Zero Sum Game

"Yeah, that’s right. I like that. Zero Sum Game has an action hero whose superpower is math. The hero is an expert in mathematics , and has the ability to see the math behind everyday things, and she uses that to perform superhuman feats. We don’t really get a lot of speculative fiction in which the thing that allows the heroine to do wondrous feats is math! It’s fresh, it’s exciting, it’s fun, and it’s so moving. You care about her. So, if you like action-packed stories that feature a strong, clever, wonderful protagonist who uses math as her superpower, this is the book for you. That’s right. A lot of books to explore, once you’ve been through the first one. I think the perception that speculative fiction is inaccessible is largely based on the idea that it deals with experiences and references the nontechnical reader may not be familiar with. But any kind of fiction, whether it’s about people falling in love on college campuses or a small-town murder mystery , requires some knowledge about the particular world that it takes place in. It’s all about the writer’s skill to make you want to learn about that world so that you can appreciate why characters care about the things they do. It’s true that Huang makes a lot of jokes about math that you’ll love if you have some knowledge of higher math, but Huang does a masterful job of making you care about the things that Cas cares about so that if you don’t care about math, you end up getting her view of the world and why it’s beautiful and compelling."