The Mountain in the Sea

I loved this novel's brain and heart, its hidden traps, sheer propulsion, ingenious world-building and the purity of its commitment to luminous ideas. * David Mitchell, author of CLOUD ATLAS *
The Mountain in the Sea is a first-rate speculative thriller, by turns fascinating, brutal, powerful, and redemptive. The book poses profound questions about artificial and nonhuman intelligence, and its answers are tantalizing and provocative. * Jeff VanderMeer, author of ANNIHILATION *
Full disclosure: in all my years as a science journalist, I could never quite get my head around the so-called hard problem of consciousness. I could recite the theories, but it wasn't until I read Ray Nayler's The Mountain in the Sea that I truly understood it in my bones. This book has many layers. It has the clothes of a futuristic eco-punk or cyberpunk thriller, the guts of a philosophy seminar and the soul of a religious tract. -- Sally Adee * NEW SCIENTIST *
A novel of ideas... [a] cerebral but not self-satisfied book that also features welcome episodes of comic relief and tightly choreographed action... It is successful entertainment as well as a warning.' -- Steven Poole * GUARDIAN, Book of the Day *
Ray Nayler has taken on the challenge of a near future that's less certain than ever, and made it gleam - not only with computer terminals and sentry drones (we love those, sure) but also polished coral and cephalopod eyes. From these pages, I got the sense of William Gibson, and Paolo Bacigalupi - and Donna Haraway, and Octavia Butler. This is a planetary science fiction, and a profound new kind of adventure, featuring ? among so many other wonders ? the best villain I've read in years. In the end, the enormity and possibility of this novel's vision shook tears loose. What a ride; what a feeling; what a future. * Robin Sloan, author of Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore *
A wildly original, gorgeously written, unputdownable gem of a novel. Nayler is one of the most exciting new voices i've read in years. * Blake Crouch, author of DARK MATTER *
With a thriller heart and a sci-fi head, The Mountain in the Sea delivers a spooky smart read. Artificial intelligence, nascent animal sentience, murderous flying drones: like the best of Gibson or Atwood, it brings all of the plot without forgetting the bigger questions of consciousness, ecocide, and scientific progress. Truly a one-of-a-kind story. * Kawai Strong Washburn, author of SHARKS IN THE TIME OF SAVIORS *
I came to The Mountain in the Sea for the cephalopds (I love cephalopods) but I stayed for the fascinating meditation on consciousness and personhood. I loved this book. * Ann Leckie *
Nayler's debut is in equal parts page-turning near-future thriller and a profound exploration of language, communication and otherness... exhilarating and kaleidoscopic. -- Jay Owens * NEW HUMANIST *
The Mountain in the Sea is intelligent, ambitious and thought-provoking. . . For its thoughtful depth, its dealing with big ideas such as the manner and matter of intelligence and communication and its education about the oceans, it is very, very good. -- Mark Yon * SFF WORLD *
An action thriller with profound consequences. Groundbreaking stuff. -- Doug Johnstone * THE BIG ISSUE *
A high tide of ideas and emotion. A compelling vision of other minds sharing our world - a vision you will long to be true * Stephen Baxter *
[A] brilliantly clever and compelling thriller. * PRESS ASSOCIATION syndicated to regional press *
Readers of Peter Godfrey-Smith's Other Minds and Eduardo Kohn's How Forests Think will delight in an Anthropocene adventure that brings their ideas so vividly to life. -- Richard Lea * TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT *
Both a profound meditation on the way human actions are affecting the world we live in... but also a breathless thriller and a perfect example of world building, this is a breakthrough novel which I expect to have a major impact over years to come. -- Maxim Jakubowski * CRIME TIME *
This is a tour de force in showing how well fiction can explore society's challenges and problems. It also is a delight that, while asking difficult questions, the author offers some hope for humankind, and redemptive joy in the struggles involved in facing our environmental battles. -- Graeme Gourlay * DIVE MAGAZINE *
A hugely accomplished debut. -- Natalie Xenos * CULTUREFLY *
Nayler's masterful debut combines fascinating science and well-wrought characters to deliver a deep dive into the nature of intelligent life . . . As entertaining as it is intellectually rigorous, this taut exploration of human - and inhuman - consciousness is a knockout * Publishers Weekly, starred review *
Less a science fiction adventure than a meditation on conscioussness and self-awareness, the limitations of human language, and the reasons for those limitation, the novel teaches as it engages * Kirkus Reviews *
This compelling debut is impossible to put down, a delightful embroidery of the rush of scientific discovery and the pain of isolation, asking hard questions about what society is and what it means to truly understand another creature * Booklist, starred review *
Exceedingly ambitious . . . [This] is a novel that is alert, intelligent, open * New York Times *