Apex Review

Title: Apex
Author: Ramez Naam
Date Purchased: 9/28/2015
Price Paid: $0.99
Date Finished: 12/25/2020
Rating: 3/5

Wrapping up a trilogy is usually pretty fulfilling. You expect questions to have been answered, plot threads to get wrapped up, and some form of resolution to have been reached. Apex does an admirable job with all three of these things, even though I wish I hadn’t read this in 2020.

Before I get into the review of the work itself, there are two things to discuss that almost made me walk away from this book. The only thing that kept me reading was the fact that both of these were well outside of the author’s control.

The first issue I had was with the formatting of the Kindle edition. I mentioned to a friend the other day that diving back into older Kindle books has been interesting as some of the features I’ve gotten used to aren’t available in older titles. I can forgive that sort of thing.

What I find it harder to forgive is a massive mistake in formatting.

In Apex, Naam will frequently bounce from character to character within the confines of one chapter. I have no problems with that. Unfortunately, the formatting of this edition lacked any separators between one point of view and the next.

Usually, when an author changes point of view, there will be a horizontal line, some sort of graphical flourish, or even a drop cap to help differentiate between the two. That is a luxury that this edition of the book was lacking.

As a result, you wind up with jarring jumps that seem to make no sense until you back up and determine where the point of view changed. Perhaps the only saving grace with this is that after a while they are easier to pick up as those changes also lack an indentation at the start of the new point of view. VERY annoying.

The second is pretty unforgivable, and if this was a list of 171 audiobooks I hadn’t listened to yet I would have just walked away.

I had some errands to run and decided to see if I could borrow a copy of the audiobook to help keep me on track with my progress. I found one, downloaded it to my phone, and hopped into the car. After about five minutes of listening, I almost drove off the road.

A good deal of this book takes place in China, and the narrator chose to use the most stereotypically racist accents possible for all of the Asian characters. I looked up the Audible reviews after I got home, and it was pretty universal: this was a HORRIBLE reading of this book. Thankfully, I only listened to about 45 minutes of it and then deleted the book.

Avoid the audio book at all costs.

Now that I’m done with those gripes, let’s discuss the book.

Apex picks up right where Crux left off, which lands the reader right in the thick of the action set up in the second book. And, as an action novel, this one was pretty fulfilling. There were plenty of scenes that would be right at home in the next blockbuster summer movie.

But reading this book made me uncomfortable.

If I hadn’t been Dan The Book Buying Machine and had actually read this book in 2015 when it was purchased, I wouldn’t have had a problem. Some of the plot threads were just way too close to what we’ve experienced with 2020:

• A contested presidential election
• Protests that erupt in violence between the protesters and law enforcement
• Citizens being detained and persecuted because they were different from the “normal”

It was a struggle to read through some of this in the middle of some very close parallels.

Once I was able to get past those plot points, I was pleasantly surprised with the book. Characters that we’ve known through three books continued to exhibit growth, new characters were handled with care and thoughtful development, and the story wrapped up in a meaningful way.

The trilogy as a whole is worthwhile read, especially if you are able to borrow them or get them on the cheap. The science-fiction aspect goes pretty heavy into technology that will appeal to anyone with a computer science background, but the overall story contains enough philosophical elements to give you plenty to think about even if computers aren’t “your thing”.

Final Thoughts: A good conclusion to the trilogy, maybe find a paper copy. DO NOT listen to the audiobook.