“I am a murderer,” the narrator says aloud to herself in front of the bathroom mirror each day. The sentence functions as a daily affirmation, her own version of CBT self-talk meant to boost her self- esteem. But there’s another reason for the ritual: she’s afraid of forgetting who she is. Her life of crime began by accident – at thirteen years old, she attempted to prank a classmate but wound up killing him instead. Surprised by how much she enjoyed the experience, she continues to experiment with various methods of revenge, starting with vandalized vehicles and progressing to premeditated murder. These acts are always aimed at those she deems deserving: an asshole SUV driver, an old man who doesn’t pick up his dog’s turds, the CEO of an energy company that’s destroying the environment. “My goal is to have fun while meting out a little justice here and there,” she says, “before we get to the ending where we all get swallowed up by the all-seeing omnipotent System.”

Alternately referred to as “the System” and “the Machine,” the narrator goes to great lengths to avoid its detection. “We’re all under constant observation in the panopticon of cameras, IP addresses, registries, chip cards, lists, passports, sign-ins, identifications, purchases, bonus points, and even ballots,” she warns. Yet the narrator sees herself as an anomaly – someone outside of the system who, because of her awareness of it, avoids being influenced. “I’m the observer, but I’m also under constant observation,” she says, explaining why she always leaves her phone at home during her so-called “plays.” Several times she brags about her tactics to avoid leaving a digital trace – only to tie up a target using knots she learned on YouTube.

Our protagonist is perceptive, especially when it comes to concepts larger than herself. She comments on the connection between the system’s increasing need for stimulation – more content, more data, more news – and how easily we simultaneously become numbed by it: “News is, by definition, a break in the continuity,” she says. “When people are constantly dying, and have been for generations, the media gets bored. And so do we.” There are some days she doesn’t need her daily affirmation to remind her who she is; in which case, “life is good, and [she] take[s] breaks.”

In the last ten pages of the book, the narrator seems to depart from all her previous rationale and caution – culminating in an unexpected rampage that I can only understand as a senseless act of boredom. Addicted to the intense stimulation they provide, she has become dependent on her little “breaks” to escape boredom; otherwise, she feels nothing at all.

The true horror in Of Vengeance lies in Kurtness’s ability to sway you to the protagonist’s side; more than once, I caught myself wholeheartedly agreeing with her worldview. Part of the reason she’s so relatable is that she’s not just a villain, she’s a victim as well. She makes her living as a translator, a profession that – thanks to Google’s translation algorithm, built on previous source translations uploaded online – will one day be “as obsolete as log driver and telegraph operator.” Sometimes, Kurtness seems to argue, corruption isn’t obvious; it can be disguised within the most innocent and innocuous-seeming of packages. And sometimes, you can be guilty for failing to ask questions or take action; you can be guilty simply for standing by and continuing to do nothing at all. mRb