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Sometimes, no matter how much I like an author, their latest book ends up being a disappointment. NEUROPATH, by R. Scott Bakker, fit that description for me. I love Bakker’s Prince of Nothing series, and I firmly believe his writing--in terms of quality--is some of the best in the fantasy genre. With NEUROPATH, Bakker attempts to put his spin on the thriller genre.

I really wanted to like this book. Seriously, I tried hard. It just didn't happen.

NEUROPATH follows the PoV of Tom Bible, a psychologist. If you have read Bakker before, the profession of the PoV should come as no surprise. Tom is divorced with two kids, and his relationship with his ex-wife is seriously strained. The main plot of the story focuses on Tom helping the FBI find his friend Neil, who has been working with the NSA on the study and implementation of manipulating people's brains. Neil has apparently gone off the deep-end, and is abducting and torturing people by messing with their cerebral functions.

Yeah, it's a cool concept. The novel's tag-line, "You are not what you think you are," serves as the central theme of the novel, and is also its greatest flaw. Half of the novel involves near maid-and-butler scenes where one character spends pages explaining a concept to another character. The first time it happened, I could forgive it, because it was well written. After happening a few dozen times, however, it tended to rub me wrong. Essentially, it’s as if we the readers are reading a transcribed conversation between a psychology professor and his unconvinced student. The concepts are explained well, and the writing is fantastic, but the simple fact that Bakker is "telling vs. showing" is extremely problematic.

The novel, and its main characters, take a very strong nihilistic view on life. We are machines. We have no free will. There is no God. Our brains are organic computers that automatically react to variables and cause our reactions. Since all of the preceding are "fact," nothing in this life matters. Nothing. The main PoV, Tom, and his buddy Neil are major advocates of this belief system. There are a few token moments where Tom acts as if he doesn’t want to believe this philosophy, but they are really just that: token moments with no real power behind them. As readers, the constant reiteration of those points takes on a preachy-feel. By the end of the novel, I felt like I was a dead horses being beaten. Hard. What’s more, is that most of the side characters fall into automatically believing this philosophy without being given any real evidence of anything. Essentially, the PoV’s take is, “Hey this is fact. Since I say so, you need to believe me. What? Of course I won’t give you evidence. You’re not smart enough for that.�

Another issue that Bakker has is making females into over-sexualized objects. You know the instant a female main character shows up that she will be involved in some sort of sexual relationship with the main PoV. The scenes are graphic, but unlike the Prince of Nothing series, they don't seem to have much point other than shock-value. His characters in NEUROPATH seem to end up in porn-movie scenarios. They are, in a word, absurd.

As for the actual thriller aspect of the novel? Because, you know, that’s kind of the point of reading a novel--either for the characters or the story. It's horribly cliché. A majority of the novel’s actual plotting is terribly predictable, and the novel is full of the dumb character behavior that is typical of the thriller genre. In many cases Tom's decisions are just plain idiotic, and are leaned on like a crutch to provide more conflict. Tom has two kids (the kids were the only stand-out goodness of the novel), and his decisions regarding them are idiotic. Sorry, but I just don’t like a character’s stupidity to be the main cause for movement in a novel. I get enough of that from Dan Brown. There is also a separate, thin side story going on about a serial killer called the Chiropractor. He has no real purpose in the novel other than as an excuse why FBI resources are spread so thin. What he does isn't really explained, and when he inevitably shows up, it is for pure convenience and border-line Deus Ex.

The tone of the novel is VERY bleak. Much more so than any of Bakker's other works. There is a line in the novel where a character states, "I don't like happy endings." That is a pretty clear indicator of how things are going to go. Don’t get me wrong, I like grim and gritty. NEUROPATH, however, was just too bleak for me. The abductions and murders that happen are very well done, and they lend perfectly to the thin story, but the ending of the novel has no redeeming quality in any sense of the word. When you match all that with the hopeless nihilistic philosophy saturating the novel, it's hard to like it. In the end, this caused my personal dislike.

I didn't hate the novel, I just didn't like it. Bakker is a seriously gifted writer. He manages to explain everything amazingly clear. Considering the deep topics, his writing makes them easily understandable, and makes the pace move along fantastically. I just couldn't like the tone or the execution of a terrific premise. But really, it all comes down to a really poor story. It does nothing but give clichéd plotting and clichéd twists under a thin veil of a psychological and philosophical preaching. Terry Goodkind gave the world enough of that, we don’t need it from Bakker.

If you really dig psychological and philosophical debates and concepts, you may enjoy this novel. Especially if you are really into Bakker. But this is easily his weakest effort at story-telling. Not to mention, the graphic content will turn off a majority of people.

Content: If you are at all offended by sex, violence, language, or character stupidity as a plot device, you should avoid this novel.