Bzrk (Bzrk)

Love The Hunger Games?  Action-adventure thrillers with a dystopian twist? BZRK (Berserk) by Michael Grant, New York Times best-selling author of the GONE series, ramps up the action and suspense to a whole new level of excitement.

 

Set in the near future, BZRK is the story of a war for control of the human mind.  Charles and Benjamin Armstrong, conjoined twins and owners of the Armstrong Fancy Gifts Corporation, have a goal:  to turn the world into their vision of utopia.  No wars, no conflict, no hunger.  And no free will.  Opposing them is a guerrilla group of teens, code name BZRK, who are fighting to protect the right to be messed up, to be human.  This is no ordinary war, though.  Weapons are deployed on the nano-level. The battleground is the human brain.  And there are no stalemates here:  It’s victory . . . or madness.

 

BZRK unfolds with hurricane force around core themes of conspiracy and mystery, insanity and changing realities, engagement and empowerment, and the larger impact of personal choice. Which side would you choose?  How far would you go to win? 

"In Grant's (the Gone novels) launch of a SF spy series, when Sadie McClure's father and brother are killed in a gruesome plane crash, she is pulled into the titular secret organization her father ran, fighting a war on the nanotechnological level to save humanity. All members of the organization take names of people who famously went insane, so the newly-minted Plath gets teamed with (and romantically linked to) fellow recruit Keats. As they finesse their skills of observation and precision, and learn the art of emotional detachment, they are also trained to operate their 'biots,' biomechanical extensions of themselves. The organization uses the biots to fight the Armstrong Fancy Gifts Corporation. Silly name aside, the latter organization has no scruples (their top recruit, Bug Man, is a rapist and murderer). Grant doesn't shy from moral compromises and brutal violence — heroes and villains alike suffer death and dismemberment — but he also draws into sharp focus the psychological toll that these events take on the characters. An entertaining, smart thriller with a conclusion that points to the next installment. Ages 14 — up. (Feb.)" Publishers Weekly Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

"With simmering pots of sexual tension, near-nonstop action, and the threat of howling madness or brain-melting doom around every corpuscular corner, Grant’s new series is off to a breathless, bombastic start."—Booklist, starred review

Time is running out for the good guys. But what happens when you don’t know who the good guys really are?

Noah and Sadie: newly initiated into an underground cell so covert they don’t even know each other’s real names. Trained for combat on the nano level, they are thrust into a war they can barely grasp.

 

Vincent: feels nothing and cares for no one. Fighting a personal battle with Bug Man, the greatest nano warrior alive.

The Armstrong Twins: wealthy, privileged, fanatical. Are they the saviors of humanity or authors of the darkest conspiracy in history?

On one side: Charles and Benjamin Armstrong’s Nexus Humanus. On the other: a group of teen hackers who call themselves BZRK.

Twenty-first-century warfare that takes place on the macro and nano level for the highest stakes: humanity’s free will.

It’s time to choose sides.

Set in the near future, a conspiracy is afoot to create a perfect and perfectly controlled world. The Armstrong Fancy Gift Corporation is a front for the conjoined Armstrong twins, Charles and Benjamin, and the plot to create their own version of utopia.

A shadowy guerilla group known as BZRK form a nascent resistance movement. Both sides develop sophisticated nanotechnology to achieve their goals:

-The Armstrong twins develop the nanobot, a stealth device that latches onto the brains of unsuspecting citizens 

-BZRK's DNA-derived biots are deployed to search out and destroy the insidious bots.  If biots are destroyed, the brain cells of their DNA-donor also die.  Hence the name BZRK.

Michael Grant is author the best-selling series GONE and the cocreator and cowriter of the bestselling middle-grade science fiction series Animorphs and Everworld. He lives in California with his wife, Katherine Applegate, and their two children.