Null Entity (The Volatile Memory Duology, #2) by Seth Haddon Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: artificial intelligence, queer romance, science fiction, space opera
Series: Volatile Memory Duology #2
Pages: 192
Published by Tordotcom on July 21, 2026
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads
In Null Entity, sequel to Seth Haddon’s bloody and sapphic Volatile Memory, Wylla and Sable take their revenge to the very corporation keeping the galaxy turning.
With her identity erased from the Corporate Federation, Wylla is a ghost in the untraceable, unpredictable, and fueled by vengeance. She fights alongside Sable, the AI consciousness whose murder they avenged, the one she loves in ways no system could ever define. Together, they’ve built a reputation for tearing through VisorForge’s carefully constructed lies.
But notoriety has a cost.
When one of their attacks draws the attention of the Edenic Order—a clandestine eco-resistance whose insurgents bloom with Old Earth flora—Wylla and Sable are offered something more than a chance to dismantle VisorForge from the roots up.
As they fall deeper into the Order’s radical vision, tensions rise. Wylla, seduced by ideology, by purpose, by something—or someone—else. Sable, pushed to her morals’ limits when what she’s wanted since death is at her fingertips.
To survive, they’ll need to embrace what makes them two minds, one body, and a shared resolve to bring down a corporatized dystopia—no matter the cost.
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
My Review:
I picked this up for two reasons. First, because I read the first book in the duology, Volatile Memory, and was really curious to see how Wylla and Sable’s story would end. Admittedly, I kind of expected it to end the way it began – in a hail of blaster fire. And it kind of did – but it also didn’t.
Second, because a more recent book, And Side By Side They Wander, reminded me of Volatile Memory quite a bit, and I found myself both curious to see if my memory was correct, AND hoping that Null Entity would manage to squeak out something like a Happy Ever After for Wylla and Sable – or at least something closer and frankly a bit more sane than the ending of And Side By Side They Wander, well, wandered into.
From one perspective, the concept behind Volatile Memory and Null Entity is both very SFnal and more than a bit different from the usual. Because Wylla is a human – admittedly a human extremely down on her luck and looking for a big score – but entirely, wholly and solely human. Her story is set in the kind of universe where corporate hegemonies rule everything. Sometimes under a veneer of civilian government – and sometimes that veneer is practically transparent. But a world in which people think they have both rights and chances that will only last as long as their real overlords, those megacorporations, allow them to.
Sable is a victim of that corporate overlordship. Also a victim of the patriarchy, in the person of her rich, slimy, megacorp stooge of a husband. I should say the ex-person, as he’s now a corpse, courtesy of Sable and Wylla.
Part of Sable’s victimization was to have her consciousness uploaded and trapped inside a mask that seems to combine cybernetics, AI, and “Big Brother is watching you”. Everyone wears a mask, which seems to be a descendant of today’s “smart glasses” combined with all of the tracking and monitoring software that conspiracy theories today believe are inside either cell phones or vaccines or both.
The experiment that trapped Sable into the LYREFIRE mask, unbeknownst to her and, as it turns out, everyone else, was merely the first step on the corporate road to something that combines the worst features of slavery, zombification, and supersoldier serum into one really disgusting amalgam of meat and machinery in order to create a mindless, soulless corporate drone.
While Sable may still be a person, she no longer has a body. The story in Volatile Memory was wrapped around Wylla and Sable working out, well, how to work together while sharing Wylla’s body, and falling in love with each other even though they’re sharing way more than most lovers would ever be willing to – even when they’re sharing less than they’d like in all the usual, physical expressions of that love.
The first story ended with Wylla and Sable on the run after their righteous killing of Sable’s slimy ex. They’re doing their best to throw a wrench into the operations of the megacorp that made Sable’s ex rich and made Sable’s current situation possible.
But the megacorps – or one megacorp in particular – have all the levers of power and are not in the least shy about using them. They’re more than willing to pull the proverbial gloves off and take over the galaxy – now that Sable has shown them just how successful – and how obliterating – the mask technology can be.
Sable and Wylla don’t have a chance of outgunning or even outrunning them. Unless a third player enters the game on their side. Or at least on their own side. This enemy of their enemy might – or might not – be their friend, but they’re even more willing than Sable and Wylla to tear the universe down in the hopes of making a chance for everyone else.
Escape Rating A-: I liked Wylla and Sable a lot in the first book. Their blending, or joining, or whatever best expresses their relationship, was a bit of a fantastic surprise. What makes this second book a good mirror image for the first book is that Volatile Memory was about the two of them figuring out how to work together and BE together while sharing a body.
This second story takes all of that and then turns it on its side and splits it on its axis, because it does the thing that they thought was impossible – it splits them back into two bodies and forces them to figure out how to trust each other when they no longer have that intimate knowing of sharing a body.
Because their separation makes their individual motivations for being in this mess in the first place abundantly clear. Sable still wants – even needs – revenge. Killing her ex wasn’t nearly enough. She wants to dismantle the entire megacorp overlord structure that enabled his villainy in the first place.
That they are using his work and her forced participation in it as a way of being even more evil – back to the zombified supersoldiers – enrages her even more. Nevertheless, her motives are rooted in the personal and not in saving the universe.
Wylla just wants to be done. She wants her own body back AND she wants to retire from running and hide herself away. That was her persona before she met Sable, and that’s who she is at heart. She’s fought all her life and she’s tired of fighting. And now she’s feeling used, by Sable, the person that she loves, to participate in a scorched earth (scorched universe?) operation more or less against her will.
And on the third, in this case definitely cybernetic, hand, the ragtag remnants of a terrorist organization that is now backing Sable’s play have an agenda of their own. They’re willing to tear everything down in the hopes that something better will rise from the ashes – even though they know they won’t live to see it.
Or at least that’s how it appears. By the time Sable and Wylla discover the Thorned Root’s true motivations, they’re all in it up to their necks.
So this whole series started out as scavengers on the run, corporate megabosses on high, ragtag resistance sniping from the sidelines and two women falling in love from inside the same body. And that’s a hell of a start that carries bits of Murderbot, Firefly, Empress of Forever, Full Speed to a Crash Landing, These Fragile Graces, This Fugitive Heart and Sisters of the Vast Black along for its wild ride. The ending also has more than a bit of Mass Effect 3 in it, with those evil megacorps in the place of THOSE Reavers. Which is definitely saying a whole lot of somethings – including a just barely, maybe, possibly, hopeful ending.
