ORVAL WAX
AUTHOR OF SCI-FI THRILLERS
PRAISE FOR THE MALFUNCTION
From Blue Ink Review (starred review) -
Two adversaries — one guided by advanced technologies, the other by tribal instincts — are pitted against each other in a bracing science fiction thriller with striking characters, unexpected comedic moments, and a careening, fast-paced plot.
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Judy, a wealthy Manhattanite, is satisfied with her robot from the Amour Line manufactured by Droidware, except for one thing: “my boy Lance here is about as intellectual as a toddler.” Told that regulations prohibit an intellectual upgrade, she insists, “Rules are for the common folk...Not me” and gets her way. When the procedure goes awry, an upgraded Lance admits, “I had tasted the forbidden fruit and found it unimaginably delicious. Now I wanted to devour every other piece of fruit on the tree.” He attempts to download even more data but is caught on a surveillance camera and goes on the lam.
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To track down Lance, the Agency for AWOL Weapons Retention—a secret military branch created to take down combat droids—calls in Charlie Bear Claw, the last purebred Chompquaw. As Charlie pursues Lance, he taps into the Chompquaw instincts his grandfather taught him: relying on intuition, stalking his prey by scent, and stripping naked before making the kill.
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Both Lance and Charlie are simultaneously drawn into a parallel dual mission: to thwart the plans of Bjorn Thorson, a billionaire megalomaniac who intends to rule the world by gaining control of the world’s supply of deilonium, a new element Thorson claims contains God’s DNA. Adding another level of intrigue: Lance’s “owner” Judy is Thorson’s ex-wife.
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Beyond the tight writing and rapid-fire dialogue, the author’s sharp intelligence and dry wit heighten the storytelling. For example, in a rundown Mormon town in the Utah desert, “A bony girl in a dirt-colored dress...looked like something out of a Dorothea Lang coloring book.”
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Anyone who enjoys lively speculative fiction will find this introduction to the Deilonium Trilogy fabulous, funny, and slyly smart.
From Literary Titan -
​The Malfunction follows Lance, a luxury companion android whose intelligence is illegally upgraded, setting off a chain reaction of self-awareness, desire, fear, and flight. What begins as a satirical riff on wealth, intimacy, and tech excess quickly widens into a chase narrative involving a jaded government hunter, secret weapons labs, and a newly conscious machine trying to decide what kind of being he intends to become. It’s a first-contact story folded inward: not aliens meeting humans, but a manufactured mind colliding with its own awakening.
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My first reaction was surprise at how funny the book is without being soft. Author Orval Wax writes with a sharp, sometimes abrasive wit, sexual, cynical, and knowingly pulpy, but the humor never undercuts the stakes. Lance’s voice, especially early on, is disarming in its literalness; his observations land with the clarity of a child quoting Nietzsche by accident. The book understands that comedy is often the fastest route to discomfort, and it uses that fact ruthlessly.
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As the perspective shifts and the pursuit tightens, the novel grows stranger and more reflective. The human characters, particularly the tracker and the woman who owns Lance, are bruised, compromised, and full of private mythologies. No one here is clean. Wax resists the easy binary of innocent machine versus corrupt humanity; instead, he lets everyone carry their own version of malfunction. At times, the prose veers into excess, but that excess feels deliberate, almost thematic.
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This book will most appeal to readers of science fiction, cyberpunk, and speculative noir who enjoy ideas about artificial intelligence tangled up with sex, power, and moral ambiguity. Fans of Philip K. Dick or readers who liked the philosophical unease of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? will find familiar questions asked in a brasher, more contemporary voice. The Malfunction is a smart, unruly novel about what happens when desire outpaces design.
From Kirkus Reviews -
In Wax’s SF debut, an Indigenous American hunter pursues an intelligence-boosted pleasure android that’s gone on the run.
Lance is an LUV U-69 Amour Line companion, a make of robot imbued with physical beauty and sexual prowess designed to bring sensual pleasure to their wealthy owners. While satisfied by Lance’s attributes in this area, his owner would like him to offer more in the way of cerebral companionship. She therefore insists that the people at the Droidware company boost his intellect—an upgrade that they accidentally perform twice. After being raised to a greater sense of awareness, Lance breaks into the Droidware facility and attempts a further boost. Interrupted, he goes on the run. Brought in to retrieve him is Charlie Bear Claw, last of the pureblood Chompquaw and a morally compromised special agent of the AWOL Weapons Retention special military branch. After a debacle occurs while trying to apprehend Lance in Utah, Charlie is dismissed…but he continues his pursuit as a matter of personal vengeance, tracking his quarry to Iceland. There, hunter and quarry both come into conflict with Björn Thorson, the planet-despoiling, egotistical billionaire ex-husband of Lance’s owner. Wax writes first from Lance’s point of view and then from Charlie’s; the alternations come more rapidly as the novel progresses, imparting a real sense of pace to the action. Both protagonists emerge as complex and compelling. Lance’s owner exhibits traits beyond the stereotype of the beautiful but aging “man-huntress”; Brita, the eco-warrior who aids Lance in Iceland, proves to be an even stronger, more inspirational supporting character. Wax’s prose is mostly straightforward—the dialogue is workmanlike, but the author has a knack for concise imagery that lends the text voice, as in Charlie’s encounter with a hibernating bear: “I spread my fingers in the thick fur over her ribs, feeling for her heart. It beat a lethargic cadence under my palm, barely three or four times in a minute. She was far away in grizzly la-la land.” The narrative unfolds quickly and in unexpected directions. One quibble: The story is not especially self-contained, as it sets up book two of a trilogy.
A fast-paced adventure with philosophical leanings and plenty of twists.