The Curve of The Earth (Metrozone)
*Starred Review* First there was the Petrovitch trilogy, a trio of interconnected novels featuring theoretical physicist Samuil Petrovitch, a Russian expat living in the Metrozone (that’s what’s left of London, England, in this near-future dystopian world) who, using a combination of wits and muscle, escapes from the direst of predicaments. The trilogy won the Philip K. Dick Award and richly deserved it, and now the author brings us a new Petrovitch novel, in which our hero journeys to Reconstruction America, a country with whom he has a few unsettled debts, to find his missing daughter. It’s set about 10 years after the third novel in the trilogy, Degrees of Freedom (2011), but if you’re expecting an older, wiser Petrovitch, you can forget about that. Filled to the brim with cybernetic enhancements to his body and sporting an artificial-intelligence companion who’s with him wherever he goes, Petrovitch is as snarky, impulsive, and coarse as ever. He’s also a genius who can manipulate computer systems without being anywhere near them and can access the most secret of top-secret files without moving a muscle. But can he find his missing daughter before something horrible happens to her? Morden has built a fully realized, believable, postapocalyptic world and populated it with full-bodied characters. Sure, Petrovitch is a bit (well, a lot, actually) over the top, but so what? He’s also completely engaging and so compelling you don’t dare look away from him, for fear you might miss something. --David Pitt