John Twelve Hawks caught my attention with the impressive Fourth Realm trilogy. Whilst the new novel ‘Certainty’ does not reach those heights, it offers a tight plot line giving a linear journey into a child’s eye world of the near future.
Two decades ago, John Twelve Hawks hit the bestseller lists with The Traveler, living entirely off the grid. It was the zeitgeist of the time. His MO through these novels stresses the realities of data harvesting, facial recognition, and mass CCTV. After a lengthy absence from novel-length fiction, he has resurfaced with Certainty.
Set in a dystopic post-pandemic near-future where algorithmic governance has quietly replaced democratic norms, Certainty revolves around a brutally cold premise: what happens when society trusts predictive software more than human innocence?
The use of the child, ten-year-old Kate, and its plush toy is a creative if under exploited move that is slowly unravelled by the end of the novel. Nonetheless, it brings a personal element to a plot that is highly relevant to this era.
Kate hasn’t committed a crime, but a predictive policing metric flags her as statistically certain either to commit murder or be killed within a month. Yes, its Minority Report with a child. Rather than questioning the mathematics, the state decides she needs to be tagged and neutralised. Kate goes on the run across a frayed American landscape toward New York City, accompanied by Zeno—an AI-enabled plush toy that oscillates between guardian angel and digital babysitter.
The story itself is set in the near future which gives it a slight post-apocalyptic feel but not in a defined way that sets the tone of the novel. The limitation here is that the near future presented lacks anything not covered before, nor is there much detail on it to set context.
Kate’s journey is intertwined with two other threads: a cynical NYPD detective investigating the murder of a top roboticist, and a young couple trying to make a living through a virtual reality game. The story takes a left turn into the games but it lacks jeopardy. The multi-POV structure can be messy when the pieces of the murder and the child on the run do not click until the end. But who they are up against are largely peripheral figures.
Twelve Hawks’s writing style is clear and draws you in. Kate is a brave ten year old girl and that is the centrality of the story – a ten year child’s old journey in a post apocalyptic world with a plush toy for company. The toy is like a minder to her with its English received pronunciation, than an intelligent sentient device.
At times she behaved as more mature than her age, which did not convince. However involving the prose is in explaining the plot the creative ideas are under developed. With the lack of serious jeopardy of the adult world it lacked grittiness that the tension needed.
Compared to the sprawling, mystical world of The Fourth Realm Trilogy. Certainty may not reinvent the dystopian wheel, but it is a nimble, intelligent, and entertaining ride.
