Day One by Nate Kenyon

Published by Thomas Dunne Books on October 1, 2013

The "evil computers become sentient and try to take over the world" plot has been done so many times that it's difficult to breathe fresh life into it. Day One doesn't even try.

The protagonist's name, John Hawke, is the first indicator of Day One's unoriginal nature. Hawke is a hacker turned journalist. In his less disciplined days, he was part of a group called Anonymous that stole secrets from the CIA (because that's what fictional hackers do, at least in mediocre novels). Hawke is disgruntled because he was recently fired by the Times (as he should have been) for hacking into a prominent person's computer, where he discovered child porn.

Hawke, now writing for a tech magazine, is investigating a company called Eclipse. Strange events start to occur all across Manhattan. Copiers and coffee pots become instruments of death. Tablets and cellphones download unauthorized programs. Predictable and uninspired scenes of urban chaos soon follow. These incidents appear to be related to something called Operation Global Blackout. Hawke's friend from Anonymous traced a recent attack on the Justice Department's servers to -- oh happy coincidence! -- Eclipse, putting Hawke in the center of the maelstrom.

The rest of the novel is an extended chase scene as a Computer Gone Bad tries to kill Hawke. Attempts at character development are shallow and unconvincing. Hawke, for instance, still carries scars from catching a glimpse of someone masturbating in a men's room when Hawke was nine years old. Seriously? Hawke has a three-year-old autistic child about whom he is Deeply Concerned, a cheap attempt to generate sympathy for the otherwise unsympathetic Hawke.

Nate Kenyon's awkward prose is often marred by clichés. Hawke avoids authorities "like the plague"; bankers and protesters mix "like oil and water"; people "changed on a dime"; people "vanished into thin air"; Hawke "had a few tricks up his sleeve." Dialog tends to be unrealistically melodramatic, as are descriptions like "Armageddon had descended in a split second's time." It's a remarkably survivable version of Armageddon, at least for Hawke and some of the book's principle characters. Sadly, they are such a pathetic group of whiners that I was rooting for Armageddon to prevail.

Much of the story is too preposterous to believe. The Threat That Endangers the World manages to turn New York City into a ghost town in seconds but can't seem to harm Hawke. The Threat not only has the ability to start cars by remote control, it can shift them into gear and steer them. It can also fill buildings with carbon monoxide by "rerouting" it from the building's heating system. Seriously? There's a switch a computer can activate that will let it poison everyone in an office building? Remind me to find that switch in my building and cover it with duct tape so it doesn't get flipped accidentally. Oh, and when the police and the FBI and the CIA receive orders to "shoot to kill" unarmed American citizens, they follow those orders blindly. Okay, that I might believe, but I'd prefer to think that cops might question illegal orders issued by unseen authorities.

The last "evil computers become sentient and try to take over the world" novel I read was mediocre. Day One is worse. Maybe it's time to retire the plot. As the title implies, the novel sets up a sequel (Day Two?). I will avoid it "like the plague."

NOT RECOMMENDED