I received an eARC of this book through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. 

Watching a new voice in SFF flex like this incredible. I was reminded by the author bio that Nayler has an MA in Global Diplomacy, and worked in Central Asia, Russia, and surrounding countries for 20 years, and currently lives in DC. You can see the experience in this book. Readers who read his debut may be surprised by Where the Axe is Buried. His first novel and novella were both deeply concerned with animals, animal consciousness, those webs of interactions on a slightly more individual level. But reading this I found the through-line of Nayler's writing becoming clear: systems. 

This book takes you by the hand and pulls you through a constellation of (unnamed, but guessable) places in Europe, seen through the eyes of myriad people thrashing towards one goal: change. Like various creatures caught in a web, they pull in their own directions but they do all, in theory, have one goal. With our birds-eye view we can glimpse the web, see the threads the tie them together, transfer the motion of one person through to another person. It's an intricate book, and one with many questions to ask. Some may walk away from it feeling unsatisfied, because Nayler, wisely, doesn't answer most of them. Can systems ever really change? What does it mean to end a regime? Isn't it really that power simply changes its mask, puts on a new guise the public is happy to play along with? What does it really mean to have responsibility? Is it individual or collective? 

I'll be thinking about this book for a long time, just like Nayler's last and I'm thrilled I had the opportunity to read the ARC.