Thanks so much to Netgalley and Hodder & Stoughton for allowing me an e-arc copy of this book in exchange for my honest review!

I read Mindwalker a few months ago and fell in love with the world that Kate Dylan had built, and couldn’t wait to read the second story set in this world!

It follows Indra, who was a child born into a religious cult who detests the use of technology in a future where technology is needed to survive. She is sold to a tech company when she is close to death, so they can meld her mind with the body of a robot.

This story is intense and yet again the author manages to create a politically and culturally diverse sci-fi world with beautiful world building, and also focuses on a few key subjects with the main being religion. It is fast paced and easy to read, although I did find myself struggling through the middle. However, the plot twists near the end drew me right back in and I could not put this down!!

Me and the main character Indra had a bit of a love hate relationship. I loved her backstory and the way she was always trying to do the right things for the ones she loved. However, she was also somewhat annoying as she had a tendency to make as many terrible decisions as she could with skill and accuracy. I did love the comeback of some of the character from Mindwalker though, and loved the queer character representation.

Her love story also felt a bit forced, and couldn’t see the appeal there at all.

However, overall I ended up loving this book and would highly recommend. I can’t wait to read what Kate Dylan comes up with next!

Thank you to Hodder and Stoughton for providing an arc in exchange for a review.

I read this book in one day and when I say I couldn't put it down I really mean it. I read it while eating and continued even when my eyes hurt; It was such a great read. I read Mindwalker last year and loved every second of it so I went in with high expectations that did not disappoint. Mindbreaker is an indirect sequel to Mindwalker, while you don't have to read Mindwalker, this book does take place after the events in the first one and I would recommend reading Mindwalker first.

This book is so relevant to this day and age where AI is growing faster than we can regulate and design laws for. It plays with the ethical concerns around tech and our dependence on it. But the characters are also great and well-developed. I'm not a big sci-fi reader, but this one is well worth a read!

"I'm the end, I guess we're all just doing our best for the people we care about. Even if our actions aren't always rational."

Once again Dylan manages to create a Sci fi world filled with the cultural and political discourse we all know too well. This time religion is on the stage.

This time big tech corporations have managed neural transcendence aka, moving ones consciousness into a new body - a cybot. Religion is at the forefront of the debate as the main character has been raised in a religious (anti tech) cult where God is their leader and not technology. It's filled with the main character battling her faith as she's forced to be a part of this tech world

Whilst it is a standalone book, I do recommend reading Mindwalker first as it gives you a lot of context that make the read a little less confusing. Despite this, it is once again a fast paced, action packed read that will leave you thinking about our future in technology

Mindbreaker goes a bit heavier on the thematic, existential crisis side of this tech-dystopia world, and I think that really works. Indra's story has several layers which come together, and there is a real sense of dread evoked by her powerlessness throughout. The story proceeds rather predictably (at some points to the extent that it makes characters feel short-sighted), but mostly because it follows its ideas through to their natural ends. I do wish Nyx and Tian got a bit more spotlight, as it sometimes feels that characters from book 1 push this book's supporting cast into the margins, but I think this is a great little classic sci-fi story that takes a fairly simple premise and gets out of it a good amount of emotion and philosophical resonance.

I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. While the premise was interesting I didn’t connect with the characters or story in a meaningful way. Some books just aren’t for us, and that’s alright.

I really love it when second books are just as good as the first. Kate Dylan has delivered on the promise made by Mindwalker, with another action-packed stark warning of the dystopian future that lies ahead of us if we mindlessly careen into an AI future with the same carelessness of thought we give to appointing our political leaders.
It’s great to pick up with some of the previous cast, and good to see a way forward for the next book in what’s already a gripping series. If you enjoyed book one, you’re gonna love book two!
Thank you to Hodder and Stoughton and to NetGalley for the chance to read an ARC.
Mindbreaker releases on 14 September.

Another fab sci fi/cyberpunk book from Kate Dylan! I loved the resurface of some of the faves from Mindwalker, and this further glimpse into the world it was set in. I will admit I like Indra less as an MC than Sil, but she was still engaging to read about

Having read the first book in this series I had big expectations for this book which can sometimes cause books to be a letdown for me. This book for me is 3.5 stars which I'm rounding up to 4 stars. There's plenty of fast-paced action in this that nearly felt too fast personally, I think the new characters here weren't as fleshed out as in the Mindwalker. Disclaimer now, at the moment I'm looking for books that have extensive world-building which I'm a sucker for so that definitely affected my mood when reading this book. A major plus here is how Kate Dylan uses the dangers of technology and corporate capitalism to build her villains and highlight how reliant humanity is and could be on tech.

Thanks to NetGalley and Hodder & Stoughton for the arc in exchange for an honest review.

This is such a great follow up to Mindwalker by Kate Dylan. She has done it again and produced a great exciting novel. I loved it but I'm sure that my teen grandaughter is obsessed with this series. It is all she and her friends talk about.

I received Mindwalker in my Goldsboro Sci/Fi Fantasy subscription. It was not a book I necessarily would have picked up on my own, but I thought it was a fantastic read. One of the best of their sub for the year. If you enjoyed Mindwalker, I think you'll also enjoy Mindbreaker. This spin off novel follows a young girl who has been given a death sentence. A tech company has offered to save her, but she is a member of a religious fringe group who objects to the use of technology and she is not of age to consent herself. So she is awaiting to see what her parents will decide. Her father decides to leave his religion in order to save her life. She leaves behind her world and finds out their way of saving her is by essentially turning her into a cybot. She has her own memories and thoughts, but is otherwise a machine. She becomes close with the girl helping experiment on her, but is otherwise isolated. She begins having memories that she isn't sure are real. Things heat up when she decides to escape and search for answers. We get to see characters from Mindwalker, which I always think is fun. Overall, this is a solid fast paced novel.

6.5 / 10 ✪

https://arefugefromlife.wordpress.com/2023/08/15/mindbreaker-by-kate-dylan-review/

Now, Indra’s no Sil Sarrah; I actually found her quite a bit more agreeable as a narrator. Where Sil was overly gruff and angsty, hailing from a non-tech religious cult seems to have mellowed Indra a bit. I mean, she’s still a teenager, so don’t expect a complete attitude adjustment, but it’s not as if you can read YA and not expect such things.

While Mindbreaker offers a return to the world of Mindwalker, it does so in a way that ruins the magic of the first book. I mean, in general we know that big tech companies are tech (shocker, right?), and the Analog Army, while being labeled terrorists, are actually the scrappy underdogs that everyone likes to root for, as they’re really just a family built around loss. Yeah, yeah—I know that’s a bit cynical of me, but in my defense, Mindbreaker really doesn’t try anything new. It’s basically the same formula, same plot, generally same technology, only a different protagonist. It’s hard to bottle lightning twice. Especially that same spark. And that’s what I found found this one to be lacking—a spark, the magic, that certain something. It’s not a bad read, exactly, just… a bit middling.

The ending however, is ridiculous. Not remotely believable, in the way that the world—specifically in a world where the rich rule arguably more than they even do today—is at all fair. Now, I realize it’s YA, and they generally strive for some sort of happy ending (well, most stories do), it’s just that the circumstances surrounding this ending are all so unlikely that together they might as well be impossible. And no—I can’t explain that without spoilers, so you’ll just have to take my word for it. But maybe keep this in mind as well: what failed to work a second time on me might work quite well for someone else. If you loved the first one and wanted more of the same, this absolutely could be amazing. And that’s fine. That’s a perfectly valid opinion. Just for me, right now… it could’ve been much better.

So, I guess take that with a grain of salt.

Also, as an aside: my favorite detail of this was an implantable NDA. That’s just an amazing—if horrifying—idea that totally needs to happen in the dystopian cyberpunk future.

EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS BOOK WAS EXACTLY WHAT I WANTED!

If you had asked me before I started reading, I would have told you I couldn’t possibly like this more than Dylan’s last book, Mindwalker. But I was stunningly wrong. This book intertwines religious ideology with hyper-capitalist dystopian cyber-punk tech in a way I have never seen before and am frankly obsessed with. I loved this so much and will continue to instantly read everything by this author forever.

This is the second book set in the same universe but featuring a new main character, Indra a former anti-tech cult member who gets injured during a radioactive storm and then enhanced by one of the mega tech companies from book one. I found Indra a hard character to like, she hadn't had a lot of choices in her life and was very angry about the fact (understandably!) but it made it difficult to empathise with some of the things she did and the choices that she went on to make. When Indra and her hacker buddy meet up with the cast of the first book I felt that things improved a lot - from having a much bigger set of characters to care about and catching up with old friends from Mindwalker. It's a solid sequel that leaves room for further instalments.

Mindbreaker is a fiercely pacy sci-fi and an excellent follow-up to Mindwalker. Stand-alone, but featuring characters from Mindwalker, Mindbreaker follows Indra, an ex-cult-member-turned-cybot who is forced into the hands of a tech company in order to save her life. Forced to accept her new reality as Glindell’s trademarked property, Indra tries to get used to Tian, her sort-of-friend and a research assistant, rummaging around in her mind. That is until Indra starts having dreams where she’s handling bombs and losing pockets of time. But she’s been in her room the whole time… right? Faced with the need to get answers, Indra finds herself on the run, desperate to find out what happens before Glindell shuts her down for good.

This was a fascinating sequel. The world in Mindwalker was shown to be a post-god society, but Indra was part of a religious commune who still believed in a god and she spends a lot of the story grappling with her faith, her learned aversion to tech and the lessons that had been ingrained within her, as well as her struggle to understand the actions of her family. It’s sapphic too, which I loved!

Just damn. Kate has done it again and created a sci-fi technology universe you can’t put down until you finish the very last chapter, or in my case until you realise it’s 2 am and you probably should go to bed because you have work to do in the morning.
I didn’t think that this book could be any better than the first, but damn was I wrong, Kate has developed her writing even more, which I didn’t think was physically possible, to be even more amazing; creating a world that you fall in to and follow each electrical pulse along the adventure’s twists and turns so much I ended up messaging Kate several times with comments like ‘what the fuck’.

Although I am not the biggest fan of sci-fi, as you can probably see from the little amount of sci-fy I read…this is definitely one book that even if you are not a sci-fi fan you must read. I loved it from beginning to end and you can see the work and love that the author has put into every single chapter and character. I cannot wait for everyone to read this book, not only that, but I am insisting now that Kate must create more books because I need her writing in my life permanently permanently.

A massive thank you to Kate for letting me read this early and having every emotion under the Sun escape for me while reading it. I hope that the special edition I have designed lives up to this amazing story.

~thank you netgalley and hodderscape for a review copy
~This is a really solid sci fi book that I really enjoyed!! If you enjoyed the first one you would love this one just as much! The plot was one of my favourite parts of this book, the main character Indra was sold to a tech corporation as she was on her death bed as the last resort to save her but her family are part of an anti-tech church and once she is her mind is uploaded to a robot they are never be able to speak to her again. I found the plot so evenly paced, throughout the whole book the pace was fast there weren’t any lulls or parts that slowed down the story. The characters were amazing!! Indra was an amazing protagonist, and you will see some familiar faces from the first book! The world that these books are set in is so vivd, you can immediately see the greater world and how it became this way even though it isn’t described in detail. I think the writing has improved from the first book (but that was amazing as well!) it tied all of the elements of this book together nicely! I don’t really have much criticism for this book but it was just missing something for me to rate it 5 stars

Come with me if you want to love.

Indra Dyer is dying, and the second-largest tech corporation in the United American State offers to save her life, totally for free, with just one minor catch: she’ll become their wholly-owned intellectual property. Raised in a church that shuns technology, she becomes the ultimate blasphemy. Instead of saving her body, they download her mind into a identical android copy.

Is she still Indra? Mostly. Will her family still accept her? Unlikely. Is there a good explanation for her missing stretches of time, and the nagging feeling that she’s done some really bad things along the way? Let’s be honest, it’s a cyberpunk book, almost certainly not.

This is the second book by Kate Dylan in this YA setting, the first being Mindwalker which I liked a lot earlier in the year. While the main characters are different, and it’s still a self-contained story, it is more of a sequel than I was expecting, which was a pleasant surprise. You’ll certainly get more out of it if you have read the first book, however it’s not strictly required.

I very much enjoyed this one too, it has a good mix of sci-fi action and intrigue with a welcome sprinkling of romance on the top. I really hope we’ll see more of all these characters again in the future.

Thank you to Hodder Books for the advance copy.

(Spoiler free)
4.5/5 stars

No more quiet rebellions

Indra Dyer lived a simple life, growing up in a religious cult on the edge of society. After a trip to the city goes wrong, and she is left in a terminal condition, signing her life away to Glindell technology is the only way to ensure her survival... But it wasn't the cure she had hoped for. Saved by the very technology she has been taught to despise, Indra mind is uploaded to the first-of-its-kind MindDrive, housed in a fully robotic shell.
She still looks the same, but on the inside, she's not sure. Something is wrong... She keeps finding herself in places she really shouldn't be, with no memory of how she got there and dangerous abilities she can't explain. So when news breaks of an attack against Glindell's biggest rival, Indra suspects the worst- With the help of research assistant Tian, Indra must uncover the truth behind the procedure that saved her life, before Glindell can use it to change the face of technology, and what it means to be human, forever...

Wow! Just Wow!

I have so much to say about this book! I absolutely loved jumping back into the same universe as Mindwalker. I fell in love with the characters almost immediately and was so happy to see some familiar faces along the way. I honestly didn't think the twist was going to catch me out like Mindwalker did... but oh boy, was I wrong! ...I think I have whiplash.
I am really hoping there's going to be another book as I want to find out what happens next.

Thank you to NetGalley for my early copy of this book in exchange for an honest review :)

Thank you netgalley and the publishers for letting me read this book. I was sceptical of this book at first when I was reading the first couple of chapters wether it was for me or not but I pushed through and I enjoyed it in the end, the concept was a bit harder for me to grasp than other books but I am glad I persevered with it because I enjoyed reading it and the pace picked up after the first 3 or 4 chapters. 3.5 stars

An interesting thriller about the dangers of corporate power and what it means to be human in a tech-enhanced world. Not as good as Mindwalker. I found the main character hard to root for.