Mind Machines (Human++1) by Dima Zales

This book is about a young man named Mike. He has a lot of money and he uses it to help start new companies. A company he's invested in is creating technology that will help people with disabilities in the future. The first test they are doing is for a study of patients with Alzheimer's which Mike's mother has so she is one of the first people to get the technology. Unfortunately thing go bad when Mike's mother and the other patients of the study are kidnapped by unknown persons. This begins a wild adventure that will lead Mike back to his home country of Russia. Dangerous people are out to use this technology for themselves and they will do whatever it takes even kill. Will Mike people to save his mother and the others? Or will he lose his own life in the process.

 I LOVED this book! It was so awesome! The technology in this book was so fantastic and confusing that it was interesting to read. I have no idea if it's all made up or if it's even theoretically possible but if such technology existed it would be very cool. Although in the book they are testing the technology on patients with Alzheimer's they mentioned that it could be used to treat deaf and blind people. As a person who is visually impaired it would definitely be cool to have something like this available. I loved that there were so many references to pop culture in this book. There's Star Wars and Star Trek references, a reference to a movie called Willard about rats who are used to kill which I thought was really cool, it's a freaky movie and I loved that it was mentioned because Ada, Mike's almost girlfriend's pet rat is called Mr. Spoke lol. Also I loved all the references to Russian culture. I took Russian language and culture as a major in University and it was so fun to see all the different references. For example Mike briefly mentioned his attacker (after he's attacked Mike) looks like a hedgehog from a cartoon of his youth and I was like "The Hedgehog in the Fog!", which is a Russian cartoon about a Hedgehog and it's one of my favorite Russian cartoons so that was a fun reference. There is also the mention of a story by Pushkin called the Fisherman and the Fish that was super fun to read. And last but not least the social media site called Vkontakte which is kind of like the Russian facebook, I've met many friends and found great music on that site. Other than all these wonderful references to pop culture I loved that Mike was willing to do anything for his mother. I loved his friends and that he was shy around Ada and not sure how to ask her out. Joe who is Mike's cousin is creepy as hell but he got things done. There was so much action and a lot of violence. I really like the whole story the technological side of the story (even though I didn't understand a lot about it) and the human side. This is just a wonderful story. If you want to read about possible future technology along with great characters, awesome action sequence, explosions and violence then this is the book for you. A really entertaining read.

Amazon

✯★✯★