Echopraxia

In the future, humanity is split between technology-enhanced monks, soldiers, data ghosts, and vampires, all genetically engineered to leave baseline humanity in the dust, all with their own agendas. But when biologist and baseline human Daniel Bruks finds himself caught up in a battle that threatens to engulf the entire solar system, he’ll have to adapt quickly, journeying into space with a crew of enhanced misfits and solving a mystery that only he can unravel… a mystery that could change everything.

Echopraxia is one of the weirdest sci-fi novels I’ve read in quite some time, and that’s part of its charm. The book demands that the reader keep up, expanding your mind to process science as religion, throwback vampires with alien reasoning, and the question of what defines intelligence and consciousness when the human body is a genetic plaything. Watts challenges the reader to join Bruks in a bizarre new world, rarely pausing to explain where we are before heading somewhere else unexpected. While some parts of the novel didn’t work for me, I remain thoroughly impressed at the author’s boundary-pushing style. Watts has definitely proved that sci-fi still has new frontiers to explore.