Tim Maughan’s debut novel is tragic and charming and very close to home: in response to the normalization of extreme surveillance, an anonymous cyberterrorist group figures out how to take the whole internet down, sending the world into chaos. In the aftermath is death, destruction, hunger, a military coup disguised as a socialist revolution, a resistance movement (or three), a girl with visions of the dead, a robust trade in spices, and lots of people just trying to get by. Maughan spares few of his characters from criticism, all of whom are complicit, pragmatic, and hopeful, in various measures. The story is the kind that leaves you both excited and afraid for the future—and more able to clearly see the present for what it is.