"Fracture: The First Book of the Shadow Sovereign Series" by Basar Gorur is an outstanding kind of addendum to the modern technothrillers published by people like FX Holden (a personal favorite of mine). It is being published by Blue Horizon Publishing, who graciously provided me with the ARC from which I am working. I confess that, while I enjoy military technothrillers, I am much less drawn to espionage as a genre (despite an early fascination with Ian Fleming). I kept picking this book up, preparing to put it away and then being sucked back into the sort of hybrid combination of special operations, international banking, and conventional and hybrid military operations that fuel the tale. For me the pacing was somewhat slow, but that was because the author challenges his readers to think about the complex ways in which the modern world conducts its diplomacy and military operations. Once I determined to stick it out, I felt well rewarded for the insights offered into the behind the scenes action surrounding so many policy decisions and their implementations on the ground, or in this case on the high seas. It struck me as very targeted when you think about Russia's shadow fleet of tankers and recent U.S. interdiction campaigns against Venezuela, not to speak of Iran and Cuba. This is a very high stakes game, and the author takes pains to link it to the individual consequences for the men and women moving behind the scenes to serve their principals often at great personal risk. Here the Russians have deployed a new technology and the U.S. has developed a counter, but the smoke and mirrors deployed to mask the weapon's use make it difficult for the U.S. or its allies to move expeditiously to counter their adversaries, and the consequences of this are game changing for the Russian fleet and its access to the North Sea. By the end, the book is moving along much more engagingly. I would recommend for anyone who is interested in modern hybrid warfare, its costs, economic and human, and the implications for geopolitics in the high risk environment we are presently confronting. It is very disquieting!