Foundry

> I felt detached, untethered.

This statement by the main character is also how I felt about most of this book. I don't think it was particularly bad, but for some reason, I found it hard to care about most of the plot beats. Maybe because it felt like the protagonist didn't either.

One explored concept is the potential impact of hardware backdoors and our reliance on a relatively brittle supply chain. To me, this mostly felt too real to be entertaining fiction, yet not explored deeply enough to be informative.

What I wasn't expecting is for this tech-y spy thriller to start giving "This Is How You Lose the Time War" vibes (to be fair, I didn't expect it from that book either). The writing style is less overtly poetic but somehow still had similar energy at times, hidden inside a more grounded narrative style. Maybe as if El-Mohtar's book was crossed with one of Kim Stanley Robinson's half-essay near-future sci-fi explorations (while thankfully staying closer to the first in verbosity).

The afterword by the author made me feel like even though this book might not have been the best fit for me, it might still be worth trying another.