Review: Mindwalker by Kate Dylan

Author: Kate Dylan
Edition: eARC
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton (September 1, 2022)
Genre: Young Adult, Sci-Fi

Synopsis

My review of Mindwalker

Mindwalker is a propulsive YA sci-fi novel that effortlessly delivers cinematic action and a nuanced exploration of consent and institutional power dynamics.

Content Warnings: violence, death on page, death anxiety, suicide, alcohol use, drug use (off-page), and graphic medical descriptions (including mentions of blood and vomit).

I received a free digital eARC from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest and unbiased review.

A Book That Stayed With Me

I can’t stop thinking about Mindwalker. To be quite honest, it’s rare these days that books stick with me for days after I’ve finished them. But I keep coming back to this one. I’ve thought about the fun world-building in the shower, contemplated character arcs while doing laundry, and kept coming back to the questions Mindwalker asks.

Admittedly, I don’t think I can put all my thoughts about this book into a review. Hell, I can’t even articulate most of them! But I am going to share my reading experience and why Mindwalker was such a fun book to read that has my brain in a chokehold. There’s probably a joke somewhere in here about mindjacking. Let’s get into it!

Move Over, Marvel

Besides my love of sci-fi, one of the things that attracted me to Mindwalker was that it kept being compared to Marvel movies. I love superheroes so naturally, this made my ears perk up. Did it hold up to that comparison? Overall, I’d say yes! Our main character, Sil Sarrah, is not really a superhero. But in a different story, she absolutely would be. The girl has a supercomputer in her brain that gives her abilities that are arguably superhuman! And the book isn’t shy about the Marvel connection either, Sil literally named her CIP Jarvis, a nod to MCU fans that instantly won over my heart.

However, what really makes Mindwalker worthy of the Marvel comparison is the style and pacing. If you love exciting action scenes that are balanced with emotional moments and humour, Mindwalker checks those boxes. From page one, Kate Dylan delivers a novel that’s fast-paced but never rushed. I listened to the second half of the book in one sitting because I just couldn’t stop! Reading Mindwalker was the equivalent of getting sucked into a videogame for hours on end, a truly engrossing reading experience.

Kate Dylan won me over very quickly with her writing style. She perfectly captures a particular brand of sarcasm with a strong character voice. Basically, I immediately fell in love with Sil.

Sil Sarrah, Fugitive-at-Large

Sil has quickly become one of my favourite YA heroines. She’s smart, snarky and just a little too cocky for her confidence to be entirely real. There were so many layers to her character, so many beliefs she held about her life and the world she lives in, that made her an interesting character to follow.

I particularly loved reading a sci-fi story from the perspective of someone who, for the majority of the story, is loyal to the Evil Corporation. And it makes sense! Yes, this is a story about resistance, but that hits even harder when we understand how Syntex operates, and why Sil believes in them. We can see the systemic abuse and how deeply unethical a lot of their work is, but we also get to see the good parts of Sil’s experience.

Sil’s character arc and her journey through her own beliefs and ideals are complemented by the characters around her. I loved getting glimpses into other experiences through these side characters. Sil’s experience of her world is incredibly specific and in many ways privileged. Being confronted with characters who are fundamentally against what she has represented her whole life made for interesting points of conflict. Overall, Kate Dylan wonderfully uses the cast of characters around Sil to add depth and nuance to the themes Mindwalker explores.

My Kingdom for Shiny Tech

Can I talk about the world-building real quick? Because damn, I loved it! Mindwalker is set in a (hopefully) distant future that is honestly pretty dystopian. But because it’s simply our main character’s reality, we only get hints of how everything went downhill. This made the world feel incredibly real and plausible!

As a lover of sci-fi, I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of worlds featuring the neon glam and grunge of cyberpunk dystopias. Kate Dylan is a master at crafting cool and shiny tech that almost makes readers forget the darkness lurking beneath it. I found myself constantly being drawn in by some of the technological advantages this world offers. In a way, this reading experience parallels Sil’s lived experience. It’s a constant battle between exciting possibilities that seem helpful and the very real consequences that come with the abuse of that potential.

Consent, Power Dynamics and Abuse

At its core, Mindwalker is a book about bodily autonomy and consent. As someone who finished her media studies degree with an exam talking about the bodily autonomy of Black Widow in the MCU for half an hour, this really hit the spot for me! You know, the whole “having an institution train you, turning your body into a weapon and asset for them” thing? Yeah, that felt familiar and is a topic I’m never tired of exploring because honestly, the MCU didn’t give us much.*

But fear not, Mindwalker takes the themes of consent and abuse seriously. And it isn’t a shallow exploration of consent either! It’s woven throughout the book, in big ways and small ones. As a Mindwalker, Sil consented to have a computer installed in her brain. In turn, she can only take over someone’s body with their consent. At least, that’s what she thinks. Mindwalker explores how quickly the lines of consent can become blurry, and how institutions purposefully shift and abuse those lines.

A central question that I kept coming back to while reading was “is consent even possible under these conditions?” When your survival depends on giving up your autonomy, can that ever be consensual?

* I don’t have the space to fully explore this here but somewhere in my mind, there is now an essay about my feelings about Natasha Romanoff and Sil Sarrah and their intersections. There are so many questions I have. How do you find an identity when yours has been crafted to be an asset to powers bigger than you? What is it like to exist in a body that knows violence better than most? Maybe one day I’ll write about this more fully, but I just had to at least let you know that I am having these thoughts.

Perfectly Balanced, as All Things Should Be

Mindwalker is an incredibly fun sci-fi novel, the kind that’s propulsive and exciting from page one. It’s fun and engaging and there are so many little world-building tidbits that are exciting to explore. But Mindwalker is also a book that holds space for bigger questions, emerging organically from the story. I find that books with such big and heavy questions are often hard to balance, it’s easy for them to feel too forced. However, this is not a problem for Mindwalker in the slightest. Kate Dylan manages to effortlessly weave together a multitude of plot strands, themes and elements, coming together in a truly well-balanced and expertly crafted story.

Overall…

Mindwalker was a fantastic book that had all the elements I love in sci-fi stories. It delivers action and excitement, mixed with humour and deeper questions about society.

Ultimately, beneath a very sleek and expertly crafted thrill ride of a sci-fi novel lies an exploration of power dynamics and the choices people are forced into.

This book is for you if…

…you like sci-fi stories that deliver shiny tech and dystopian realness in equal measures.
…you are looking for a book that feels like a Marvel movie.

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