Seb DoubinskyReseñas

15% of the way into the book and I could not get engaged

Just last week I commented that I missed a good detective novel that made me crave a good cup of coffee. To my delight, The Invisible was that novel, gritty, full of coffee and whisky, it was what I call my literary “comfort food”. Despite its dystopian label and it’s Gotham-like atmosphere, New Babylon was a familiar landscape with a refreshing amount of optimism not usually found in this genre.

It doesn’t take long before you notice the political and social parallels, sometimes eerily similar to today’s headlines. Ratner’s attitude throughout the entire story makes the tension palpable, rolling with the punches and putting his best foot forward.

Dashes of quirkiness set this story apart from other detective novels, adding a little bit of the unexplained to further distinguish this plot from the rest. Short chapters make the timeline move quickly, a slow burn that sneaks up on you, a resolution that satisfies but leaves you wanting more.

Doubinsky has created a welcome respite to the chaotic ups and downs of the traditional mystery. A paradoxically rich palate cleanser that rests and rejuvenates the mind while still delivering an engaging plot.

Many thanks to Meerkat Press for a galley copy of the book. The opinions are my own.

Doubinsky continues his City-States with New Babylon’s election, sketchy politics, a dark drug circle, and a hidden question that lingers in this clever noir. The Invisible, is everything that stays hidden until the truth has to be exposed or banished.
Great Read!

Kurt Wagner is the head of a massive arms manufacturing company, hated by millions around the world. Susan deVeere is an award-winning filmmaker who is feted for her progressive work. How the two ended up sleeping together fuels the start of “Paperclip,” but is soon superceded by the activities of Omar, Kurt’s bodyguard and an ex-patriot from SankaraVille in Africa; Jet, Kurt’s driver who is studying magick (definitely *with* the “k”); and the newly minted International Court for Economical Crimes in SankaraVille, which is prepared to kidnap industrialists to force them to stand trial for their crimes. And that’s not even to mention Waldo, a human who has somehow become a bird…. This novella is part of Mr. Doubinsky’s “city-state cycle,” depicting a world containing many city-states in competition with one another rather than countries doing the same; otherwise, though, the world is rather like our own. He tends to write in short chapters, in this case alternating between the various voices of his main characters, and even though the chapters are often only a few paragraphs long, there is never any confusion as to who is describing what because each character is so well delineated, and this reader at least found herself rooting for each of them in turn (well, not for Kurt obviously). Not quite sure what Waldo’s there for, but other than that, I found the author’s storytelling to be very much flowing in nature, and a joy to read. Recommended!

This is an interesting book with some intriguing concepts, painting a picture of a society not too far removed from reality. Magic, politics, and ethics all play pivotal roles.
It doesn't feel like it's put together quite right, though. The Waldo chapters are good in their own right, but don't have a function in the narrative that I could identify. As for the rest of the book, it could have been pared down to a single storyline and made into a dynamic short story (or two). For a longer piece it needed more fleshing out, development and connections to work to its full potential.

An engaging speculative fiction novel. I requested this book because of the intriguing cover design, which I rarely ever do, so kudos to whoever was responsible for it. I was rewarded with interesting worldbuilding, several POV characters (which I always enjoy) and some cool story ideas. Oh, and I love birds, so that helped.

"Paperclip" is not the first novel in Doubinsky's alternate reality universe of competing city-states, but the first one I have read and for me, it totally worked as a standalone. I never had the feeling I was missing some vital information from a previous book. This seems to be the case with all his novels, so if this fictional universe sounds like something you might be interested in, I suggest you chose whichever book appeals most to you.

I found a lot to like about this book. The bird chapters were what I loved most, not just because I like birds, but because I found them to contain the best writing and some very interesting insight and inner monologue. The worldbuilding is interesting, fans of speculative ficiton will find some creative, yet believable ideas. The characters are layered, not simply good or bad. Everyone is good, but everyone's also an asshole in some capacity. Their motivations are clear and understandable. All in all, just what I like in my POV characters.

The story is driven by the characters and their actions, it has layers and touches on a lot of subjects. Things that do not seem connected in the beginning tie together in the end, motivations that are not clear at first glance become understandable later. There are some disctinct surreal elements that, in my opinion, go nicely with the more down-to-earth and plausible worldbuilding. Not everything is explained or even resolved. I like this in a story, but I am aware this is a matter of personal taste. The choice pays off and makes this story more intriguing.

What I did struggle with was the writing. The chapters were too short for my taste, so there was a lot of jumping around between the different POVs. The characters all seem to have the same voice; although they are different, they are not written differently. The author sometimes jumps from one thought to another without transition and the inner monologues are rather matter-of-fact, very short or not there at all. I would have wished for more insight into the character's minds. This made the writing seem incoherent and a little bland to me and contributed to the fact that, even though I enjoyed the world, the story and the characters, I did not particularly enjoy the process of reading the book. This is not due to lack of talent or editing, but rather a creative choice, because the bird chapters are written very differently and show that Doubinsky can write and knows what he is doing. So I might of course be wrong here, but I think the distinction between the story-focused and the more instrospect writing is intentional, and it does fit the content of the respective chapters. It might just not be my cup of tea. I guess I will have to read more and find out. Because I am intrigued.

tldr; I am glad I read this book and will read more of Doubinsky's works. I struggled a lot trying to decide if I wanted to give "Paperclip" 3 or 4 stars, but ultimately landed on 3.5 stars, rounded down.

Thank you to Netgalley and Meerkat Press for the eARC.

I am not quite sure about this book.

I loved a lot of things: the talking bird for example, the fears of the billionaire, the different threads and complots in the book.
What I liked less, was the writing sometimes: it did not go smoothly always, I read sentences which could have been written better. That was in the beginning of the book, I had no problems after that.
(I am myself not a native speaker of English by the way, I am sure you will have noticed.)

The end - yes, indeed, the wishes were fulfilled, but not in a way the subjects expected.
I finished the book today, so I am still thinking about the end.

“Paperclip” takes place within the military-industrial complex and big pharma world of dystopian city-states and environmental chaos. Sadly, though, while I felt attracted to the setting, I cared very little for the writing style. Good action fiction should have a degree of cinematic flow to it. Where the reader might like a movie, Paperclip offers an old fashioned slide show. Each slide offers high contrast description of a scene, but the carousel cannot rotate fast enough to please the reader, and the continuity is disturbingly fractured. Even worse, the carousel doesn't contain a great deal of plot, leaving the reader to wonder how much descriptive text serves as filler.

Call me unforgiving, but when I see, “ Coming out of the hotel, the heat crushed Susan like an ant under an uncaring heel,” I think of high school English class. Is there such a thing as a caring heel? Furthermore heat embraces, suffocates, envelopes, or, if you're a biochemistry nerd, even denatures. It does not crush.

A few such sentences are tolerable, but the book is replete with such passages. Doubinsky could improve it dramatically if he deleted half of his adjectives and most of his similes. I always felt too distracted to fully grasp the plot. In cruel fact, the reader can decide right away if they take to Doubinsky's writing style just by reading the second paragraph of the book. If it works for you, dive in. If not, move on.

Dystopian novel involving Nick Wagner, a descendant of a Nazi grandfather and involved in munitions and supporting a right wing government. He uses synth, a drug that enables him to hallucinate a liasion with Marlene Dietrich. He ends up sleeping with Susan who supports a poor country in opposition to the right wing power that Wagner supports. The book involves various parties with different positions regarding the political countries. I gave the book a three for its innovative content but it was sometimes disjointed and hard to understand how the parties interacted with each other , especially Waldo, who morphes into a bird.

I've read the first of the City-States series/universe into which this is another offering. That didn't make much sense and this doesn't either, although I've come across much worse. The basic theme is an anti-corporate diatribe without acknowledging any of the products we've become accustomed to. An African state has decided to instigate it's own World court of corruption and thereby officially kidnapping/arresting corporate leaders it believes have contributed to the externalities costing that has badly effected their land.

We flit between several characters - a drug addicted corporate leader, his bodyguards, and a reporter who's decided to dramatize this new 'court'. And Waldo who dreams he's a bird, and turns into one. I've no idea what or why he's doing in this book he has no interaction with any of the other characters. The corporate guy is nasty, the bodyguards naive, and the reporter conflicted. Add in some black magic because why not, and the ending is pretty much as you'd expect. Plus Waldo succeeds in flying.

Georg Ratner, former police detective and a respectable official, hated politics. The only one who hated them more was his wife. This is what was so peculiar when Georg accepted the assignment as the new City Commissioner of the New Babylon. He knew the President wanted him appointed to clear out the new illegal drug, Synth. she was the less of two evils running for President. Both were corrupt. The other nominee was pure evil. He was leery when she required him to give his personal guarantee he would discover who was to blame and get it under control. He was either the "scape goat" doomed to fail, or was respected enough that people truly had faith in him...He suspected the former. When he told his wife of his new commission, unexpectedly, she was supportive of him, instead of furious with him.

The main character often reflects on the 1950's and 60's events in comparison to some of the present events in the book. The similarities are there but they are also different.

Georg, also has a strange individual he communicates with, occasionally, in the night.

This is a dystopian novel with an unusual insight, A "one world order" could actually happen with the appearance of individual country governments, while all are in an alliance together, The characters can use better portrayal, but eventually the reader can begin to feel connected. It is quite a dreary tale, as most Dystopian stories are, and I had a struggle, in the beginning, to feel connected to this tale. In time, I did begin to feel a part of the story.

This is a story of corruption, all too prevalent in today's society, and of some of the situations which occur as freedoms are taken away, and the people no longer have a say in government decisions. It is also an interesting crime and detective novel.
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**Reader Beware: There are a few words of profanity used and sexual situations without details.
*This book was gifted me with no pressure for a positive review. This is my honest review.½

Odd. Sort of set near future, ish

I could not quite make out what this book was for.

For me, a book should have an end as well as an ending, and this one stopped quite abruptly – so abruptly, in fact, that I thought at first I was experiencing formatting issues with my e-book version. However, I have since learnt that this is maybe supposed to a cliffhanger of sorts, so we might expect a 2nd volume. It seems there’s a collection of short stories with the same protagonist and setting that might have to be read before this to understand all the premises.

The setting is an alternate universe - of sorts. The place names have been changed to: New Babylon (which is, very transparently, New York), New Petersburg (nicknamed “Pete”, same as its namesake Питер), New Berlin, New Moscow, New This and New That - however, apart from this re-christening of real-life places, Doubinsky’s universe does not differ from ours in one single instance*. Virtually everything we have, they have: E-Mail, combustion engines, Guinness, YouTube, Antonioni or Iggy Pop, one and all being firmly in place, making you wonder why the author even bothered with his creation. To avoid being sued for libel? A simple disclaimer would have done the trick more conveniently.

*Edit: I’ve only just seen from other reviews that there is, in fact, one thing: there seems to exist a “legal assassination” concept, which may feature prominently in some of the other books, but gets only such a passing mention in this one that it did not register with me.

Anyway, here we are, witnessing the protagonist, an aging cop, taking over his new job of city commissioner. A job he, basically, disapproves of as being political, however, there are some (rather benign, on the face of it) cases of corruption going on, which somebody has to uproot, and it’s either him or his arch enemy, so he buckles to. As we go along, we find that he, himself, is not above a spot of lobbying and getting “sponsored”, which even his radically socialist girl-friend does not object to. Ah well, live and let live.

An investigating detective is “stabbed from behind … right into the heart” (can that even be done? wouldn't his shoulderblades have been in the way?) and his notebook taken, however, it seems, not for his case notes, but for the poetry verses from his pen, and which the murderer, naturally, hangs on to. All of which points to some dark conspiracy on a large scale with the aim to suppress poetry, literature and, so, free thought. Also, there is a new illegal drug flooding the market. Said drug is reported to be neither addictive nor in any way harmful to its users, moreover being sold at cost price within a rather small community, making you wonder why it’s illegal in the first place. The Secret Service (?) stake out a drug lab. First appearance of “The invisible”. The end.

What this novel has to offer is: Loads and loads of characters, which I found a bit difficult to keep track of (the protagonist, before consistently called “Ratner”, at some point and quite out of the blue is referred to as “Georg”, leaving me I like: “Who is that now?”). Smoking and boozing like in a seventies talk show. Cops happily littering their crime scenes with cigarette butts. An investigation virtually going nowhere. Choppy writing, reiterating parts of conversation verbatim within two consecutive paragraphs. Weird similes (“… her mouth appeared dark red. Ratner thought of cherries in the spring”). An Egyptian goddess acting as the hero’s “occasional detective sidekick”, offering not very helpful advice. I don’t know about “noir”, but there is certainly enough world-weariness and pointlessness floating around to put me off the rest of the series. Not for me, this wasn’t.

Finally, some facts for fiction:
- Undercovers do not usually make arrests.
- The bombing of Dresden (on a large scale) took place in 1945.
- A book burning is not normally called an “auto-da-fé”
- The DIN series for envelopes is C, not A½

It an intriguing story which seemed to have a lot of potential. However, it never really goes anywhere.

This gripping story is divided into twenty-three parts, each comprising a number of short chapters, many of which are just a page long, some just a paragraph. When I first started reading I did wonder whether this style would feel too disruptive but it never did, if anything I found that it added an intensity and urgency to the story-telling. I think this is testament to the virtuosity of the author’s writing style, his total control over his use of language, making every word count as, step by step, he revealed the multi-layered depths to this complex, thought-provoking and unsettling story. I’m going to resist the temptation to go into detail about any specific aspects of how the story unfolds because it’s the surprising twists and turns which make for such a pleasurable reading experience. However, Seb’s well-paced and evocative story-telling quickly drew me deep into the dystopian city-state of New Babylon, a world which, with its political corruption, tyranny, power struggles, xenophobia, economic uncertainty and the threat from a powerful new drug, felt all too recognisably topical! Georg Ratner’s reflection that “morals was a word that had been erased a long time ago from New Babylon politics” felt chilling in its familiarity.
I found the author’s portrayal of such totally convincing and vibrant characters to be a constant source of delight, especially the multifaceted and deeply-loving relationship between Georg, who enjoys punk music and industrial rock and drinking whisky, and his wife Laura, a teacher and political activist, always ready to challenge injustice and be prepared to take action in order to bring about change. Although in his role as a cop Georg is part of the establishment, it’s clear that his instincts are liberal and Laura’s challenges, reflecting her role as his alter-ego, enable him to negotiate a path through the inevitable conflicts he experiences when doing his job. However, there is another woman in Georg’s life from whom he seeks support and guidance, She is Nũt, the Egyptian goddess of the sky who had first visited him in a dream when he was investigating a murder, and who is now someone to whom turns and silently communicates when he needs to find focus and clarification of his confused thoughts and feelings. I loved the mystical and the philosophical elements which this relationship brought to the story, all contributing to me finding Georg such an interesting and likeable character.
A theme reflecting how art and culture can be used as subversive weapon in any regime which uses oppression to control its citizens ran like a central thread through the storytelling, just as the hallucinogenic drug Synth came to feel almost like a character in its own right as the effects of its presence in the city wove through the story. Regarded as a “political drug” by the politicians, dangerous because “it makes people believe in other realities … makes them escape the system”, it became central to the candidates’ electioneering campaigns, with demands that its source must be tracked down and the drug eradicated. These themes alone would provide rich material for discussion, making this an ideal choice for book groups.
Each of the twenty-three parts of this novel begins with a brief epigraph introducing illustrated tarot-style cards – The Fool, The Magician, The Lovers, The High Priestess, Justice, to name just a few. These not only provided a rich source of enjoyment and humour but were also thought-provoking – as I finished each section I frequently found myself re-visiting them to reflect on the ideas they contained! One of the characters is a hierophant, a person who shows or reveals secret things … this seems a particularly apt description of Seb’s talents as a writer!
Although it has elements of science fiction, political satire, thriller, dystopian-noir, spiritualism and mysticism, I think this is a story which defies being constrained by being shoe-horned into a single genre. Rather, the brilliance of the writing lies in the fact that the author has been able to combine all these elements into such a coherent and satisfying whole. When I finished the book, I felt bereft of the company of its main characters so a plea to Seb – I hope it won’t be too long before you offer your readers an opportunity to become reacquainted with them!
With many thanks to Tricia at Meerkat Press for an ARC of this wonderful story in exchange for an honest review.

The Invisible is a noir police mystery set in the not-quite-New-York city of New Babylon. Georg Ratner is the police commissioner, and finds himself walking the tightrope of politics during an election year while investigating the murder of his former partner and the appearance of a new and mysterious drug called Synth. Not only that, but he also has to contend with a city-wide strike, a dead poet, and a secret society who believe that corruption is a living entity.

The mystery deepens when he finds that there seems to be no central source for the drug, and moreover it seems to have no negative side effects, but enhances creativity and peaceful feelings. Yet his superiors seem to want to crack down on it even more.

The book consists of very short, choppy chapters, most less than a page, and is divided into sections named after the major arcana in Tarot. This imbues the story with a mystical feel which contrasts with the gritty reality of murder and corruption in a very intriguing way. The magic intensifies when it's revealed that the Egyptian goddess Nut occasionally appears to Ratner in his dreams, giving him advice and answering questions. Music also plays an important part, with Ratner listening to songs inspired by the drug Synth and seeking out its creators. Despite the brevity of the text, the author pauses to describe a smell or the beauty of the season, which also helped to add a sense of the ethereal.

The Invisible is part of the City-States Cycle series. I wasn't able to find a numbered listing but it seems to be at least the tenth book set in this world so far.

I have to admit, it annoys me when I read a book and don't find out until later that it's one of the latter books in a series. I'm just a bit OCD that way. I was confused about some questions that presumably would have been explained had I read the series from the start. For example, the setting -- very similar to Earth but with different city and country names. Is it an alternate history or something else? Is it the kind of universe where magic is real? Can a goddess really help Ratner or is he just hallucinating?

The story also ended quite abruptly, with the mystery on the verge of being solved. It's hard to say whether the author intended it to be a self-contained ending, or if the mystery is solved in the next novel. If it's the author's style to leave major questions unanswered at the end of a novel, I can accept that, but if it's an attempt at drawing the reader in to continue on to the next in the series, it's kind of annoying.

Despite this, I did enjoy the story and found the concept of a harmless drug and a police commissioner guided by a goddess to be intriguing, and I have to admit, the brief chapters appealed to my ever-shrinking attention span.

Would I read more by this author? Yes!

Please note: this book was provided for me to read and review by LibraryThing's Early Reviewer programme. You can rest assured however, that this is (as always) an honest review!

When Georg Ratner accepts the position of City Commissioner in New Babylon, he knows it is largely a political position and one in which he is likely to be the scapegoat for any number of corrupt politicians. But he decides to take the job anyway, in particular to prevent his nemesis, Thomsen, from getting the position, which he would surely use for corrupt and racist ends. Sure enough, it’s not long before his superiors ask him to look into a new drug, Synth, which seems to be all over the city-state and yet seems to have no big dealer network, which is complicated by the fact that it’s an election year and President Delgado is in a fight of her own….I believe this is an entry in Mr. Doubinsky’s City-State Cycle, of which I need to read more because I’m a bit confused about the geo-politics of New Babylon: since there’s a President and a Mayor, is New Babylon a city or a country, or both? In any event, the story itself is quite entertaining; dystopian states and the introduction of a strange new drug are nothing new in sf/f, of course, but Mr. Doubinsky is a poet as well as a writer of fiction, and his style is very, well, poetic. I also liked the following snippets: although Thomsen is mentioned fairly frequently, he’s actually only in one short scene in the whole book; Ratner is a long-time cop who loves punk and industrial rock; and his wife Laura is a borderline anarchist. Among other attributes. The story is framed by odd descriptions of Tarot cards and most chapters are only one page long or even less; that might suggest a certain choppiness to the novel, but it actually works very well. Recommended!

Authors love to play with structure and a quick check will bring up novelists who fool around with sentence length, numbers of letters, fonts, and other stuff that we non-writers can't imagine anyone imagining. Here Mr. Doubinsky, who teaches literature and so does imagine these things, writes a novel as a series of single-paragraph chapters. Not entirely, he doesn't force himself into it, but most of the chapters are a single paragraph, the others are short.

"Missing Signal" is the story of a spy in a 1984ish not too distant future. There may be aliens among us and we need spies to catch them. Paranoia runs deep and the structure helps it build.

A year ago I gave "Song of Synth" 3 stars because I thought the end was squishy. This book is tighter (as it must be with the forced structure) and more coherent, to the extent that paranoia can be coherent. Nevertheless, I think the reviews in Amazon's "Editorial Reviews" are exaggerated. This book is a solid 3.5 stars. You will like it but you won't send copies to your friends.

I received a review copy of "Missing Signal" by Seb Doubinsky (Meercat) through LibraryThing.com.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R3K69NB8LK5QEQ/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_tt...½

I started this book with some trepidation because science fiction is not usually a genre I read. But, when I started reading it, I realized it's a compelling read and could easily identify with the characters and lives.
The books is divided into short chapters and detail the lives of Agent Terrence Kovaks and his work as a counter-intelligence agent. He has many aliases and mainly debunks UFO stories by propagating fake news about them. Once day, he attends a conference and meets a skeptical attendee, Thomas. Thomas gets in touch with Kovaks and brings a beautiful woman, Vita, with him at the meeting.
Vita tells Kovak that she is an alien and has come for help. Does Kovaks trust her? Does he believe in what she is saying? Or is is all part of a test? What is fake and what is real, and where do we learn to accept our loneliness and reach out, form the crux of this concise, yet expressive story.
I'm looking forward to reading the other books in the series now!

Jona

[Disclaimer: I received an Advance Review Copy] This novel is set up in a possible future world where real and fake news fiercely compete: the main character is indeed a counterinformation agent. The idea is developed well, only a bit hurried at the end, which was not obvious at all given the theme. What I did not like was the "stream of consciousness" bits: most chapters were just a few lines long and I did not manage to get an overall idea of the relation of these parts with the main plot. It could be just me, however.

Skillful, enjoyable writing, a surreal atmosphere, and an intriguing story. Yet it ends too abruptly without much resolution. This is really a short story posing as a novel. It's delightful, but the end felt strangled, as if this book could easily have been extended to a novel and instead, in the interest of leaving a "mystery" for the reader, is simple cut short with too few answers.

Missing Signal takes place in some slightly-off alternate reality. It's not too far off, perhaps slightly futuristic, but the world has changed from the current state. The main character, Terrance Kovacs, is an espionage counter-intellience agent (posting subversive propaganda--"fake news" indeed) for a country called New Petersburg that doesn't particularly seem Russian. Doubinsky leaves a lot for the reader to fill in. Terrance's job essentially is to disguise government weapons testing as UFO phenomenon, so he embeds himself in the UFO conspiracy movement, and when there is something the government wants hidden, he creates a UFO story that slightly changes the facts enough to subvert the truth.

The following is not a spoiler--it's in the book description--Terrance is approached by individuals who claim to be actual aliens disguised in human bodies. And from there, things start to get weirder and weirder, with Terrance unsure who he can trust, and whether he is being lied to by his department or by a foreign power.

Doubinsky's writing is a pleasure, and he crafts a wonderfully strange atmosphere. The real issue is just how abruptly this ends, leaving me disappointed. Still. Even with the disappointment, I think it is worthy of four stars. I'd like to check out his other books.​

Note: I received this book free from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
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I received an ARC of Seb Doubinsky’s "Missing Signal" from Meerkat Press; I had never read him before and had no idea what to expect. It turns out that this is the latest in a cycle of “City State” novels set in a dystopian near-future world, possibly modeled on Europe. Terrence is a master spy in this world, with some 50+ identities and a job involving…. well, hard to say what it involves, but he’s very good at it. Until, that is, he is contacted by a mysterious and beautiful alien, who has a plan to save the planet from being taken over by an evil Empire, said plan involving the highly controversial drug Synth, which may (or may not) allow humans to see the world as it really is…. Or something like that. This is a very short novel with very short chapters (sometimes only one paragraph) and a very quick read, although I have to say that I am not entirely certain of the plot other than to say it’s quite wild. I believe the author is also a poet, and this is a very poetic book, not to mention being really zany at times. It will be published in August 2018, and I hope readers will have the chance to discover this writer as "Missing Signal" is a lot of fun; recommended.

Are we alone in the universe? Is the universe a computer simulation? These and many there modern day question are posed as fiction in Missin Signal. Terrance Kovacs is a government employee designated with misinformation. However, he soon meets a beautiful girl from another planet ( an alien) and he begins to ask these questions of himself.

“Missing Signal―a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside a government conspiracy? Agent Terrence Kovacs has worked for the New Petersburg Counter-Intel Department propagating fake UFO stories for so long that even he has a hard time separating fact from fiction. Especially when he’s approached by the beautiful woman named Vita, who claims she’s been sent from another planet to liberate Earth.”

This blurb would not normally attract my attention because Sci-Fi is not a genre which appeals to me. However, having read several earlier publications from Meerkat Press (all outstanding), when offered the opportunity to read an ARC of this story I leapt at the opportunity. I knew I didn’t want to miss out on what could prove to be novel which would enjoyably widen my reading experience. Missing Signal has done just that – indeed, I’m delighted to have discovered an exciting new voice in Seb Doubinsky’s unusual novella. This is not a traditional Sci-Fi story but is one which offers a disturbing glimpse into a dystopian City-State future which reflects, albeit in an exaggerated way, so much of all that is disturbing in our 21st century world.
The labyrinthine network of false websites Terrence Kovacs creates as an agent in the counter-intelligence department – he has fifty-seven different aliases and is a master at reinventing himself – offer him some sense of satisfaction in his work but, at the same time, it also highlights his sense of loneliness and isolation. Even his name isn’t his own, so who is he really? Which of his experiences are fact, which fiction? The arrival of Vita complicates his life even more as his paranoia about whom he can trust becomes caught up in his need to believe in someone or something. Has she been sent by his superiors to test his loyalty or is she genuinely trying to help? Will a mind-altering, genetically-designed alien drug help or hinder his search for the truth?
This story is told in very short chapters, some of which are just a paragraph, or even a sentence, long, with none being longer than three pages. When I first started to read I wondered whether this style could possibly hold my attention; would I be convinced that a sentence could constitute a whole chapter? However, I very soon did become convinced because the quality of this author’s writing is such that he makes every single word count, nothing feels superfluous to the story-telling. In fact, it is the very sparseness of the writing which seems to give it such a thought-provoking power. The dystopian nature of the story, with its reflections of the all too easily recognisable horrors we see in today’s society, make this a book which I know will stay with me for a long time. Apart from the various themes which emerge in this story, I think that the nature of the writing-style would also make for some fascinating reading group discussions.
This is the seventh book in the “City-States Cycle” but can easily be read as a stand-alone story. I now feel highly motivated to seek out the earlier ones. If you enjoy creative stories with a difference, I hope that my enthusiasm will encourage you to seek out this author’s work for yourself.

My thanks to Nudge and Meerkat Press for giving me the opportunity to read this wonderful and amazing book in exchange for an honest review.

"Song of Synth" isn't bad, really, it's just that it isn't as good as it should be. Mr. Doubinksy draws heavily on "Neuromancer" and the druggy side of cyberpunk and that's fine by me, but while the drug throbs through our hero's system, there is no story throbbing through the book.

Mr. Doubinsky sets up his location, a future megalopolis, and he sets up his drug theme and the mechanism the drug uses, but he does not take them anywhere. We read but do not understand that Synth provides Marcus Olsen with a customizable chemical experience similar to the "gland" drugs of the Culture. Marcus smoothes and flavours his experiences with Synth but seems not to be overly affected by the result. The drug enhances his life and while the potential for overindulgence or poisoning is there, Mr. Doubinsky chooses not to take Marcus down the rabbit hole. Marcus goes about his life and then one day moves to Samarkand (Samarqand) and there his drug cravings are muted and then seem to fall away. His girlfriend the neurologist cures the addiction and the book is over. The secondary plot is about Marcus's participation in illegal political activities and the death of one of his friends who was a leader in the revolutionary movement, but Marcus, and we, seem disengaged. The writing lacks immediacy and a compelling voice.

I received a review copy of "The Song of Synth" by Seb Doubinsky (Open Road Integrated Media for Skyhorse / Talos) through NetGalley.com. Originally published 2015.