An exciting thrill-ride through the underbelly of cyber espionage in the vein of David Ignatius’s The Movie director and the tv screen series Leverage, CSI: Cyber, and Person of Interest, which follows five iconoclastic hackers who are coerced into serving the U.S. federal government.

An Anonymous-style rabble rouser, an Arab springtime hactivist, a black-hat hacker, an old-school cipherpunk, and an internet troll are each offered a choice: go to prison or help protect the United States, putting their brains about Zeroes: A Novel and skills to work for the federal government for one 12 months.

But being a white-hat doesn’t generally mean you work for the nice men. The would-be cyberspies find that behind the scenes lurks a sinister NSA system, an artificial intelligence code-named Typhon, that has origins and an development both dangerous and troubling. And whether it’s not really brought down, will be uncontrollable.

Can the hackers get away their federal watchers and confront Typhon and its own mysterious creator? And exactly what does the government want them to do? If they opt to turn the furniture, will their personal secrets be exposed-and their lives erased like lines of bad code?

Merging the scientific-based, propulsive narrative design of Michael Crichton using the eerie atmosphere and conspiracy themes from the X-Files as well as the imaginative, speculative edge of Neal Stephenson and William Gibson, Zer0es explores our deep-seated concerns about government surveillance and hacking in an inventive fast-paced novel certain to generate Chuck Wendig the widespread acclaim he should get.