This is sci-fi writing at its best. I couldnt put the book down.Felicia Day, author of Youre Never Weird on the Internet (Almost)An enjoyable read . . . Expect minor whiplash from the frenetic pace.Entertainment Weekly[A] science fiction [novel that] smashes The Bourne Identity together with The End of Eternity to create a thrilling action rampage that confirms [Jason] Hough as an important new voice in genre fiction.Publishers Weekly (starred review) No one has created a multiverse like Jason Hough does in Zero World. Imagine Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind meets James Bond.New York Journal of Books A fast-paced cinematic novel full of action . . . Story, character, world building, actionall points are firing on all cylinders here.Bookreporter A fast, furious powder keg of a novel . . . Hough pulls off a complex science fiction thriller, keeping the reader guessing about the good guys and the bad guys. . . . This is a smash hit. Loved it.Examiner.comHough has combined all the ingredients of a first-rate sci-fi thriller.Kirkus sOne hell of an entertaining read. Hough continues to deliver white-knuckle books anchored by unusual and fascinating characters. Zero World is a giant cup of pure badassery that secures his place among the finest sci-fi action writers today.Kevin Hearne, New York Times bestselling author of the Iron Druid Chronicles A high-octane blend of science fiction and mystery,Zero Worldis a thrill ride that shoots you out of a cannon and doesnt let up until the very last page.Wesley Chu, author of the Tao Series Warning: Do not pick up this book if there is anything else you need to do. There is no safe place to rest inside these pages, no lag in the full-throttle action, no moment when you will think, Okay, this is a good spot to take a break. Once you realize how much you dont knowabout this world, these characters, this inexplicable missionthe only way out is forward.Brian Staveley, author of the Emperors Blades series I just finished Zero World and theres only one thing I need to know: How long must I wait for the sequel!?Raymond Benson, former James Bond novelist and author of the Black Stiletto series A brilliant combination of spy thriller, cold-case mystery, and hard sci-fi tale, Zero World is a smart, action-packed thrill ride of a book. Jason Hough is redefining storytelling with his new novel.Ted Kosmatka, author of The Flicker Men Zero Worlddeftly blends the best elements of sci-fi and spy thriller with blistering action and a depth that unfolds itself in surprising ways. Hough is a master.Jay Posey, author of the Duskwalker series Fast, fun, and full of action, Zero World melds a spy thriller with science fiction to excellent effect. If youve ever wished Jason Bourne would tackle a mission involving wormholes and mirror worlds, this is the book for you.Courtney Schafer, author of the Shattered Sigil trilogyElectrifying and addictive, Zero World is a page-turning sci-fi thriller that had my pulse pounding.Adam Christopher, author of Made to KillFrom the Hardcover edition.About the AuthorJason M. Hough is the New York Times bestselling author of the Dire Earth Cycle: The Darwin Elevator, The Exodus Towers, and The Plague Forge, as well as the novella The Dire Earth. Hough was born in Illinois but grew up on the mean streets of suburban San Diego, California. In 1978, when he was six, his parents took him to see Star Wars, and so began a lifelong love of sci-fi and all things geek. He later worked for a decade in the videogame industry as a 3D artist and game designer. Today he lives in Seattle with his wife and two young sons. When not writing, Hough enjoys building LEGO spaceships with his boys and other similarly grown-up pursuits.From the Hardcover edition.Excerpt. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.1In a luxurious flat overlooking Hyde Park the assassins mind reverted.He lay on a stiff mattress in a dark room, naked between silk sheets, cool conditioned air gentle against his face, when the rewind occurred.Time had just been taken from him. He knew this because hed been exhaling, a slow, measured breath that suddenly and quite inhumanly changed to a sharp inhale. Hed prepared for this, but even with all his measures to reduce the effect, the moment of reversion always left him disoriented and more than a little nauseous.The routine hed developed over the last dozen years involved a careful arrangement of his environment and physical state so that when his mind suddenly lurched backward to the trigger moment, the similarities would far outweigh the changes. He always used the company flat. The same bed, the same sheets, the same pillow. Set the thermostat to exactly 20 degrees Celsius. Kill the lights, draw the curtains, and send his handler, Monique Pendleton, the message: Im ready.Then hed lie down, face up, hands at his sides. As agent Peter Caswell waited for her to trigger the implant, he would silently recite an old song lyric. Not aloud, just in his head. It was his secret anchor. His bridge across time.Speak the wordThe word is all of usAgain and again he would recite the words until the reversion moment arrived. It never took long.This ritual was key. Days ago had been the trigger moment. Monique would activate the implant from her perch a few hundred miles above, and hed get up and dress and go off on some clandestine job. Hed conduct his particular business, and then return here, to this same exact room, and put everything back just the way it had been. Once again hed send Im ready. Hed lie down in the same position, and he would wait for reversion.And so here he was. Mission over, brain chemically reverted to that same trigger instant despite the days that had passed. The first half of the lyricSpeak the wordfront and center in his mind. A bridge over the memory gap. He crossed it, silently. The word is all of us.Three or four days deleted. That was the average duration, and so a safe assumption. All memory of his deeds wiped away. Conscience cleared.To jump ahead in time like this, as any drunk would know, can really fuck with the head. To trigger in a London office and revert in an alley in Cairo produced a sensation of disorientation and vertigo that bordered dangerously on the unbearable. Even to go from day to night, or one meal to something totally different, could leave one a vomiting wreck for hours.Caswell had learned all this the hard way, years ago. Gone from a beach cottage in Mexico, belly full of beer and fish tacos, to drifting in null gravity on an Archon Corporation ore processor with nothing in his gut but nutrition paste. That experience had nearly killed him. It had certainly made a mess of the Archon orbital. More important, the event had forced him to do the thing he detested most in this bizarre life: plan. So he invented the ritual.Yet preparation went only so far. In four lost days there were thousands of minute differences both to the body and his surroundings, no matter how carefully controlled. Each tiny variation was quite easy to overlook viewed individually, but added together all at once the effect could crush an unprepared mind.Here now, in this room, the differences began to fall inside his head like sudden rain on dry pavement. A relaxed heartbeat had shifted to a racing one, the rhythm slightly off. One instant hed been exhaling, then abruptly breathing in. Such things made the mind want to react, and react he did. A sputtering cough racked his body. He let it pass and forced himself to focus, to continue the catalog of differences that allowed him to acclimate.Before the trigger hed been relaxed and ready, and was now out of breath. Okay, he could deal with that. He must have rushed to get here in time. Not so strange. What else?A new ache in his left shoulder. Another on his ribs, though less intense.Stubble on his chin that itched. That was odd; hed shaved beforehand like always. Why hadnt he had time to shave again before reversion? Because hed been in a hurry. Right. Focus, Peter. He filed that and moved on.He opened his eyes. The room was pitch black, but that was expected. A sudden shift from day to night could really disorient him, so he always pulled the thick drapes fully closed. Slowly he lifted the blackout curtain beside his left hand. Just a hair, enough to get a sense of things. Gray daylight spilled in. Raindrops on the window. The Thames winding off into the distance between a forest of skyscrapers. London in the fall. That was good.He let the curtain go, sat up, then stood. Muscles across his body were sore. He felt tired and hungry, yet seconds ago he hadnt been. There was something else, too: a faint antiseptic odor that reminded him of a hospital. Caswell felt his way to the bathroom and switched on the nightlight. He stared at himself in the mirror. A square patch of white gauze was taped to his left shoulder. There were sutures visible on the left side of his torso. Six stitches, recently administered. That explained the hospital smell. The stubble on his face was barely visible, representing perhaps four days growth, thanks to the curse of Korean genes. What could he infer from a four-day beard? Hed gone somewhere where shaving had not been an option. Somewhere remote. A battlefield, maybe? There was no shortage of those around the world. Or had his cover required a disheveled appearance? His unkempt black hair said yes, maybe so.Whered you go this time? he asked the lithe form in the mirror. Not aloud; theyd be monitoring the room. Do the injuries mean you screwed up? That youre losing your edge? Did you fail?For a minute he stared at himself, as if looking into his own eyes might reveal some hint as to what exactly hed done in the last four days. This burning need swept through him every time, but he always battled it back. Not knowing was the whole point. And truthfully he didnt want to know.A clear conscience was his greatest asset, the reason for his extraordinary success.Caswell showered. First scalding hot, then ice cold. He toweled off, shaved, and dressed. Dark slacks, a maroon polo, light gray casual coat. Comfortable Italian shoes. A tungsten biometric bracelet he slipped onto his right wrist. The band performed all the usual functions but also interfaced with the implant, automatically regulating certain aspects of his brain chemistry according to his personal desire.Phone, wallet, passport. This last he thumbed through quickly, looking for new stamps. There were hundreds of stamps inside, but none were new. No surprise there. Wherever Archon had sent him, they would have provided the required documents. This passport was his, and he had a few more pages yet to fill.Now came the moment of truth. Clear conscience or not, there was one thing he simply had to know. He went to the kitchenette and gripped the handle of the fridge. Steeling himself against what lay within, he pulled the door open. White light bathed him from inside, along with a rush of frigid air that brought goose bumps to his skin.The space was completely empty save for the one thing he always made sure they stocked for him: exactly twelve bottles of Sapporo beer. They were in a neat row across the top shelf, from one side to the other. Each had its famous label facing him, save for the last three on the end. Those three were turned to face away.Peter Caswell felt his stomach tighten. Over the last few days, under the Integrity-Assured status his implant provided, hed killed three people. All memory of this had just been deleted. Since hed come up with this way to keep track a decade ago, hed now assassinated a total of 206 human beings, and the only thing he knew about any of it was the number. Thats all he wanted to know.He could have tried to learn more: taken clandestine pictures, scrawled a secret coded diary, left himself a voice mail on some personal unlisted number. There were a thousand ways to drop such hints that fell outside the safeguards already built into the implant. But part of the reason for his top-ranked status in this career was that hed never attempted to tell himself these things. The beer bottles were his one allowance. If Monique or anyone else at Archon knew about this, theyd never mentioned it.Caswell removed the three backward bottles, set them on the counter, opened them, and poured each into the sink. A silent memorial to the three lives hed taken and the widows or orphans hed left behind. Then he took a fourth bottle out and opened it with that satisfying tsuk. The cap rattled in the sink.May someone remember you, he said for his victims, and drank.On the elevator down he summoned an autonomous limousine on his phone. The sleek black vehicle waited for him outside the doors of the corporate-owned building. No one said a word to him as he exited. No one ever did. Friends, even acquaintances, did not suit him. Relationships were... difficult. Memories, the goddamn past, were not for him. He had only Monique Pendleton, the one person in the world who could understand his life, who knew what it was like to have bits of your memories stolen away for securitys sake. And though hed never met her in person, she was enough. Besides, she had the power to remove from his mind the horrors of what hed done out there. She was the reason he could live with himself.Peter entered the car and immediately barked, Turn that off. The BBC news anchor on the seatback screen vanished. Radio as well, he added. Silence enveloped him as the car slid into traffic. He stopped on the way and bought a scone and coffee, diligently avoiding the magazines and newspapers on display just outside the caf door. News was poisonous. To glimpse some headline like three top malay diplomats assassinated in bali, or something along those lines, would fill his mind with questions. Had it been me? Was I really capable of that? What if they were the good guys?He didnt want to know. He wanted to stay one step ahead of his past, his own version of Mr. Hyde.But he also wanted to give himself every chance at success. He may have killed 206 people but he gained no benefit of experience from that. To him, theyd all been the first. And the next one to fall would be no different. The perpetual rookie, thats what he was.Heathrow, terminal one, he said to the car. His mouthful of scone mangled the words, but the vehicle obeyed without hesitation.Caswell parked himself on a stool at Wetherspoons, the only pre-security pub in the terminal. Hed chosen the spot, and his mark, after several careful minutes of observation. Someone roughly his size, age, and build. A weary-looking Asian businessman fit the bill this time. Caswell ordered a brandy and ginger ale, plus a burger with crisps. He made small talk with the man next to him.To be good at his job he had to keep certain skills honed. This was the only gift he could give his professional self: training. Practice. He had no memory of past missions to guide his actions in the field, so he lived his personal life in such a way as to best prepare himself for his next first assassination.Oddly, it was not knowledge of weapons or martial arts that he prioritized. It was travel. The ability to go anywhere, under a hastily assumed identity, and survive. Not just survive, but thrive. Play the role via total improvisation. Adapt to the surroundings. Live in the moment with only his wits to guide him.Reversion meant he had five days, give or take, of cool-down time. It was physically impossible for Monique to trigger his implant again before then. Doing so would drive him insane, or worse. So after each mission came the mini-holiday, and with his rather obscene bank account balance, Caswell could literally go anywhere and do anything. Thats precisely what he did.At the bar he ate and drank and made conversation with the mark hed chosen. One Wei-Lin from Shanghai, a factory manager on his way to a conference in Brighton. Nice enough chap with a strong accent that Peter listened to carefully.I am Wei-Lin, a Shanghai factory manager. That would do nicely. Caswell paid his bill and said his goodbyes. I wish you all success in Brighton, he said to Wei-Lin, with a slight bow. The man blinked in surprise, for the voice he heard nearly matched his own.Caswell walked across the hall, past a crowded simkit parlor, and into the nearly empty bookshop. He meandered to the travel section. In the center of the bottom shelf was a book titled 300 Thrills in 300 Pages: The Adventure Travelers Guide to the Worlds Most Exciting Destinations. Peter Caswell thumbed to page 206, one for each kill he didnt have weighing on his blissfully empty mind.Page 206. Inland Patagonia, Chile. how do i make a contact form Zero World
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful. Like his previous worksBy A. KecskesDisclaimer: I happen to know Jason Hough personally as an acquaintance.I was very excited to dig into Zero World after having read his previous trilogy that started with Darwin's Elevator. Like his previous works, Jason demonstrates in Zero World a talent for steady, thoughtful character development, building a suspenseful story arc (usually several interlinked), and punctuating it all with quick action scenes that don't drag down the plot.I read it with absolutely no knowledge of the storyline and came away delighted -- and eager for more (semi-spoiler, the story leaves the reader with threads continuing onto much bigger story, presumably over a couple of books). Plenty of other reviewers provide a decent enough plot synopsis, so I'll offer some comparisons instead:Zero World has the basic plot of Vernor Venge's "Tatja Grimm's World" (with a better twist and a better ending) combined with both the commando-level action scenes and the solid character development of John Scalzi's "Old Man's War" (or maybe more like "Ghost Brigade"). Despite the comparisons, Zero World is it's own book. The character's motivations, for me, were completely reasonable and the main protagonists had moments of fear and concern yet they maintained composure in crazy situations. Many sci-fi action stories that I've read seem to degrade down to either "who has the biggest guns" contest or "the antagonist has an unbidden epiphany or undisclosed skill that saves the day". Boring! Hough does a great job at foreshadowing enough that everything that comes up seems reasonable. Early into the book, you know the characters well enough. They aren't complex, but they are complete and consistent. Important for me, they are allowed to change their minds as the plot throws new information at them.Overall Zero World is a light read -- this plot does not plumb the depths of any major social issues or high-level sci-fi concepts, though Hough does a great job at imagining a world where many of our current social issues (racism, misogyny, etc) are better managed than in the real world and the tech tools and weapons he describes for his characters to use are completely acceptable and interesting.My one pique with the book is perhaps a stylistic thing. A couple of times while reading, I had to backtrack to make sure I didn't miss something when, apparently, there was a sudden and inexplicable shift in either the scenery or the time of day, or both. Weird enough to notice, not bad enough to affect the story line. I feel like the problem is more in the editing; in many books, such mid-chapter jumps are usually indicated by some icon or other visual break. Not so here in Zero World.That little problem was just enough for me to ponder the difference between 4 or 5 stars. I went with 5 because the story simply delighted me so much. I loved the plot twist in the middle of the book (because suddenly a whole new set of plot arcs opened) and I especially loved both the main protagonists. The bond they form during their encounters starts out contrived -- because hey, sci-fi novel -- but ends up being endearing and the perspective they provide to give the reader a real sense of the world(s) was nicely done. Well done, overall, so 5 stars.3 of 3 people found the following review helpful. Not your ordinary parallel universe - a compelling read; highly recommended despite having an abrupt endingBy Larry J PriceThis was a 5-star story except for the last page. I was disappointed enough in the ending to drop this evaluation by one increment. That said, I still recommend it. And, I'll say, I sincerely hope Mr. Hough writes a sequel that may, if done as well as this book was done (up to the ending) render this single criticism moot. In every other way I loved this story. The parallel universe application is different than any other I've read. The other world in which most of the story takes place is uniquely designed/constructed and it's people are wonderfully different...human but not homosapien. The main character is someone who should not be liked...but has some characteristics that make him at least somewhat redeemable and make reading about him interesting. The second main character is a strong, smart, failable, resourceful, brave, persistent, engaging and thoroughly admirable woman. Kind of like my wife of 47 years in many ways (though younger and alien). I judge a book by several criteria. One, how difficult is it to put down to do the many other things I do each day. This one was very hard to put aside and got more of my time over the past 3 days than 75% of the books I have read previously. Two, did I like the characters? Yup! Three, within it's genre was it believable? Absolutely. Four, was the story interesting, well paced and did it hold together without unrelated tangents and meaningless dialog? Yes, yes, yes and yes. Five, was it properly edited? Yup, no spelling errors, incorrect word use, etc. And, finally, does the ending bring closure or at least, in a book that is part of a series, allow the current story to finish even as it leaves a path for the next installment. This book ends very abruptly, without grace or closure. And it BEGS for a sequel that isn't available at nor hinted about in the Acknowledgments. So, Mr. Hough, you have a ready customer if such a book is forthcoming. (Please)3 of 3 people found the following review helpful. Cannot recommend this book enough! It's phenomenal!By Peter ClinesHoly crap, this book is fantastic. Brilliant sci-fi, kick-ass action, and an amazing story past that. The core idea--an enhanced assassin who gets memory-wiped at the end of each job--is clever enough to warrant a novel all on its own. Super-spy Peter Caswell lives a life of random travel and learning, always honing skills he may need since he never carries any experience from one job to the next. I'm always a huge sucker for playing-with-memory stories, and this book does a fantastic job establishing tension with the ticking clock of Caswell's memory wipe (set in advance by his handler) but also the idea oh jarring and disruptive such an experience would be.But this is just the launching point for this story,and once we follow Caswell through a hole in space to a parallel Earth, things get really fascinating. Jason Hough deals with so many of the clever elements that would inevitably crop up with parallel worlds and just adds them to the list of issues Caswell is dealing with.Absolutely love this book. Want the sequel. NOW.