The Mountain in the Sea is a thrilling new sci-fi read from Ray Nayler. Meticulously researched, crafted, and paced, Nayler brings new colour to the age-old question of what we as beings and minds are - or could be - and how we might know one another.
In a near-ish future, Ha Nguyen, a prominent marine biologist and author of 'How Oceans Think,' signs on for a research mission to a remote Vietnamese archipelago to study a dangerously intelligent new species of octopus living in the bowels of a shipwreck. The islands have been purchased by an AI tech corporation named DIANIMA, whose murky motivations Ha ignores in the opportunity of her lifetime, obsessed with deciphering the strange symbols the octopus flashes on its skin to communicate.
She is joined on the island by a highly sophisticated android named Evrim, and a war-scarred Mongolian security guard named Altantseg - each fascinating characters in their own right. Meanwhile, two subplots bubble: in Astrakhan, a hacker named Rustem attempts to find a way into the android's brain, and out in the open sea a man named Eiko, who has been captured and enslaved by a sinister automaton fishing vessel, fights for freedom.
This is a mind-bending and at times super spooky read, laced with philosophy and science surrounding the non-human mind, intelligence, and language. Pacy yet cerebral - a perfect beach read as you look out at the waves and ponder what goes on beneath.
