Review of Where the Axe Is Buried by Ray Nayler

A few years ago, a former professor of mine wrote a journal article on the positive power of alternate history. The reference material was a YA series that features Poland's underground resistance in WWII emerging victorious, as opposed to the brave defeat it suffered in reality. For context, Poland is a country that has had historical successes, but few recently. In WWII it survived the invasion of the Germans only to be overrun by the Soviet Union. Congrats! Oh, wait... Maybe the Nazis were better than the Soviets? Regardless, my professor argued that such use of alternate history, by making the Poles victorious, offers readers a form of catharsis, a relief from the historical weight of defeat. Whether you agree or disagree, it's an interesting idea. Spinning this concept into a Clone Trump future is Ray Nayler's Where the Axe Is Buried (2025).

Nayler has another name for him, but I will call him Clone Trump; the novel presents a naked extrapolation on current politics. So yes, the left's worst fears come true. Trump extends his grip on power by perpetually transferring his consciousness into new bodies, all in service of implementing a draconian regime based on limiting personal liberties and censorship. When a new term approaches, propaganda is dispersed, fake elections are staged, a body is made ready, and a new president takes power. But between the ears it's the same person: Clone Trump. Meanwhile, most other countries have chosen to opt out of human leadership and moved to AI prime ministers. These machine minds make the hard decisions—limiting energy usage, food consumption, commercial activities, etc. Beneath all this is an underground group of biohackers and tech wizards looking to “set things right”, which is where the book's rubber (quietly) hits the road.

On the dartboard of fiction, Where the Axe Is Buried hits square inside two areas. One area is labeled 'slow-burn, cyberpunk thriller'. A mix of AI and cybernetics, Nayler invests time in the technological possibilities of his near-future setting. The second area is labeled 'characters', predominantly the people surrounding Clone Trump and the underground hacktivists. Through workaday prose, Nayler attempts to use subtlety in making them human.

Indeed, the novel's style is basic. I'm not sure it helps. A slow burn techno thriller with characters at its heart is laudable, but the prose doesn't invest the reader in caring whether they are oppressed by Clone Trump or not. The diction gets the story from A to B to C, and narrative format (blocks of time with characters) works well enough. But the prose doesn't improve things, it doesn't bring the characters to full life. A sharper, edgier tone with subtler human realities would have been more effective.

A challenge some readers will have with Where the Axe Is Buried (challenge, not a failure) is getting over the plausibility of AI leaders. Nayler puts a handful of paragraphs into explaining (away?) humanity's acceptance of machine leaders. But something constantly nagged at me while reading: would humans so easily accept AI overlords? I can't picture it going as easily as it does in the novel. I know, I know. It's science fiction. Go with the extrapolation. But I tried. And I failed. I kept encountering the impasse of: With effort clearly invested in the humanity of the other main characters, why not a similar effort invested in the overarching humanity of society and its reaction to AI leaders? No, I have not been watching too much Terminator. Nayler achieves a stronger degree of realism than that franchise. The AI just needed more credibility for me to get over the hump.

One sure challenge of the novel is its unspoken dalliance with socialism yet the blanket statement authoritarianism is bad. Calm down, relax. I'm not here to defend Mao or Hitler. But a few points need be made. Those assholes' regimes were not 100% terrible evil Evil EVIL. China made huge strides forward in literacy during Mao's reign, huge strides, and people in Germany and Poland still drive on the exact same roads Hitler commissioned eight decades ago. If you have one color to paint them, ok, make it black. But in a “serious novel”, which Axe would seem to want to be, there is the option to use a palette of colors—to show how mature a writer you are, how well you actually understand the historical application of authoritarianism. Combine this with the fact Nayler's AI plays games with the free market (socialism, ahem) and you have a recipe for... Don't know. It's a confusing recipe. Ingredients are clear, but the intended outcome is not, save of course Trump Is Bad.

In the end, Where the Axe Is Buried is a decent novel with good intentions. Its hammer hits the nail it was aiming at. I'm just not sure the simple diction or lack of subtlety in presenting humanity give the hammer the power it needed to drive the nail home to be Literature. Prose is wishy-washy and the setup is obvious. Authoritarianism is bad, nnnn-k kids, but I may be advocating for AI dictators, not sure... There is mediocre nuance and an unstable conceptual foundation, which for a novel with social justice ambitions is something that was needed. Try Philip K. Dick's The Simulacra. It too has clone leader and wishy-washy prose, but at least you get a dynamism out of the plotting that keeps the pages turning.