Where the Axe Is Buried

All systems fail. All societies crumble. All worlds end.

Following the success of his debut novel, The Mountain in the Sea, Ray Nayler launches readers into a thrilling near-future world of geopolitical espionage where an authoritarian Federation ruled by a near-immortal President is beginning to crumble, paralleled by the collapse of AI-governed Western societies.

In the authoritarian Federation, there is a plot to assassinate and replace the President, a man who has downloaded his mind to a succession of new bodies to maintain his grip on power. Lilia, a brilliant scientist on the run from the authorities, may have invented a way to bring down the President and escape a near-impenetrable web of Federation surveillance. Her fate is bound up with a worldwide group of others fighting against the global status quo. All systems fail. All worlds end. But what will rise to take their place?

A cybernetic novel of political intrigue, Where the Axe Is Buried combines the story of a near-impossible revolutionary operation with a blistering indictment of the many forms of authoritarianism that suffocate human freedom.

Author Biography

Ray Nayler is the author of the Locus Award-winning novel The Mountain in the Sea and the Hugo Award-winning novella The Tusks of Extinction. Born in Quebec and raised in California, Ray lived and worked abroad for two decades in Russia, Central Asia, the Caucasus, and the Balkans.
Ray most recently served as international advisor to the Office of National Marine Sanctuaries at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and as visiting scholar at the George Washington University’s Institute for International Science and Technology Policy. He lives in Washington, DC.