"Zeroth Law" review

Overview

Title: Zeroth Law

Author: Guerric Haché

Subgenre: Science fiction, Post-apocalyptic

2022 Bingo squares: Weird ecology, anti-hero, book club, Self published (HM), Ifs/Ands/Buts

Recommended if: you want an intriguing post-apocalyptic scifi/fantasy story with cool worldbuilding

Not recommended if: you require your protagonists to be likable people, or if you’re impatient about reading characters you don’t identify with - it’s fairly unlikely you’ll enjoy both of the storylines

LGBTQ rep: It seems to be a queer-normative society, but no major queer relationships

Stars: 3.5/5

Review

With zero-indexed titles and a protagonist named Ada Liu (after Ada Lovelace) who’s a Coder, I was pretty excited for Zeroth Law - and Ada’s half of the novel was indeed as entertaining as expected. Sadly, I found her co-protagonist Isavel’s arc to be rather generic and boring, and decided not to continue with the series after book 1 because half the chapters made me want to stop reading.

That said, there was a lot to enjoy about the novel - the worldbuilding really was fun, and I particularly enjoyed working out the present-day geography as I was reading - I thought the author did a fantastic hint of dropping subtle clues throughout before making things clearer. If you do the same, you can check my work when you’re done 🙂