Nanowhere

by Chris Howard

Kaffia Lang's an experienced hacker. She's cautious, but her inability to turn down any network cracking challenge often leads her and anyone with her into danger. Alex, a geeky skater, new at school, works his way into the mysterious technological world she's created. He doesn't know whether he loves her or fears her, but he's forced to choose when he finds himself caught in a tangle of revenge, and Kaffia's life hangs on every decision he makes.

Nanowhere ...is a love story with all the usual rogue soldiers, computer hacking, tyranny, cryptography, hit-men with an affinity for rolled adhesives, rebellious skateboarders, and sentient billion-node self-organizing nanotech ghosts.

"Chris Howard has released an...interesting and well-written..sf thriller called Nanowhere along with a bunch of supplementary materials that purports to be the lab notes and publications of one of the book's characters..."
    --Cory Doctorow, BoingBoing

Genres: Science Fiction, Young Adult, Fiction

292 pages, Paperback

First published February 28, 2006

About the author

Chris Howard is just a creative human with a pen and a paint brush, author of Seaborn (Juno Books, 2008), Salvage (Prime Books, 2013), Saltwater Witch (Lykeion, 2005), and a shelf-full of other books. My short stories and essays have appeared in various magazines and anthologies, including “Lost Dogs and Fireplace Archeology” in Fantasy Magazine and “How to Build Worlds Without Becoming the Minister for Tourism” in Now Write! Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror (Penguin, 2014). My story “The Mermaid Game” appeared in the Paula Guran edited anthology Mermaids and Other Mysteries of the Deep (Prime, 2015), and “Hammers and Snails” was the Robert A. Heinlein Centennial Short Fiction Contest winner. I wrote and illustrated the comics Saltwater Witch and Salvage. My art has appeared on dozens of book covers, art cards, interior illustrations for publishers, authors, and Kickstarter projects. You can also find my art in Shimmer, BuzzyMag, various tabletop RPGs, and on the pages of books, blogs, and other interesting places.

Find out everything here: http://www.SaltwaterWitch.com

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Reviews

[Lore · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book utterly hooking. I started it one night and couldn't let go. The next day I kept taking away snippets of time from studying to keep reading. The plot is complex and driving. I am not going to get into details of it, so as not to spoil it!

The world presented has suffered some serious changes from ours. Their near history is tainted by a government that allowed experimentation on humans, a corporation take out and many other atrocities. There were experiments to make delinquents and political prisoners into brainless automatons to serve the society. People died by the thousand due to lack of medical care since hospitals had been taken by a corporate organization that basically refused to give treatment. Lots of people died opposing this government until finally they were dethroned. Still there are some organizations working undercover still active.

So, enter Alex and Kaffia. Throughout the main plot we gets flashes of memory from Alex of how he and Kaffia met and how they got to be this best friends almost couple item that we see from the page one.

I already liked Alex from the Seaborn Trilogy, now add to it he writes awesome poetry and goes face to face with the most evil torturer scientist ever for love. Couldn't get any better. But I have to admit I had a pretty strong dislike of Kaffia that had put me off from reading this book. However, by the end of the novel, even if I didn't love her, I grew to like her. I mean, she is this hacker goddess that can flip the network and make printers do her bidding with a little string of code. Major cyber kick-ass.

There are parts were hacking terms and hardware related vocabulary get a little heavy, but I relayed on Alex to gather meaning to the most obscure of them. And since the actions comes from Alex's perspective it totally worked for me. He sees Kaffia in a different light from what we got at the Seaborn Trilogy and I got to understand her a little better.

The extra papers on the theory behind creating a conscious AI were amazing, really detailed, created like a Thesis or scientific report. It really gave a different light and deeper meaning to the whole Wesley and Walter existence thing. Nanotechnology blew me away altogether.

So, I totally recommend this book! Different, refreshing and plot driven. Go for it.

[Tiamatty · Rating 3 out of 5]

I got this through Goodreads Giveaways. This is a bit of an odd book. The writing style seems aimed at Young Adults, but some of the concepts seem like they'd be a bit beyond most teenagers. Of course, some of the concepts are also beyond most people, regardless of age. Still, it does make for a very niche audience. Weird science aside, the writing style is generally fairly simple, even when describing some occasionally gruesome scenes. The perspective jumps around quite a bit. Also, while most of the book is third-person, there are chapters written in the first-person. These chapters explore how the protagonist first met and became friends with his girlfriend. Speaking of the girlfriend, it feels like she gets some short shrift at times. The main protagonist talks a lot about how amazing she is, but it mostly happens behind the scenes, and we don't get much insight into how she feels about events. There is a nice subversion of the "damsel in distress" direction the book seemed to have taken, but it would've been nice to have actually seen her at work.

This wasn't a bad book, but neither was it particularly great. There are some weird bits, scenes or lines that stick out awkwardly. But there's also some interesting concepts, and even without having read any other books in the series, the world Howard created is explained clearly enough to avoid being confusing.

It might be at least worth checking out at a library.

[Misterg · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm about halfway through Nanowhere
On the face of it you'd think it was "Young Adult", but you would be wrong - a lot more gruesome. Also tough going in places with the pseudoscience and the rambling bits ... hit the clicker and you can treat them the same way as Tolkein's songs and poems in LOTR!

I'm going to finish it, but only because I want to see how it ends

UPDATE: Finished it. So as not to spoil it for others I'll just say I'm not sure how it ends. There is a good conclusion to the overall story, but the relationship between the two main characters is left open, as well as the missing ghost. What happens in the last 10% was, frankly, disappointing. Again it reminded me of the appendices in other books where it obviously took a lot of work but I hadn't the inclination to read it all.

[Avital Gertner-Samet · Rating 3 out of 5]

Had I rated the book on originality and ingenuity of the plot, I would have given it 5 stars out of five. The story is brilliant.

The problem I had is way the way the story it told. It is so convoluted and detached that I couldn't get into it. I wasn't able to dive in and page one page after another with such excitement that the pages come undone... This is the type of excitement that I would expect from a book with such a great premise. But unfortunately it didn't work for me that way.

There were also some glitches in the story. Some discrepancies I caught, but nothing too serious.

In summary, I guess I expected more of this book because of the great story that was actually being told.

[C · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received this book for free through Goodreads First Reads.

This book had me hooked from page 1. I loved the story line. My only issue was that it was sometimes hard to figure out whose perspective or which characters we point of view we were reading from.

[Michael · Rating 2 out of 5]

A bit amateurish and full of overly-technical discussion of computer hacking and security, but a good concept and story.