The Song of Synth by Seb Doubinsky

The Song of Synth Reviews

• 
  Lizz

  I don’t write reviews.
  
  Liquid diamonds and crackling ice. Who am I? Who are you? Valid questions. The me of now surely isn’t the me of last year or maybe even last week. Thank god for small miracles.
  
  Can I rely on my memories to be honest with me? Either way I will only be able to retrieve a slanted, subjective and most likely misinformed version of the truth. I think that’s for the best. Reality isn’t as real as they’d have you believe.
  
  Doubinsky explores the nature of self in this fast-paced and poetic story. I’d be amiss if I neglected to mention Philip K. Dick at this point. He too loved to explore these topics at the heart of all things: Who am I? and What the hell is going on? The first half of the story is very much in this Dickian realm, but Doubinsky’s voice is his own. It’s plaintive, earnest, almost haunting. The story is Markus/not-Markus’ but truly, in many ways, our own stories too. Are we not lost souls being led through artificial experiences and offered synthetic thrills to soothe our lonely hearts?
  
  The second half goes into the territory of William S. Burroughs and brings with it the chance of escape. Escape from the stories we tell to others, the hiding we do from ourselves and the routines, my god, the routines. Again Doubinsky opts to skip the pre-worn trails and charts his own course for what we all wish for: poetry, love and slightly imperfect redemption. We all can find truth underneath all of the labels and the visceral experience of living, dismissing the ersatz virtual pap served to keep us from rebelling. We do know who we are after all.
• 
  Vincenzo Bilof

  Phillip K. Dick’s legacy lives on in Seb Doubinsky. We have worlds within worlds, paranoiac fantasies, and a subtext-critique about progressive technology and its ability to install variations of tyranny into government. Here is a William Gibson wet dream in which we attempt to define worlds and understand them but learn that ultimately these worlds spawn each other and are reflections of reality. In this book, we are distorted, a body of water with a puddle skipping across; each event creates a new reality. Each habit and ritual informs our actions and affects how we perceive the world.
  
  I couldn’t put this novel down. I looked forward to reading it when I got home from work. Here’s a contemporary vision of our social media meltdown and its implications. The death of poetry and the value of artistry. I wanted to read these ideas and watch them evolve through the text.
  
  Doubinsky writes with the spiritual essence of an extended haiku. A minimalist writing style that allows the reader to experience the story rather than have it shoved down their throat. I was able to interpret and understand this book on my own terms. Like a book of poetry, I was left with impressions and ideas; reading this book felt like floating through cyberspace. The book is a reflection on eternity, and sometimes the book is nothing more than the story of a man who is trying to find out who he is, or a man attempting to find redemption. I cared about the characters because I cared about their experience and their goals.
  
  This is a Dystopian nightmare that challenges our perception of identity, time, and entertainment. Every chapter seemed like an attempt at catharsis or the breakdown of a psychosis into crystalline shards of memory and regret. There is a journey that portrays the revolution of a mind and the search for meaning in different worlds. I felt like I was taking the journey along with Doubinsky through the haunted passages of time and dreams. Entire chapters provided moments of lucidity; poetic ruminations on the state of the mind as it warps and contorts along with our changing world.
• 
  Chris Berko

  Your overall enjoyment of this book will depend on whether you are a "the journey is all that matters" kind of person or a "the destination is everything" kind of person. I am the latter, and while it was a fun book and the journey was pretty wild at times, the ending was very underwhelming and left me wanting. Not much more to say other than I dug it but on a very basic level.
• 
  Grant Wamack

  There’s always a multitude of books sitting on my to-be-read pile and a lot of these are writers are new to me. One of these figures is Seb Doubinsky. He posts a lot of free poetry online and is supportive of a lot of writers in general. I finally dug into his novel Song of Synth and didn’t realize how damn good this guy is until now.
  
  Markus Olsen is an ex-hacker who is forced to work for the state’s secret service. He starts taking a potent drug known as Synth. It’s relatively new and induces incredibly vivid hallucinations. Matter of fact, I wish I could get my hands on a baggie full of synth.
  
  Olsen’s past as an anarchist pops back up in the form of a weird credit card that shouldn’t exist. He’s tasked with solving the mystery and let’s just say things become mad interesting. He stops taking Synth, but he still feels the effects and the hallucinations begin to bleed over into his reality. Real trippy ish.
  
  The rest of the book is too good to reveal and I’m not for spoiling a good ride. All of the comparisons I heard about Doubinsky being a modern-day Philip K. Dick are on point. However, Doubinsky has surely carved out his own lane.
  
  Doubinsky’s prose is poetic and crisp. At first I thought it would slow down the pace of the book, but I ripped through the pages and finished it within a couple days.
  
  The Song of Synth is a trippy yet beautiful exploration of what it means to be human in world obsessed with technology, entertainment, and any means of escaping reality. This is one pill you need to pop.
  
• 
  Marvin

  It is impossible to write a review of a Seb Doubinsky novel that doesn't mention the influences of Phillip K. Dick. That is because there are so many similar themes: The confusion between reality and illusion, the delicate role of identity, the connection between hallucinogenics and perception, and the soured fruits of repression in an authoritarian society to name just four. But there are distinct differences too. While Dick was essentially a pulp writer who tackled philosophical issues, Doubinsky is a poet who not only understands the subtlety of the themes, which Dick certainly did, but endows them with a poetic beauty.
  
  Now with The Song of Synth, an earlier novel (2013) by Doubinsky that has been reprinted this year, We can add William S. Burroughs to the list of influences. This is most evident in the first half of the novel where the protagonist is constantly under the influence of a drug called Synth whose hallucinations are so strong and of such long duration that they can be easily mistaken for reality. In both the works of Dick and Burroughs, hallucinations and multiple realities have a symbiotic relationship. Doubinsky's merging of hallucinogens with virtual reality games also bring to mind Gibson in content if not in style. I'm going to toss out one more name in the mix and mention the "non-fiction" writer Carlos Casteneda. In Casteneda, as in Song of Synth, Hallucinogens offer not just a voyage to an alternate reality but often a tool to understand the one we are already in. Doubinsky's protagonists may be confused and lost in the varying interpretations of their realities but eventually they became grounded and address the sociopolitical dilemma they live in.
  
  Since I leaped straight into an analysis, perhaps I should offer some grounding of my own and describe the bare bones of The Song of Synth. Markus Olsen is a former hacker who is now working for the corrupt government of Viborg City hunting hackers. It was part of a plea deal that kept him out of jail even while those his partners ended up with thirty years imprisonment. He escapes from the misery of his life through a new and possibly dangerous drug called Synth. It blends fantasy and reality together to the point that they become inseparable for the user. The safety of this devil's deal is challenged when Markus is assigned to examine a recently arrested hacker and discover a novel with himself as a character. This leads him to past allies in his life and perhaps a way out of the trap he has made for himself.
  
  Doubinsky's novel can be said to have two halves. The first half takes place in the corrupt and oppressive Viborg City. This is an alt universe Doubinsky has used before. Viborg City is a city of economic castes and massive corruption. Virtual reality seems to be an "opium of the people" designed to help them escape and ignore their harsh reality. The second half takes place in Samarqand, a country with its own problems and corruption but with hints of revolution and tastes of freedom. It is a country where a poet can be a hero. The first half reeks of Burroughs as Markus struggles through his existential crisis like a junkie without a cause. The second half is more mainstream, so to speak, offering a quasi-mystery and throwing a few new teases along the way like a search for Alexander the Great's tomb. But these are only important to the extent they add to the main story of Marcus's own journey and resolution.
  
  There are many layers in The Song of Synth but ultimately it is a novel about identity. Markus values his identity in what he does but there are many aspects to identity he does not understand. Identity is also in the way we value relationships and art. It in the way other perceive us and we perceive them. And it is the role forced on us, but ultimately rejected and accepted by us, by a society that either embraces or suffocate individuality. These are again similar themes we see in Dick, Burroughs and Casteneda . Doubinsky puts his own poetic stamp on it and welcomes us to interpret it with our own visions. Is it a perfect novel? Of course not. Does it rise to the equal of a Dick or Burroughs. No. It does lose the flow occasionally and some of the "hints" get lost in the shuffle. Yet it is an exceptional work out of the mainstream but still accessible for those who don't mind a little work while they read.
  
  Doubinsky is still a young writer relatively speaking. There are bound to be more works from him and I suspect we will visit Viborg City once again as it seems to be the perfect setting for the author's sometime hallucinogenic, sometime socio-political meanderings. If they are even close to this work, they will be very welcomed.
  
  
• 
  Rodney

  I should have done this review long ago. A phenomenal read. Doubinsky has somehow relayed spies, drugs, class struggle and government in an impossibly poetic way. This may just be my book of the year.
  Markus Olson was part of a group called the Potemkin Crew, responsible for hacking and destroying 5 war satellites, worth billions. Ten years have passed since having his home raided and losing girlfriend Karen to his activities. He ​now works for Viborg Security Center, part of his plea to shorten his sentence. Lonely and wearing a security anklet, ​he is hooked on the experimental street drug Synth. His superiors discover a card which isn’t linked to any existing accounts, but has an unlimited balance. With it, there is an unpublished book, the Potemkin Overture. It is his task to find the origin and significance of each. He realizes t​he answers are sometimes in such obvious locations, and is lead to a whole world that he is a bit embarrassed he did not know existed, considering his status as a “hired hacker.” W​ithout going into full synopsis mode or giving away too much, the numerous, well played twists that follow are something to be praised. Important elements:
  A cruel and unfair class system.
  A secret place for forbidden art: Erewhon.
  Synth and the after effects.
  Gloria.
  Karen.
  Which version of Markus will be the one he stays with and where?
  
  Through the phases of the protagonist’s experience I was hooked. The many facets of the story, carried out with precision. The skillfully placed moments when the characters cross paths added depth and the element of surprise to the plot.
  
  At the finish I was drained, ecstatic and reflective in all the right ways. This hallucinogenic sci-fi
  manages to be both entertaining and beautiful while exploring the addiction to technology, socio-political struggles, and ultimately identity. I hope that somehow I have managed to come even remotely close to relaying the experience I had reading The Song of Synth.
• 
  Meerkat Press

  A brilliant novel! Our fav Doubinsky book so far!
• 
  Bandit

  I’ve been working through the City States series. Finally, in proper order. Working isn’t the right word, it implies work and this is the opposite of work…fun. There’s something about these books that just really speaks to me.
  This one, book two in the series that can technically be read in any order, is considerably more linear and less experimental than its predecessor, which works well for my brain. Though it’s still plenty odd, compellingly so.
  The plot finds its protagonist, a former anarchist, a digital savant and an addict, a man of many names and a criminal past, trapped in an unenviable position of being something of a collaborator with the very regime he had once fought against, the regime that has cost him so dearly and not just him, but also his two best friends. And so, to quiet his conscience among other things, he stumbles through his days high on synth, the latest in experimental mind altering substances. Until circumstances and revelations I won’t discuss to maintain the suspense force him to make some radical choices and changes.
  That may sound fairly straight forward, but the world of City States in many things but. It’s a fascinating, complex futuristic composition of intricately developed geopolitics and exciting destinations. The stories of City States are exotic, erotic and extremely entertaining.
  The author’s narrative has a very specific beat to it, it reads very, very quickly, but skimps on nothing and every so often there’s a turn of phrase that just wows. It’s somewhat erratic, but perfectly coherent. If it were music and I liked jazz, I’d describe it as jazz. It’s inventive, original and very enjoyable. Synth itself is an absolutely fascinating invention, a very elaborate sort of mental elevation that puts conventional methods of getting high to shame and makes you understand the protagonist’s addiction.
  So yeah, lots of fun, easy one sitting read and (pun or no pun) quite a trip. Recommended.
  
  This and more at
  https://advancetheplot.weebly.com/
• 
  Leo

  A drug fueled dystopian about an hallucinational drug called Synth who gives effects of a indistinguishable reality. This was very entertaining read but not more then that for me.
• 
  Kendall

  I found this book well written and very entertaining, but there were a lot of interesting plots that were built up only to be abandoned and never mentioned again in the second half of the book. So many questions were left unanswered, which sometimes can be good as it forces the reader to think critically. However, with this one, I feel it left too much to be desired.
  
  Although I have given it a three star rating, I WOULD reccommend this book to others as I found it to be a fast-paced, addicting read.
• 
  b

  Absolutely wonderful. Doubinsky is a genius. Smart, funny, genuinely engaging work of fiction. Both political and apolitical, creating an alternate world of the mind, body, and soul. Look forward to reading more of Doubinsky’s work and the universe that he has created.
• 
  Nathalie

  Immense coup de coeur pour ce roman! The Song of Synth is different from anything I have read in a long, long time. It's fascinating, beautifully written, wonderfully strange, a kind of literary science-fiction novel. This was my first novel by Seb Doubinsky and it will not be the last. I am very glad to see that he has written many books before that one.
  
  "If anybody wondered what literature was about, there it was, plan and simple: comforting references. You weren't completely alone in this world. The books whispered their words in your ear. The same with music. A tune for every move. And the links were never down." - The Song of Synth.
• 
  Jeff

  An interesting study of a captured hacker, serving his time catching other hackers. He believes his sacrifice saved his girlfriend, but then meets her as the boss of huge software company. All this is complicated by a drug he is experimenting with, and gradually the drug takes over his life. So he makes a breaking his life & runs to the other end of the world to find a better version of himself
• 
  Zachary Tanner

  I just finished rereading this for the first time since Late Winter of 2017. The impression of this book that comes to mind when wafts of New Orleans visits trigger vivid memories of my life at the time I first read it is that of it being a strangely cohesive and coherent Dickian psychodrama, something I thought an oxymoron before encountering Doubinsky, something I thought impossible until I'd read this love letter to druggy SF: what fascinates me most in Dick is the irrelevance of what sense is made by working class protagonists amidst the Sisyphean struggle of posturing reality's nonsense. What fascinates me in Doubinsky is the use of this peculiar form as an allegory (by the metatactics of SYNTH's miltitary-engineered design and the semiotics of New Wave-esque cultural allusions), a fact which makes me think that jokes on monolingual Anglophone readers such as not recognizing at first familiar characters from Jules Verne are not only in jest, but this is the defining ascetic principle of Doubinsky's work, what makes it so punk rock, that it is informed by the classics to reject the classics in a way that is wholesome, invigorating, and, above all, entertaining. It takes a humanist, global citizen like Doubinsky (one of the characters of his gigantic alternate Mega Cities--New Babylon, New Petersburg, Samarquand, et al.) to rejuvenate North American science fiction in the dawn of the Global Age. In this book we have sublime literature packaged in a form equally satisfying to genre readers. It's a wonder this one has never been made into a movie. I'd star Jake Gyllenhaal as Markus, with Raquel Welch as Karen, Timothy Chalemet as the inspector, and a pixie-cut Zendaya as Saran. Alternately, a claustrophobic A 24 auteur piece in the mode of Ex Machina might be just as interesting.
• 
  Jordan N

  The Outkast song Synthesizer, featuring George Clinton, starts with the lyrics "Everbody's got opinions / on the way you're living/ but they can't fill your shoes/ life is made of half illusion", and these lyrics could describe Markus in Song of Synth. A man on a new drug, with lives virtual and multiple, but he is the only one who can do what he does and do it well. No matter how intelligent or successful Markus is in his activities, confusion reigns over his life. Digital worlds overlapping with reality and his shifting states of mind make the book an addictive whirlwind that rewires the way the reader thinks about the differences between a terrorist and a poet. In one world or city someone is a villain in another they are the hero.
  Doubinsky has a very readable prose that allows one to read the entire book without realizing it's about to be over. Like a software update that's downloaded before you even clicked download.
• 
  Byron 'Giggsy' Paul

  fun drug-fueled (but not drug dominated) phildickian post-cyberpunk. I enjoyed how this was in 2 parts, the first taking place in Denmark and the second taking place in Samarkand where only the main character was prominent in both and both had a distinct style separate from the other.
• 
  Geoff Balme

  Unusual drugs, inspired activist poets, Samarkand, tomb of Alexander the Great, a bored cop his spoilt cousin a couple of murders and curious online lovers and worlds. Doubinskys storytelling is smooth and modern and fun. I'll look for more!
• 
  Charles Cohen

  Real fever dream vibe, and it turns out I'm just not super into drug lit.
• 
  Allison

  I certainly liked it, but towards the end, I got less and less interested. Not my type, you know?
• 
  Roy

  Song of Synth skillfully reels us in with a dual stream-of-consciousness -- a damaged protagonist's wishes are intermittent hallucinations vivid enough to become an alternate reality, while his life turns increasingly twisted and dire.  Add a broad frame of historic and geographical reference, consummate noir style, alliances and betrayals, sex , exotic settings and the poetry of lines like "the dust of the streets here remembers," and the mix of elements becomes inevitable as the denouement ties it all together.  An extraordinary feat, filled with strangely beautiful sad echoes, longing, dreams.
• 
  David Bridges

  What do Peter Clines, Lauren Beukes, and Seb Doubinsky have in common? They are my favorite contemporary Science Fiction writers. What sticks out to me about Doubinsky is his ability to give me the same feelings I have when I read some of my favorite "older" (obviously relative) Science Fiction authors. Doubinsky has this way of channeling PK Dick or Matheson which gives me this calming feeling when I read him.
  
  Anyways, The Song of Synth. An alternate time In Viborg City. Markus Olsen is a white hat hacker against his will after being caught taking down an important government satellite. He is miserable and still dwells on his arrest. He's addicted to a hallucinogen called Synth which is making it increasingly difficult for him to determine what is real and what is a hallucination. He is becoming more frustrated with his situation by the day. While investigating a hacker for Viborg City he discovers a book called the The Potemkin Overture that motivates him to do more about his stasis. Investigating the origin of the book lead him to meeting someone from his past and he decides to make a run for it. His departure takes you to the second half of the book. Olsen goes undercover in a new land called Samarqand where he uncovers a lot about his past and aims for another new start.
  
  The prose is beautiful. Doubinsky is a master of saying so much minimally. One of my favorite lines is "the synth stretched in him like a satisfied cat". The dialog is straight and to the point. While this book is actually long for Doubinsky it likely would've been soooo much longer in another authors mind. There are deep layers of political nuance throughout the book. If you like your science fiction interesting with a creative literary flavor then I suggest The Song Of Synth.
• 
  Robin

  This book was all right, but I can already tell I'll be struggling to recall details in a month or two. Didn't leave much of an impression. There are little sparks and flashes of inspiration. Some interesting concepts. But not enough to catch kindling. It was clear that this book was trying to do Something Ambitious, but it might take a mind more inclined to academic reading than my own to suss it out.
  
  Checked a bunch of the boxes on the postmodernism list, not always to the story's advantage. Jameson, Lacan, Foucault are all represented (As well as Mulvey, though I don't know if that was intentional). And it's practically rolling in literary references, which is pleasant but not particularly nourishing. I think there was probably a very interesting plot in there - a small band of hackers take out a defense satellite to make a statement about global affairs, war, and peace! It does not end well for them! - but it got a little buried in the carefully disjointed narrative. Add to that some fairly watery characters that leave little impression (including three women who might as well have been the same woman) as well as a distracting preoccupation with sex and male virility and you get a resounding meh from me.
• 
  Katie Scofield

  Tried so hard....couldn't finish it. Maybe I'm just a literary Philistine, but it just jumped around too much to hold my interest. The jumps between drug-induced fantasy and reality were interesting at first, but at some point I needed something to latch onto, and never really found anything. Hate hate hate not finishing books, but had to do it this time.
• 
  Pixelmonkee

  Wish this book had kept its momentum from the first half to the second. Once Thomas/Markus/Mathias flees Viborg City, the pace slows dramatically, the enigmatic Karen disappears from the story, and the story eventually coasts to an unremarkable end.
  
  I was really into the first half. At least the book was a quick read so the second half didn’t drag out too long!
• 
  Jennifer Jamieson

  An interesting look at the construction of reality. The nature of the drug makes Marcus an unreliable narrator, but also makes us look at our own lives--are we constructing our own reality by seeing things as we prefer, much the way Synth is pulling things from Marcus' brain?
• 
  Donald Armfield

  Synth is a song in all of us, the path we choose alters the vision we take forth.
  Doubinsky’s creates a hallucinogenic memory of reality and freedom. It’s a drug-fueled Matrix under a sky of a distance future. An addiction from the first page to the last.
• 
  Andreas Jacobsen

  3.0