The Mountain in the Sea

Nayler’s debut novel of speculative fiction laced with cyberpunk elements and environmentalism is set against coastal Asia on future-Earth. The most prominent of the novel’s three interwoven narratives features Ha Nguyen, a cephalopod researcher; Evrim, the world’s only android with manufactured consciousness; and Altantsetseg, a technologically advanced security guard. All are on the mysterious Con Dao Archipelago research facility, which has been cordoned off from outsiders to hide the octopus consortium living in surrounding waters. The trio aims to confirm that the consortium communicates among itself, and they are also determined to bridge the communication gap between humans and another species. The remaining two narratives follow a sophisticated hacker sent to breach Evrim’s mind and enslaved people aboard an AI-controlled fishing vessel who are poaching the ocean’s creatures. The multiple narrative threads, coupled with quotes from fictional books (written by the characters) at the beginning of each chapter, make for challenging narratorial work, but despite the hard-to-follow transitions, Eunice Wong remains polished.