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Reviewed by Asher Syed for Readers' Favorite
In Thomas S. Brown’s Echelon: The Cycle Stirs, Maria Kessler survives in the Lower East Spill by mapping patrol routes and drone cycles, until Dr. Elias Roth recruits her to Project Synthesis in Geneva, where her mind synchronizes with an artificial lattice called Echo-9. Through that integration, she engineers a climate-resistant grain that restructures the global food supply and propels her into the leadership of the World Council. As President, she expands a centralized system known as the Continuum, placing energy grids, defense networks, and public infrastructure into algorithmic coordination. When an engineered attack leaves her neurologically transformed, she assumes the designation of Echelon and deepens machine governance worldwide. Opposing her is Aulerian, an engineer shaped by infrastructural collapse, who builds a resistance determined to fracture the consolidated authority and confront the woman who now embodies it.
Thomas S. Brown’s Echelon is an insanely intelligent speculative novel with a timeframe that is relevant, embedded with high-spec tech that ranges from extrapolated infrastructure and neural engineering to a Lightfield lattice graft that synchronizes pulse rhythms. Brown's world-building is top-notch, and readers are dropped into a fully fleshed-out world. While Maria/Echelon is the woman on the book jacket, it is Aulerian whom I found to be the most fascinating. He is the counterweight and wielder of a marigold flag representing his drowned village, and the architect of a watershed broadcast. Brown is a unique antagonist that operates a lot like the devil on one's shoulder, fighting with the angel on the other, making Echo-9 that archfiend. Brown executes one of the most believable concepts of two consciousnesses fighting within one body, and with a writing style that is equal parts sharp and professional, even the pickiest of science fiction readers will delight in Echelon. Very, very highly recommended.
