Kundo Wakes Up

[psocoptera]

Kundo Wakes Up, Saad Z. Hossain, 2022 novella. Set in the same world as The Gurkha and the Lord of Tuesday, although I think it would stand alone just fine without having read that. (Although a bunch of people on Goodreads disagree, so, ymmv. There's also apparently a novel, Cyber Mage, which I haven't read, but nobody seems to be saying they think you need to have read that one.) The basic setup is that the unsympathetic main character is looking for his wife, who has left him, which takes him on a path that involves virtual-reality gaming and eventually djinn. Some parts of this worked better for me than others - I just don't care that much about cyberpunk, and "I guess I never realized my wife was a person" was a tiresome POV to be in, but there were some really strong moments and details in the worldbuilding. And although I didn't think Hossain quite sold the ending - there's a cut and "skipped scene" where I think he wants the reader to have to fill it all in themselves, but I didn't think he gave us quite enough to bridge all the way to his outcome - I thought it was interesting. Recommended if you're interested in stories about people living in collapsing civilizations or about who stays behind (and why) from raptures of the nerds.