REVIEW | “The Time for Doing Is Always Now”: Reading Where the Axe Is Buried in Unprecedented Times

It feels strange to write a review for Where the Axe Is Buried, Ray Nayler’s newest novel-length work, in January 2025. From my home in the American Midwest, I sometimes feel the anxiety of being a powerless observer as wave after wave of “unprecedented events” crash against my communities and loved ones from all angles. I often worry that I have no role to play and no way to create the tangible changes I want so desperately to see.

Where the Axe Is Buried is an antidote to that feeling, which I don’t wish you to mistake for meaning that it is cheerful. Rather, it is optimistic in that it reminds us that each of us has a role to play in shaping our societies; we are both complicit in our larger societies, and we are important to make change in whatever small ways we can.

Axe is Nayler’s second novel-length work and follows a format similar to both his acclaimed first book, The Mountain in the Sea (MCD x FSG, 2022), and the novelette The Tusks of Extinction (Tordotcom, 2024). In a familiar yet foreign near future, perspective shifts among members of a small cast of individuals who, through one small action they’ve taken, have become part of a resistance movement against authoritarian governments run by “rationalized” artificial intelligences in Western Europe, and by a president who has been downloading his consciousness to new and improved bodies to retain power in the Federation (as Russia has come to be known in this setting). These individuals—citizens of London, of a small unnamed Western European state, and of the Federation—are subject to constant surveillance that is sometimes masked under the name of safety or efficiency, and at other times blatantly weaponized to control the population. Often, these characters’ choices are less concerned with furthering any revolution than they are with maintaining the safety and autonomy of themselves or their loved ones who are at risk.

For readers who found The Mountain in the Sea’s view of global interconnectedness a challenge to follow, Where the Axe Is Buried provides a more tightly focused examination of similar topics. Nayler’s trademark speculative elements—downloaded consciousnesses, lab-made bodies—are crucial and engaging, but never distract from the main thrust of the narrative.

Throughout the book I felt called to consider the idea of revolution, and particularly whether it is possible for true innovation and change to occur in societies unless they are willing to tear up their own foundations and start again—not from the rubble of the previous system, but from a blank slate on which any number of new choices can be made. Nayler’s characters ask themselves whether resistance movements are worth their high costs in defeat, and whether anything has ever changed through resistance and reform. As I read, in the wake of a second Trump inauguration and a slew of repressive new policies, I found myself thinking along those same lines. Where is the tipping point that spurs us from inaction to revolutionary action? How do we navigate safety—for ourselves, for the people and places we love, for those we don’t know personally—while also voicing opposition to an increasingly authoritarian government? Nayler doesn’t provide easy answers to these questions, but he implores us to try nonetheless.

Revolution is a form of faith. It is an expression of the hope that every moment of sacrifice, of physical or emotional pain, of loss, is worthwhile, because in the end it will give way to a better future. It is a belief that these “unprecedented times” won’t last forever, and that there is a better option in the future, waiting for us to come and get it. But revolution can succeed only if we can imagine the outcome we want to see. Not a less-bad outcome—revolution truly succeeds only if we are unafraid to rip out the roots and start again. And as Nayler reminds us in Where the Axe Is Buried, the time for doing is always now.

Recommended Reads 

• Forget I Told You This by Hilary Zaid
• Moonbound by Robin Sloan
• Terraform: Watch/Worlds/Burn ed. Brian Merchant and Claire L. Evans