cults, human existence on a large time scale, isolation, alien weaponry, nanotech, alien viruses, nirvana, etc. The story gets bigger and more compelling all the way through the very end. It definitely hit me right in the Revelation Space.

Then at the very end we get an extremely unexpected but very interesting link to the first book. if all that wasn't enough, we then find out that all this was just the jumping off point for an even bigger story in the next book. Wild.

I have to praise Nagata's writing. It's the perfect mixture of science, tech, emotion, and poetic prose. It elevates this from a collection of cool ideas to a great story. Even though this isn't a "space opera" in the sense of spanning a bunch of characters and worlds simultaneously, this easily stands up with Revelation Space, Peter F Hamilton, etc. although on a smaller scale.

My only real complaint here is the reliance on forced obfuscation way longer than necessary. Once the exposition starts to hit, the ideas are cool enough that the story doesn't need to rely on mystery to keep the reader engaged. Just tell me in a clear way wtf is going on and what the big picture is instead of doling it out little by little in capsules laced with uncertainty and doubt.
I think certain ideas were presented in a much more clear way in Revelation Space and therefore I'd say that's the superior tale of... a certain type of alien weaponry.

All that said, very much recommended and I can't wait to see where things go in Vast.

[Kevin Phyland · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found the first part of this book hard to follow so I’ll quote a bit from the jacket copy: “Deception Well is a tropical world 200 miles below the sky city of Silk, poised on a space elevator. Ten years ago fiery prophet Jupiter Apolinario, with his fanatical followers, stormed Silk determined to reach Deception Well, where they believed they would achieve ecstatic Communion with the AI mind below. Instead, they find destruction. 18yo Lot is Jupiter’s son, who has spent the last ten years as a prisoner/ward of Silk.” Lot has alien Chenzeme neural architecture and nano Makers from the Hallowed Vasties that enable him to exude charismata, which can be used to attract fanatic followers, much like his father, and the rulers (those above age 1000) want to keep a close eye on him. Eventually he incites a riot when the ados (adolescents) are refused voting rights and he flees to the surface of Deception Well, where he discovers that a Great Ship mind may still be operating and perhaps even his father may still live. In my opinion it would be required to read the preceding book in the series (The Bohr Maker) to really get to grips with this book. Linda Nagata has a third volume as well, so don’t expect everything to be tied up in a neat little bow, although once you get the picture of the goings-on it is readable enough.

[Mat · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review for all 3 books of The Nanotech Succession:
—How did I miss these when they first came out?!
—Really enjoyed these. As Nagata has written, they are situated in the same universe, though standalone novels, though they can be read together as a loose series, and were gathered together as such at some point. I think they work great together. The tone/style/sweep (small to big to bigger) changes, to good effect. The payoffs become greater.
—Something said at some point by Alaistair Reynolds was my gateway to reading Nagata, and there are great parallels between both of their approaches (especially Reynolds' Revelation Space, which I suspect was heavily influenced to good effect by Nagata)
—These are more in the "hard" SF vein, and while I think that's too generic, there is a lot to like here in terms of getting more nitty gritty with the tech, whilst having great characters, interactions, evolutions and so forth.
—I see parallels too with the alien-ness of Peter Watts' work. Again, lots to like.

I'd rate these 4.5 out of 5. I really enjoyed them.

[Cathy Newman · Rating 3 out of 5]

The premise was interesting, and even the story was largely engaging. But where I think this book falls short is in clear worldbuilding. I never really understood much of what was happening or any of the technology because instead of using the vocabuary introduced in book 1, the author describes the complicated technology in a semi-religious context as experienced by people with little/no understanding of the nanotech world they're part of. So where I was left intrigued and curious by book 1, I was left mostly confused by this one. This made it nearly impossible to make connections to the world introduced in Bohr Maker.

[Paul Logan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Muddled, confused, this books reads like a k-hole. Lots of interjected dialogue and smash cut flashbacks that meander through the narrative. Defensible if we were coming or going from anything interesting, but it's all kind of a bland soup.

I'm a big fan of biopunk and analogizing social and biological evolution, but the plot movement and table setting was too drab to make it work here.

Also the ending is grade A garbage, the pacing sucks, and the book lacks attention to focus on any one obstacle, thought, or narrative for too long.

[Bulcsu · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting read with quite a few twists and unexpected events. Only 3 stars, because the events are often confusing and unclear what is going on. I liked the first book better, but the series is definitely interesting and I will continue reading the other books.

The story is not that original, but the setting is unique. There is enough mystery to keep you hooked and the characters feel real and have their own personality.

[John R. Goyer · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really enjoyed the first book of this series, unfortunately it seems series is a very loose term, and this volume is only slightly related to the first. I didn't care for the beginning of the story or the characters, and things really didn't get better as I read - at about 2/3 through I gave up. I've love every thing else I've read from Linda Nagata, but this was a disappointment.

[Tricia · Rating 4 out of 5]

More good writing

Nagata is a solid writer, with fun, unusual ideas. I had a harder time following this plot than the first in the series, but still enjoyed it. Going on to read the third asap.

[Christopher Madsen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very good Science Fiction. The kind that bends your thinking. In this book it was the idea of 'faith' being a virus that can infect an entire population. The book stands alone from Bohr Maker but continues the far future world created in that book. Disorienting at first but a good read,

[Doug · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fell victim to a bit of middle-book syndrome, in my opinion, but still quite enjoyable. And it does finally get around to tying itself solidly to the first installment (as well as setting things up well for the final (1998 final, anyway!) installment.

[Keizen Li Qian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Imaginative and visceral, yet with aimless political twists and an unsatisfying resolution that does not make me want to read more.

[Luiz Marques · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting, but maybe because the tech was so vast, didn’t feel as entertaining and didn’t flow as well as The Bohr Maker.

[Nick Keighley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent story.

[Michelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

These books just don't resonate with me, which is a shame because I ate up the Red trilogy like it was chocolate.

[Bryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great science fiction!

[Tai · Rating 4 out of 5]

Different. Enjoyable.

[Mark · Rating 1 out of 5]

Gave up at 20%, the setting is just as evocative as her later books, but the quality of writing and delivery is pretty bad.