Inara, like her mother, is genetically predisposed to cancer and is racing against time to use her biohacking skills to find a cure. But a decade of engineered plagues has forced most people to look to corporations to protect them with a personal biofactory patch – programmable biology that requires users to surrender ownership of their bodies.
Rajaniemi’s biotech is immaculately grounded by the fact that he runs a company trying to do much of this in real life. His vision of the dangers of modern biotechnology and our possible responses are underpinned by a robust scientific understanding. What is weaker is the psychedelic ‘Burning Man’ hacker aesthetic, which roots one side of the novel’s conflict in 90s-era phone-phreaking and cypherpunk counterculture, while opposing it with a prescient vision of the coming corporate land grab.
While I’d put this firmly in thriller territory, it nonetheless asks important questions about the blurring of the boundary between our bodies and biological machines, about whether we will retain control of our biology or cede it to corporations. The plot is well-paced and wisely avoids the trite answer that the open-source biopunks are good and corporations are evil. Instead, Inara bounces between allegiances, painfully aware that neither side is a perfect solution to the problem of our future. Unfortunately, it concludes by setting up a sequel that, as of 2026, remains frustratingly absent.
While Rajaniemi doesn’t add much new to biopunk’s familiar pop culture obsessions, junkyard art, and bioluminescent aesthetic, he does provide a highly enjoyable thriller with an admirable technical fidelity. Darkome doesn’t rise to the heights of his Jean le Flambeur trilogy, nor does it dig as deeply as Naam’s Nexus trilogy into the examination of the social impact of our biotech future, but if you’re new to biopunk and want an accessible entry point, this is a great read.
