Book Review | Mindwalker by Kate Dylan

Hey all! So, for today’s review, a young adult sci-fi book called Mindwalker, by Kate Dylan, I’m going to preface with this: I generally have two reactions to sci-fi books I enjoy, either ‘ooh this was cool’ or ‘I’d quite like this to be injected into my veins’ when I really love it.

Anyway… can someone inject Mindwalker into my veins please, or give me a CIP maybe? Because this was closer to an experience than just reading a book. If you enjoy Marvel, sassy characters and plans to take down evil corporations then you need to read this. And preorder, because Kate included one of the most awesome things ever in the preorder swag (and it convinced me that she’s a genius).

Read on for my full review! 💜

About the Book

Title: Mindwalker
Author: Kate Dylan
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Release Date: September 1st 2022
Pages: 320
Source: Physical copy provided by the publisher (this in no way affects my review which is honest and unbiased and true hype)
Two finished copies are/will be preordered (one being GSFF September, haven’t had the charge for it just yet of course!)
Rating: ★★★★★★★★★★

Synopsis

Eighteen-year-old Sil Sarrah is determined to die a legend. In the ten years she’s been rescuing imperilled field agents for the Syntex Corporation—by commandeering their minds from afar and leading them to safety—Sil hasn’t lost a single life. And she’s not about to start now.

She’s got twelve months left on the clock before the supercomputer grafted to her brain kills her, and she’s hell-bent on using that time to cement her legacy. Sil’s going to be the only Mindwalker to ever pitch a perfect game—even despite the debilitating glitches she’s experiencing. But when a critical mission goes south, Sil is forced to flee the very company she once called home.

Desperate to prove she’s no traitor, Sil infiltrates the Analog Army, an activist faction working to bring Syntex down. Her plan is to win back her employer’s trust by destroying the group from within. Instead, she and the Army’s reckless leader, Ryder, uncover a horrifying truth that threatens to undo all the good Sil’s ever done.

With her tech rapidly degrading and her new ally keeping dangerous secrets of his own, Sil must find a way to stop Syntex in order to save her friends, her reputation—and maybe even herself.

Review

Okay so Mindwalker… I’m not entirely sure how to talk about this because I just loved it so much? Along with fantasy, sci-fi is another all-time favourite genre but there aren’t that many that I see and want to read straight away. With Mindwalker though, I’d been following Kate for a while and every new thing I saw about the book made me want to read it as soon as I could (especially any kind of comparisons to Marvel).

Zero disappointment, from the first page we’re introduced to Sil and her Central Intelligence Processor (CIP), which she’s elected to name after one particular AI from Marvel… and she’s hungover, making her reminiscent of a young female Iron Man. Sil is then thrown into a mission pretty much straight away, and we see how those like her (Mindwalkers) are able to get inside the minds of field agents and use their in-brain technology to help them get out of tricky situations.

That’s not the only good technology from Syntex, the story is set in a post-apocalyptic world where lots of nukes had gone off in the past, and Syntex is helping people survive in this world with their technology. If you’ve played any of the Fallout games, they’ll likely give you Vault-Tec vibes… (Thinking about it, my love for Fallout 4 may also be partly why I loved this book to be honest, but instead of deathclaws you get humans being the big bad in this!)

On the surface of things, they have pretty neat technique. But then we’re told how the CIPs have a shelf-life and eventually just… combust in the Mindwalkers’ heads. Not so neat, especially for our main character who’s not got much time left.

Events then happen, leading Sil to be hiding from her own employers and trying to infiltrate a group who has the sole aim of taking down corporate bodies such as Syntax, Analog Army. Think of an Anonymous-like group of people. Within Analog Army though is the super-smug-yet-handsome Ryder, and cue some angst, confusion and kind of enemies-to-lovers. Their interactions are just brilliant throughout and the chemistry between them works so well!

Stillness is the greatest enemy of pain; the second you stop moving, it catches up to you.

Overall, the story is fast-paced throughout and even through that, it’s hard not to form attachments to the majority of characters you meet. Some older themes are covered, so I’d definitely say its for the older age range of young adult (and all the way up to and beyond retirement age), and it is so… genius!

That’s honestly the best way to describe this book, there are twists you don’t see coming and Kate included a scavenger hunt for clues in the preorder items below (everything except the pin and proof in the photo, those were gifted from the lovely publisher!) and… it was amazing. Definitely something to enjoy after reading the book, but it highlighted how much care Kate took with this story and even though my initial reaction to finishing reading it was pretty much ‘Christ-that-was, that was incredible’, I was in even more awe after the scavenger hunt.

Preorder this book as soon as you can, you can grab signed bookplate editions from Forbidden Planet and if you also want the purple beautiful Goldsboro GSFF edition I believe you can email to ask to be on the waitlist! Then, send in your preorder receipt to Kate so you can get awesome swag like below! 💜