Excellent novel, halfway between fiction novel and the political thriller

Philip Nicholson sign with this "Extramuros" his third novel, and as many say now, he already perfectly mastered the tricks necessary to create good thrillers. Information taken from the author's previous books, it seems that with his last, he drove the point in the near futuristic novel, with more or less programmed drop in such states as we have known them for the benefit of Megastructures financial. Here, in a world where global warming plays its full role of weather and geopolitical disruption, the "business areas" have settled and are reserved for the capitalist and consumerist elite. In them, one can benefit from the latest treatments cry, total security, an education lavished by the best teachers, etc. For other people outside? The near-nothingness, forced to fend daily to eat and get by without too much damage ... But the revolt rumbles when these areas are the desire to become independent states enjoying the bankruptcy of states to purchase existing territories. With the mammoth project of Mark Zuckerberg to create his own town for his employees ("Zee City", with an estimated cost of 177 billion euros, no less), Nicholson's fiction is probably not so remote from a possible future ...

Initially, the reader knows some cold sweats, the first pages posing an overall decor (places, people, ...) a bit too static in his narration. And it inevitably becomes afraid to go for one of those endless futuristic novels totally unreal and without any background. Fortunately, very quickly, the author throws us a hundred miles an hour in his story with brutal acceleration but oh so salutary. From that point, the reader is glued and finished the book literally foot to the floor as the writing is incisive, precise and breathless done.

If the author manages this nice feat, it is also thanks to his characters, finely built and which we immediately adheres to the image they (basically, we hate them, we admire them, we understand them , one identifies, etc.). None of these is treated hastily and each offers a real successful psychological construction without Manichaeism too elementary. And that's pretty damn nice touch! The suspense is maintained (and without the use of multiple improbable conjuring tricks like are more and more authors of thrillers) to the last pages of fairly brillantissime, which reaches a conclusion excuse a little "cheap "but that does not spoil the excellent overall impression provided by this book. Not a masterpiece not, but an excellent book. And author of more monitoring because the masterpiece could happen quickly ...