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Echelon by Josh Conviser
01/07/2006 . Source: Geoff Willmetts 
pub: Del Rey/Ballantine Books. 289 page enlarged paperback. Price: $13.95 (US), $18.95 (CAN). ISBN: 0-345-48502-5. Buy Echelon in the USA - or Buy Echelon in the UK  check out website: www.delreybooks.com
released: 18 July 2006
Echelon is the name of the computer system used by America's National Security Agency (NSA) in the years after World War Two with the capability of analysing anything digital sent around the world. Over the years, its effectiveness has been to control the data as well. Life has become orderly and, according the blurb, dull. That was to change when agent Ryan Laing is damaged on a mission and restored to life with cybernetic implants. He finds himself with a neural mindlink to another agent, Sarah Peters, and an order to locate a double agent in the organisation. His discovery that his boss, Christopher Turing, is involved is complicated by a chase for the key that will give one individual control of Echelon itself.
I came away from this book with rather mixed feelings. If anything, a large proportion of this book could be regarded as cyberpunk in its texture even if not all the action isn't in cyberspace. It works well in places but there are some serious jumps in logic where you would expect to see some scenes for justification and character development that aren't there. Whether this is poor editing or author Conviser expects the readers should fill the gaps or not is debatable. Certainly, key players involvement in the affair aren't filled out and I doubt if you could read this as a detective story and work out who did it from what is given.
There's certainly some muddled thinking and I don't think the reality itself is properly fleshed out cos you rarely see what regular life is like here as most of it takes part inside the agency and missions, hence my earlier remark about 'dull'. If things are so regulated then why should there be a need for an agency let alone a need to still kill people off?
This isn't to say that this book is unreadable. The characters we do see are nicely rounded and interesting but as Conviser is a scriptwriter by trade, that shouldn't be surprising. If he can sort out his problems with plot then you should be seeing a nascent new SF writer develop.
GF Willmetts
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