In a dying world, the last frontier is the mind.
And reality is a relic.
Humanity has abandoned the physical world for Onyros—a vast, dystopian virtual sprawl where consciousness thrives and flesh is obsolete.
Logan Bochniak is an illegal extractor, pulling minds out of digital paradise before they collapse for good. Years of jumping between realities have left his own mind dangerously frayed. Guilt of past actions is catching up. He is isolated, yet determined to find his way back home.
Then he finds it.
An impossible anomaly. A hidden signal.
Something even the creators of Onyros can’t explain.
As reality fractures and enforcers close in, Logan races to uncover the source of the anomaly—and the truth behind humanity’s final escape.
A dystopian science fiction novel for adults—a cerebral, high-concept thriller about identity, consciousness, and the cost of living inside your own illusion. Perfect for fans of William Gibson, Peter Watts, and Black Mirror.
In a dying world, the last frontier is the mind.
And reality is a relic.
Humanity has abandoned the physical world for Onyros—a vast, dystopian virtual sprawl where consciousness thrives and flesh is obsolete.
Logan Bochniak is an illegal extractor, pulling minds out of digital paradise before they collapse for good. Years of jumping between realities have left his own mind dangerously frayed. Guilt of past actions is catching up. He is isolated, yet determined to find his way back home.
Then he finds it.
An impossible anomaly. A hidden signal.
Something even the creators of Onyros can’t explain.
As reality fractures and enforcers close in, Logan races to uncover the source of the anomaly—and the truth behind humanity’s final escape.
A dystopian science fiction novel for adults—a cerebral, high-concept thriller about identity, consciousness, and the cost of living inside your own illusion. Perfect for fans of William Gibson, Peter Watts, and Black Mirror.
There it lay: The future of humanity.
It had brown, scruffy hair. It smelled like sulfuric acid and was clad in gray rags.
The future of humanity had forgotten how to speak. It had spit crusted on the corners of his mouth and eyes filled with milk. It smiled. A thousand demons could have spawned from that smile.
The future of humanity had forgotten how to think. How to breathe on its own. It was hooked on cables, on tubes and bits. It twitched. It drooled.
The future of humanity wore a ghost’s complexion.
A child of Bellgraph.
A cortical phantom.
What a strange sight.
Dr. Sumac Vashili looked at the boy. And then at the interface—that metal, shell-shaped rim at the temple. It was pristine, carefully maintained, while the skin around it deteriorated.
Humanity’s priorities made flesh.
He felt helpless. Mere days ago, he had carried the scrawny body onto the examination table himself. Now, he was minutes away from throwing a white sheet over his face.
The boy wasn’t dead.
It was worse.
He had carried out tests. The goal? Probing the boy’s cortex. The neural flicker had grown fainter by the day, but there was nothing he could do. Like trying to light a candle in a drowned room, each spark dying with a hiss against the soaked wick.
But I keep striking matches.
Hoping for a fiber dry enough to catch.
He called for the nuns to collect the boy. They wouldn’t be here for another hour, so he took his time and closed the file. Conclusion: a fried neocortex and a limbic system reduced to pink foam. Years of uninterrupted virtual immersion had taken their toll on the young brain. The oldest song of Bellgraph. The eternal script; the barrage of Onyros.
He took a final look at the kid. I feel so little for him.
The tides of Bellgraph had worn him down to apathy years ago. His laboratory occupied a spot in the Kampa Clinic, on the edge of the neon-drenched megalopolis. The lab sat near the marketplace, where street vendors hawked bionics and virtual phlegm like household items. His workspace was housed in a vast chamber, its high ceiling dotted with LED panels. Despite all his years here, he couldn’t escape the leaden stench of blood that permeated every corner.
He couldn’t help himself. After the boy fell into another stupor, he activated the holographic projector and checked the boy’s documentation once again.
Five years immersed in the virtual network Onyros—uninterrupted. He was too afraid to return to this reality. Spent every waking hour on a virtual plain called “Basin”. Sumac had never heard of it. But then again, Onyros contains hundreds of thousands of plains and levels. Nobody knew them all. He only knew one certainty: given enough time, they all had the same effect on the brain—complete neurological atrophy. The mind grew dependent on data packages until its sensory capacities collapsed.
The brain’s construction doesn’t allow for long-term virtual immersion. Took us four hundred years to find out, and now it’s too late.
He zoomed in on the boy’s prefrontal cortex. Where there should have been a bustle of synaptic connections, there was only a flickering mist. The dendritic spines had atrophied to near non-existence. The very language of thought—dead. Dried out.
And there is the temporal lobe. The hippocampus. Shrunk to a fraction of its normal size. Wernicke’s area, responsible for language comprehension, was degraded. The nuns of this city have branded this symptom interitus linguarum, derived from the Babylonian confusion of tongues. Interitus was Latin for destruction. A fitting title, Sumac thought. There has never been a greater destruction in the history of mankind.
„But the most depressing aspect of the boy’s fate: The parietal lobe, tasked with sensory integration, showed signs of severe hyper-connectivity. It was lit up like a bionic slaughterhouse, but he lay motionless on the examination table. A bright darkness is engulfing the boy, and there is nothing I can do to get through to him, no light, nor darkness, to direct at him.
“Zaaaahhh…”
A guttural moan. Followed by a hiss. A last glimpse at the projector—the nucleus accumbens and the ventral tegmental area, vanishing into neural fog.
He switched off the projector, plunging the room into twilight.
The anger that engulfed Sumac Vashili was overwhelming. He didn’t direct his fury at the boy or Onyros, but at the city—at the men who guarded, maintained, expanded, and perfected this system, disregarding the millions of souls plugged into the network. And the millions left out.
He despised them with a passion. Sumac stood at the forefront of the 25th century’s silent plague—the neurological plight called Rosenkranz & Scheer, named after its discoverers centuries ago. We’ve come to the evolutionary dead end, and I have the great privilege of witnessing it from the best seats in the house.
Sumac then approached the window, gazing out into the neon-drenched twilight. The overcast skyline of Bellgraph stretched before him, punctuated by gargantuan structures looming in the distance.
The nuns arrived at noon to collect the boy. Sumac never learned his name—he was part of an endless stream of patients. He remembered moments, revelations, and despair, but never names. Only a few ever stuck with him.
Making what happened around midnight so extraordinary.
As darkness settled over Bellgraph, Sumac had just finished documenting another case—a young man ravaged by Rosenkranz & Scheer—when his intercom rang. Not the usual bureaucrat directing new patients to his clinic, nor a nun reporting on instabilities.
This was different.
When Fiona Watts’ voice rang in his intercom, he let his document pad fall to the ground.
He had seen her just a week ago, but the woman had lain motionless and mute as always, while her daughter watched him perform the usual brain scans and prescribe neurostimulants. The city’s wolves had tortured her, so she suffered from a severe case of interitus linguarum.
But there it was.
Her soft voice ringing in his intercom.
“Doctor? It’s me, Fiona. And Maya. We are standing in front of the clinic,” she whispered. “Could you please come and get us?”
For a moment, he couldn’t move. Of course, he would go to them, but one question dominated his mind: How has she gotten her voice back?
‘When thinking of the triumph of the future, you probably imagined a Megalopolis teeming with life, technology, and human marvels. There is none. It’s empty. Everything of value has migrated to Onyros, leaving a ghost town the size of a continent.’
Where do I begin? Dystopian futures, harvested humans, a cult of nuns, distorted realities and the potential of immortality. Onyros Chronicles Book One: Splinter (moving forward I will simply refer to the book as Onyros) by D.K Thorne is in this reviewers humble opinion a modern-day sci-fi masterpiece. I have not read anything this enjoyable, unique and thought provoking since Alastair Reynolds delivered Chasm City in 2001. D.K Thorne has delivered a remarkably complex, action-packed book with some really challenging themes about the nature of immortality, human evolution and the degeneration of the brain. If AI and a virtual world are our future, let’s not be so certain that it will be our salvation. Published as tech millionaires begin to look for a virtual upload of consciousness and technology such as neurolink in an experimental stage, this book is a glimpse into a possible future. The blend of genres elevates this beyond just a typical science fiction romp on distant planets with laser beams and rocket ships. This is a gritty journey about redemption, loss, betrayal and hope.
The story line itself feels like an LA noir detective story mixed with biblical redemption arcs. Complex, layered and gripping. Thorne weaves together a story about returning home, of saving mankind from itself all the while navigating the complexity of what a digital and virtual world of the 25th century would look like. As the opening quote suggests, it is not pretty. In the vein of blade runner Logan Bochniak a ‘splinter’ from the city of Bellgraph is given a job on behalf of a mysterious virtual immortal to find a witness to a crime committed on a virtual plane. The powers that be the Lamantheans want to bury any trace of the incident and ensure the glitch that happened can’t be replicated. The job Logan rapidly realises is an impossible one and working with a team that he does not know with some members actively working against him whilst being hunted by a castrated cannibal Logan needs to find a way to do the right thing and stay alive.
What worked well. The buggest thing is that Logan Bochniak is a fantastic anti-hero. Thorne really builds an unusual character to route for. Perhaps it is the fact he is dying ever so slowly because of brain misuse and the effects of a disease called Scheer that starts to eat through his grey matter. Maybe it is the fact he has an old-fashioned moral code that leads him into trouble or perhaps it’s because in this vision of ‘homo virtualis’ he is the most human character in the novel. The supporting cast are also great ranging from the mysterious to the downright psychotic. What was really enjoyable was the range of skill sets that have emerged in this new and foreign land all surrounding the integrity and maximisation of our brain power. Bodies really do become an afterthought, sacks of meat which can be enhanced and where vanity in an appearance is oddly antiquated. What matters now is your index. I really enjoyed this as what it demonstrates is how different societies value different things and while the Greeks may have valued beauty Bellgraph in the 25th century could not care less about the bodies we possess. Then there is the city itself. Bellgraph is a hellscape which wonderfully reflects the society it houses. The open wounds and mutations the people perform on themselves but also the neglect they place in other aspects of their bodies is mirrored by Bellgraph. There are modern wonders as huge servers touch the sky and ionise the air around it and then there are abandoned sewers and hospices where the decent try and repair the broken inhabitants. Between Logan and the city you find yourself feeling the oppressive nature of the novel and the walls closing in as Logan races against time to find answers.
As for limitations of the book there are only really two. The first is the lexicon used by Thorne to describe the various trades used by the residents of Bellgraph and the specialisms found in accessing the brain. Splinters, Drifters, Neurads, Orkhams, Nikons, Runners and all the scientific language around brain development and diseases surrounding brain degeneration. The language developed by Thorne is fantastic in one way as there is nothing, I have come across that is even close to similar to the world built but it also is taxing to follow at the start and does take some time to get to grips with. A simple lexicon or glossary of terms at the start of the novel would help significantly.
The other criticism I can see being levelled is that people will draw a lot of parallels between Onyros and the Matrix movie. There certainly are similarities between Logan and Morpheus. A splinter who goes around waking people up, pulling them out of a virtual reality back to the real world (whether wanted or not) is strikingly similar to a ship’s captain pulling Neo out of the Matrix. While there is similarity about the nature of a virtual system and people uploading themselves to it the villainous machines are not there. This is a purely human experience and it comes with all the foibles that human beings possess. I think that is where the similarities end though and Thorne is actually giving us a much more complicated dilemma. Do people want to be woken up? Is ignorance really bliss? Potentially some readers will not see the depth of what is going on in this book and see it purely as a middle of the road science fiction book and not the ambitious philosophical work it really is.
I enjoyed this book immensely. Sometimes we come across ‘art’ whether that be an album or a movie which captivates you. Yet it does more than that, when you return to it you are struck by a thought, that this is how music will sound in the future, or this is how art will look in the future. Onyros for me read like how science fiction books should read. I finished this novel wanting more, I wanted to discover more of this universe that Thorne has built. I want to travel to the different realties contained in Onyros and I want to see the revolution and the retribution continue. I highly recommend this book. It won’t be for everyone, but for true science fiction lovers this is an absolute must read. I do think it will have its detractors though, but great work is often divisive. If anyone picks this book up, stick with it as it is absolutely worth it. This is book one in the series so there will hopefully be more. Will it follow another character with a different skill set from a splinter, I can only wait and see but I will definitely be picking up book two.
5 out of 5.