What's the story about?
Palmer Wilde built Root, the revolutionary brain-computer interface capable of regulating emotions, retrieving memories, and connecting minds. He plans to finally install Root, desperate to silence the grief that has plagued him since a drunk driver killed his parents and siblings. On the eve of Root's launch, he has a numinous encounter with an aircraft made of a complex form of light. It drops a black-stone cylinder with rotating dials that contain symbols that appear to be hieroglyphs.
Palmer's life is upended when he's introduced to a network of outlaws who use psychedelics to communicate with alien life. The same alien life that donated the object to Palmer, tasking him with stopping Root from becoming the instrument of humanity's assimilation.
Together, they set out on an adventure to find an Oracle who can help them decipher the Donation before Root's secret control system goes live. But Root's controllers learn of Palmer's plan. Elijah Brooks—Chicago's cyborg police chief—and a rogue government operative intend to use Root to control the human mind for greater peace and prosperity. While an occult climate fundamentalist, Ophelia Oali, infiltrates the police force, acting on a prophecy to kill Palmer and return humankind back to Mother Nature before anyone can wield Root.
They want Palmer assimilated. Or Dead.
He was ready to abandon his life; now, he's on a dangerous adventure that takes him to corners of Chicago and crevasses of his mind he thought impossible. Palmer must get to the Oracle to discover how he can use the Donation. But what's inside is far bigger than Root. Not only will it force him through the unthinkable, but it will require Palmer to accept a fate he believes he's unworthy of, all to preserve the consciousness that he once wanted to escape.
The territory
Both a propulsive technothriller and a haunting exploration of grief, control, and what it means to be human, The Donation explores fascinating ideas around psychedelics, alien life, quantum physics, brain-computer interfaces, consciousness, and nature, while including raw and complex characters. It combines the transhuman urgency of Blake Crouch's UPGRADE with the metaphysical mystery of Nicholas Binge's ASCENSION, and will appeal to fans of the OA, Devs and The Matrix, while answering one big question across three converging POVs: who gets to decide what it means to be human?
Follow publication updates→