enne📚 reviewed Null States by Malka Older
Null States review
2 stars
Content warning minor plot spoilers for Null States
I also read the sequels to the SFFBookClub Infomocracy book this month. Null States is the second book in the series.
I think this also suffers from "trilogy book two syndrome". The first book is fairly self-contained, but this book is mostly setting up plot that gets resolved in the third book. In particular, this book is more murder mystery and local politics rather than global election action thriller, but the resolution of the mystery doesn't create a lot of closure. In the end, it's discovered who is behind the murder vaguely, but they escape and there's very little known about them or their motives. This does get answered, eventually, in the last third of the third book, but it left me a little bit wanting here.
I think I also enjoyed the increasing plot focus on Information as an entity that a lot of people find intensely creepy (cameras everywhere, etc) and also as something that cannot be neutral even if it tries to bill itself as such.