Do you like your heart to race a bit when you’re reading? I do! I also like my mind to race trying to figure things out and I love really intelligent main characters. You can find all of these in techno thrillers where the excitement of the plot is built up by the use of computers, machines, advanced weapons and other types of technology. If this sounds like something you’d be in to, try any one of these four techno thrillers…
Sleeping Giants, Sylvain Neuvel
A girl named Rose is riding her new bike near her home in Deadwood, South Dakota, when she falls through the earth. She wakes up at the bottom of a square hole, its walls glowing with intricate carvings. But the firemen who come to save her peer down upon something even stranger: a little girl in the palm of a giant metal hand.
This book is told in a series of interviews as the mystery of the hand is unraveled. It’s heart stopping in a subtle and quiet way.
Illuminae, Amie Kaufman
The year is 2575, and two rival megacorporations are at war over a planet that’s little more than an ice-covered speck at the edge of the universe. Too bad nobody thought to warn the people living on it. With enemy fire raining down on them, Kady and Ezra—who are barely even talking to each other—are forced to fight their way onto an evacuating fleet, with an enemy warship in hot pursuit.
Before I even finished this book I was telling everyone around me to read it. It will make you nearly pee your pants.
Insignia, S.J. Kincaid
The planet’s natural resources are almost gone, and war is being fought to control the assets of the solar system. The enemy is winning. The salvation may be Tom Raines. Tom doesn’t seem like a hero. He’s a short fourteen-year-old with bad skin. But he has the virtual-reality gaming skills that make him a phenom behind the controls of the battle drones.
Imagine a world in which WWIII is being fought via drones piloted by super smart teenagers who have all the technological resources at their fingertips they could want.
Ready Player One, Ernest Cline
In the year 2044, reality is an ugly place. The only time teenage Wade Watts really feels alive is when he’s jacked into the virtual utopia known as the OASIS. Wade’s devoted his life to studying the puzzles hidden within this world’s digital confines—puzzles that are based on their creator’s obsession with the pop culture of decades past and that promise massive power and fortune to whoever can unlock them.
A virtual game that will guarantee a life of luxury for anyone who is willing to go to extremes to solve it. You have to be smart. You have be to good with technology and computers. And you have to be willing to kill.
Do you think too much technical stuff bogs down a story?
// Comments //
Tanya Patrice
I had no idea these types of books were called techno thrillers.
Kim
Girl with the Dragon Tattoo could be considered a techno thriller too. I’ve been trying to find more of these because I realized I like them so much.