The novel “Binary Storm” by Christopher Hinz was published for the first time in 2016. It’s part of the Paratwa series.

Nick Smith is officially a common programmer at E-Tech but he survived decades of cryogenic stasis and after his awakening at the end of the 21st century he found an Earth barely habitable for humanity. A war is taking place between normal humans and binaries, a lineage of killers genetically engineers raised so that two bodies can share a common consciousness.

An attempted murder gives Nick Smith the chance to become close to Annabel Bakana, an E-Tech executive. Together, the two of them look for new ways to fight the binaries, particularly those belonging to the so-called Royal Caste, the most lethal and ruthless. Assembling a team capable of fighting binaries requires extreme measures.

Christopher Hinz became famous in the second half of the 1980s with the novel “Liege Killer”, the first of the trilogy about the Paratwas, the terrible binary killers endowed with superior physical abilities thanks to genetic engineering. They can use two bodies in perfect sync thanks to a telepathic connection and since infancy they’re trained to use a deadly weapon called the Cohe wand. The trilogy takes place in a fairly distant future but in 2016 the author wrote the prequel set much earlier, “Binary Storm”, which can be read as an autonomous novel.

“Binary Storm” is set at the end of the 21st century on an Earth that is less and less habitable because of the environmental degradation worsened by wars that hit many nations more or less heavily. The situation is so bad that orbital colonies are increasingly widespread and emigration from the planet is growing.

The environmental theme is present in the background without many details while in the foreground there are political and economic issues. Even in such a difficult situation large corporations keep on pursuing their own interests while poor people struggle to survive. The references to the present connected to these themes are quite transparent with a rather apocalyptic vision. The end of the 21st century is still far away but Christopher Hinz makes it seem close. Many new technologies are described in “Binary Storm” but that future world is easily recognizable.

A present but less in-depth theme is that of technological and scientific development with the ethical and moral problems linked to them. There are factions that would like development without obstacles and others that would rather limit it. The situation existing in “Binary Storm” is also due to the misuse of those developments and it would have been interesting if Christopher Hinz had offered more food for thought on these problems. Instead the impression is that the author considered other elements of the novel more important and focused on them.

The strength of “Binary Storm” lies in a plot that maintains a fast pace with a lot of action based on an interesting idea like that of the Paratwas but also thanks to a series of intrigues. There are also interesting protagonists who are developed in a non-trivial way. The novel offers many surprises and twists related to the various elements of the plot and the revelation of various characters’ secrets.

My only doubt about the characterization of Nick Smith and Annabel Bakana is that certain reasons of conflict seemed forced to me to advance the plot in a certain way. Christopher Hinz wanted to create a relationship between the two of them but “Binary Storm” is a prequel and the story had to develop in order to reach the situation existing in the first novel of the original trilogy. All in all it doesn’t seem to me a serious flaw.

Prequels are always a dangerous idea in the sense that there’s the risk of misusing the possibility of telling what happened before a story that was already known. In the case of “Binary Storm” it seems to me that this possibility was handled well. This novel tells events that are spoilers for “Liege Killer”, if you consider that a problem you can read the original trilogy first and this prequel only later.