Zero Sum Game by S.L. Haung

Zero Sum Game by S.L. Huang

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Jacket Blurb: Cas Russell is good at math. Scary good. The vector calculus blazing through her head lets her smash through armed men twice her size and dodge every bullet in a gunfight, and she'll take any job for the right price.

As far as Cas knows, she’s the only person around with a superpower...until she discovers someone with a power even more dangerous than her own. Someone who can reach directly into people’s minds and twist their brains into Moebius strips. Someone intent on becoming the world’s puppet master.

Cas should run, like she usually does, but for once she's involved. There’s only one problem...

She doesn’t know which of her thoughts are her own anymore.

Read for October book group. Read as an audio book.

Premise of the book is Cass Russel, a street wise gal good at retrieving items, has been hired to retrieve Donna Polk's sister from the cartel. The job goes sideways and Cass finds herself falling down a rabbit hole involving her not-friend Sun Rio and a PI named Arthur, and a putting them all against not one but two secret organizations. One organizaation determined to make the world a better place, the organization is determined to eradicate the very existence of the first. Cass and Arthur soon learn that morality is a very gray area and their thoughts might not be their own.

This is fairly fast paced. The story hits the ground running and really doesn't stop. At. All. I thought the narrator had an excellent performance - it was almost as if you could feel Donna Polk manipulating the people around her, the lack of empathy in Sun Rio, and Cass's mind whirring as she tries to fit all the pieces together.

There is a small enough cast of characters to keep the story interesting and kept the plot moving forward without getting bogged down. Everything is told from Cass's point of view, but we go get those glimpses of frustration, anger, and worry from our supporting characters. I did find Cass to be a bit of a contradiction; for someone as smart as she is, there were some moments where I found her actions to be...stupid. Plot mechanics aside, they were just dumb choices or decisions. It's like watching someone in a horror movie - "Let's hid in the shed with the chainsaws!" or "Nooo! Don't go down into the basement alone!". And they do it anyway.

I also hit a wall with my tolerance for action about chapter 27. I was ready to be done - wrap this plot up and let's move on. Alas, no. There were three more hours to go at that point. About chapter 30 the story starts to move over into implausible and I'm contemplating skipping to the end. But, the astute reader will recognize that at some point, there will be a Big Reveal...I just had to hold out till then to confirm my suspicions.

Overall, an interesting read that could have wrapped things up about 10 chapters earlier than it did and still been just as strong a story. Not sure *I* would read the next in the series, we'll see what the book group thinks.



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