Counterweight

I found this book frustrating because it kept being just interesting enough to keep me reading, but never really seemed to develop the potentially more interesting of its ideas, and ultimately felt like a lot of SFF / cyberpunk cliches thrown into a pot and not quite stirred enough to become a whole.

[#SFFBookClub September; I am slowly catching up on reviews]

Counterweight is a nearish-future scifi thriller set on the island of Patusan, which I have just learned today has a long literary legacy.

The plot follows an unnamed employee of the LK Corporation as he attempts to unravel a series of events revolving around the world's first space elevator, erected by LK on Patusan. I enjoyed the originality of the setting, but I found the whole thing fairly convoluted and somewhat difficult to follow.

The dystopian corporation-state future where having a literal worm implanted in your brain is a condition of employment is becoming all too plausible at this point.

#SFFBookClub

I have little idea what the hell was going on in this novel. See, there's a space elevator. And a corporation. And AIs that are made from the memories of living people. And an island nation that holds the base of the space elevator and which has been subsumed by the corporation that owns the space elevator.

But I can't even tell what the conflict is about. Confusing AF.

I'm still not really sure about this book. I should probably reread it since I think I went to fast and missed some things. It was definitely interesting, but it seemed like there were too many characters for such a short work. None of the characters or the world itself were given much depth. #SFFBookClub