Sunfall

I love the author, but he definitely needed better guidance on this one. What could have been an interesting scifi book instead goes down the thriller route which exposes Al-Khalili's limitations as a writer. Not sure if the editors gave him an “ABC Primer of thriller writing” but we have all the tropes here, from washed-up heroes in need of rehabilitation, reconnecting to estranged family members, villains, tenuous and “I've got to have a love interest because my editor tells me so”

And so, from a wonderfully interesting plot background which could have been developed without needing to resort to cliches where the ignition is the focal point we are treated to international terrorism hunt. SI was hoping this would have been less attempt at a best seller and more a book i walked away thinking.

The writing is really good, but I thought the story was about a disaster. Instead, after the first few chapter, very compelling short stories about the natural disaster, the book steers into hacking, terrorism and techno babble, using the disaster storyline as a plot device.
The technology is barely credible, with new important technologies added to the world more for narrative necessity than world building.
By the end we reach the nanomachine cliche, aggravated by mind reading nanomachines.

It's rather prefer the natural disaster storyline to be center stage, because those first chapter were very very good.