It was random: cheap, sci-fi, and set in Edinburgh. And surprisingly enjoyable!

I usually dislike novels that cut back and forth through time using a date stamp to tell you where you are – but I got over it here pretty quickly. The flashbacks slowly reveal the true horror of Kendrick Gallmon’s past incarceration in ‘The Maze’: a shadowy prison-laboratory housing suspected terrorists who are no more than ordinary people with the wrong views, swept up under military law following an attack that nukes L.A. off the map. There is a true sense of chill that innocent people, through no more than vague suspicion, are branded terrorists and become less than human – perfect subjects for dodgy nanotech experiments.

And so hundreds die, injected with nanobots that go on the rampage inside their new human hosts, killing them in exotic and horrific ways.

Fast forward, and the few survivors are finding that ‘survival’ came with a ticking time bomb… With nothing left to lose, most go seeking the truth of ‘The Bright’ on a deadly and abandoned space station, while Kendrick’s journalistic past leaves him driven to expose the man responsible for all their suffering.

A little slow to get into, although I liked the local (Edinburgh) setting and the largely low-key technology. Started to grip me with the glimpses of the past, and as the pieces drew together. The ending, however, was really rather disappointingly unfinished! Argh!