Book Review: Mindwalker by Kate Dylan

‘Mindwalker’ by Kate Dylan was released in 2022, it was her third book, but her first piece published in English. It was a gripping, fast-paced, sci-fi dystopia.

The book is set on Earth in a distant future, where the planet has suffered from humanity’s negligence and greed, and succumbed to radiation. What we know as the United States is now divided, cleaved apart by war, and subsequently fragmented for the populations’ safety. Technology has advanced, and instead of the new mobile phone, trending software and technology focuses on cybernetic enhancements known as mods. Most people have at least one mod, whether it changes their hair or eye colour, or gives them a screen in their wrist, or enhances their senses.

Then there are the prodigal children, who have the genetic makeup and capacity to do more with these mods, by having a supercomputer inputted into their brains, called Walkers. They use these computers to take over the minds of others, but these children, with the perfect genetics and capacity to wield this sophisticated tech, significantly reduce their lifespan, by using it. But they’re important, valuable members of society, they assisting military personnel in escaping precarious and life-threatening scenarios by walking into their mind and navigating for them, with the assistance of their implants.

We follow the most exceptional Walker, who is, unfortunately nearing the end of her days, having entered what programmers consider a Walker’s twilight years, even if they seldom make it to nineteen, let alone twenty years old. She is friends with other, older Walkers, Lena and J, both of whom are also counting down the days until they short out.

Captain Sil Sarrah has a 100% mission success rate, but experiences her first ever glitch, with her systems interrupting a mission, and she nearly loses her charge, and her perfect record. But that glitch inspires paranoia and conspiracy on her charge’s part and he confronts her, demanding she get out of his head, and that he can feel her there. But there are systems in place to make sure Walkers can’t just take over anyone’s body for no reason. It’s a consensual exchange.

Distraught by watching the man she saved kill himself in her room, Sil is a mess, and at a company gala, when a group of anarchic hackers that seek to change this industry, and reduce the control tech has on the general population, attack the gala. Sil is put on the spot and ordered to perform a live extraction for the guests’ entertainment, while they dealt with the hack.

But what Sil saw during her extraction, the same thing that got her first ever target killed in a drone strike, reduced her to a wanted woman. She was a fugitive. On the run, adamant to gain a reprieve from the company that’s been her safe-haven since she was just eight-years-old, she uncovers far more than she first intended to.

I loved this book, it was so immersive and fast-paced. I loved watching Sil learn about the corruption in the world around her, and the budding enemies-to-lovers relationship between Sil and Ryder. I loved how she found him equally frustrating and endearing, genuinely considered that he may have crossed state lines illegally to play video games. Furthermore, I loved seeing Sil’s sense of selflessness in practice, without the looming idea of statistics and rankings looming over her. The people she saved, who first seem to be almost dehumanised by her work, are clearly demonstrated to be more than that, when she utilises her skills to help others.

This book looks into many deep, pressing themes like mortality, the extent of corporate control, and the lengths one person will go to with the hopes of helping someone else, especially someone they love. It was a moving, exciting story that I’d definitely recommend to dystopia fans, and I am very much looking forward to reading the second book.

‘Mindbreaker’, Dylan’s second book in this universe is on my TBR and I am really looking forward to reading it!