The Oracle Year by Charles Soule

 

I came upon this when I was poking around the library, and the title and cover copy piqued my interest. Turns out, it's a really good book, a thriller with maybe a stronger whiff of SF than most technothrillers do--there's absolutely some premise to accept before the rest of the novel can work--but the writing is mostly strong, and the pacing does crank the pressure with chapters in the POV of people variously opposed to the main character. There might be some sludge around the middle of the book, but it never feels bloated or like a grind. The prose has life and style, and the characters all manage to feel differently like themselves. The novel clearly has things to say, or at least things it wants the reader to look at and/or think about, about free will and fate/destiny, and the extent to which it's possible to shape the future; also, whether at least one thing in the novel (though it's really more like a negative space in the novel than anything else) is good (if maybe a bit pragmatic) or evil (if maybe a bit altruistic).