Crux Review

Title: Crux
Author: Ramez Naam
Date Purchased: 1/4/2014
Price Paid: $1.99
Date Finished: 12/8/2020
Rating: 3/5

I have never been able to read multiple books at once. I don’t mean like at the same time, but if I’m reading a book I need to finish it before I start another. There is a little bit of flex if they are of totally different genres, otherwise I run the danger of picking a book back up and wondering what happened to the dragon what that was in that OTHER book.

For a short period of time I thought I could get away with bouncing around with my “series” reading. Start a trilogy, read several other books, and then come back for book two.

I was wrong.

Threads get lost, characters disappear into the depths of my mind…it’s a mess. I have now realized that, where possible, I should plow through a series without deviating or I’m going to be confused at some point.

The first third of Crux found me constantly scouring the internet for a recap of book one (Nexus) to jog my memory. Naam leaned heavily on the reader’s ability to remember details from the previous book and would reference events in passing, relying on the reader to fill in the blanks.

I could not.

To be clear, I don’t blame him for this – it has been over six years since I read the first book, so this is what some would refer to as “my bad”. Thankfully I was able to find a recap and pieced things (slowly) together. The (very brief) summation of the first book is that a new nanotechnology called “Nexus” has been created which allows users to link their minds with other users. Of course the government gets involved and chaos ensues.

Once back into the swing of the plot I found that Naam excels at building suspense and delivering action, which can be a daunting task when a good chunk of the action takes place within a character’s mind. Internal monologue is one thing, but internal computer interactions could have been just plain boring…but they aren’t.

When approaching this book as the second of a series, it can be easy to forgive some of the character development issues I noticed. Chapters are quite short (there are 90 chapters in this book) and jump from one character to the next, with at least seven different characters having their own arc.

I can appreciate this approach as it relates to my reading style (I like to push to get to the end of a chapter before putting a book down for the evening), but it certainly makes character development a bit herky-jerky. As I mentioned earlier, I think moving onto this book as a continuation of the series would help alleviate this, but it forced me to do a lot of research.

Thankfully, Naam is able to weave the threads of all of those different viewpoints into three distinct narratives, which are poised to come together as one in the final book of the series. While I’m tempted to speak to the message I’m getting from these books, I will wait until I’m finished with the trilogy to approach that topic.

Final Thoughts: A solid “beach read” – fast paced, plenty of action…just make sure you don’t wait six years between books.