Reviewed by Jamie Michele for Readers' Favorite

In Steven Nimocks’s Severance, Elias Reynor is an investigator with the Neural Compliance Division in 2747 SoundCore, where implants regulate feeling and public order depends upon citizens remaining within approved limits. Nine years of exceptional service have made Elias a strong candidate for promotion, with his career built upon strict adherence to the rules he enforces. A routine violation exposes sophisticated regulator technology carrying restricted NCD signatures, drawing his investigation to a source with access far above the city’s street market. As new cases produce the same signs of institutional knowledge, Elias begins tracing the technology through official records where familiar procedures take on another meaning. The search places him inside a city governed by surveillance, asking what happens when the investigator trusted to protect its system starts finding evidence buried within it.

Steven Nimocks’s Severance is outstanding dystopian fiction. Nimocks writes SoundCore’s bureaucracy brilliantly, showing how official rules have entered everyday speech. That comes through when Elias questions Katherine Dupree, a corporate executive linked to restricted neural technology, and she cites an employee wellness protocol from the interrogation table. I also love Elias’s nine-year partnership with fellow investigator Juno Tavir, which Nimocks develops through familiar gestures. After an operation, Juno’s faint smile and the coffee placed on Elias’s desk say everything about their routine. Nimocks gives Elias’s investigative habits individuality through details, proven by the analog notebook hidden inside his bed frame. Still, it’s Nimocks’s near-cinematic descriptions of SoundCore that steal the scenes, the standout being Central Plaza’s photonic leaves suspended in nutrient mist beneath metal and glass towers. Well written and immersive, readers who enjoy intelligent dystopian fiction will adore this first book in The Last Regulator series.