An Uncalculated Risk

A visionary and her tough-as-nails security chief battle the plans of a shady trillionaire.

This latest installment in the author’s Cain series, following A Desperate Measure (2024), sees the return of Francesca Pieralisi, a former mayor of Venice, Italy, turned ecological visionary, and her tough, dour lover and security head, Cain, as they navigate a gritty near-future world. Progress on Francesca’s passion project, a massive seawall intended to foster necessary agriculture in lands facing rising sea levels, is threatened by a seemingly unlikely problem: a series of events that have affected the availability of tin needed for the manufacture of worker exoskeletons. The European Union enlists Francesca and Cain to travel to various international hotspots to determine the causes of the tin crisis and possible solutions. This, of course, forces them to confront many dangers—the worst of which may be a shadowy figure named Irrfan Singh, who’s the head of the vast conglomerate Omnipicorp, headquartered in an orbiting space station. Singh has his own intel, his own army, and perhaps his own reasons for wanting to see Francesca’s seawall fail. As in the previous two volumes of James’ series, the steady, strong highlight of this latest Cain adventure is the elaborate worldbuilding, which lays out a complicated world to come with many moving parts, addressing such thorny issues as international politics, personal technology, and the long-term effects of climate change. The author has a penchant for breezy Hollywood-style dialogue, although some readers may find the novel’s sex scenes cringe-inducing, due to unconvincing chemistry between the two leads: “Despite the waves of orgasm rising ever higher within her, cresting nearly above consciousness, a part of Francesca held ecstasy at bay and watched Cain intently.” That said, James delivers the main action of the complicated techno-thriller plot with energy and conviction. Overall, it’s a fast-paced tale of suspense featuring some intriguing moral compromises.

A pleasingly complex adventure tale, despite some uneven characterization.