The Skill of Our Hands (Incrementalists, 2)
Incrementalists • Book 2
by Steven Brust, Skyler White
Why You'll Love This
A secret society that has quietly nudged history for forty thousand years suddenly can't agree on whether to stop a murder — or who's next.
- Great if you want: immortality explored through identity, memory, and moral compromise
- The experience: cerebral and layered — two timelines braided with quiet tension
- The writing: Brust and White weave past and present with confident, tight control
- Skip if: you haven't read book one — context here is non-negotiable
About This Book
What does it mean to improve the world when you've been trying—and dying, and returning—for forty thousand years? The Incrementalists are a secret society of only two hundred people, but their reach spans millennia. They cheat death, inherit memories across lifetimes, and work quietly to nudge humanity toward something better. When Phil, their most stable and enduring member, is shot dead, the mystery isn't just who pulled the trigger—it's what threatens the fragile, patient work they've devoted so many lives to protecting. The stakes are intimate and enormous at once.
Brust and White write with a distinctive double vision, threading contemporary Arizona alongside the volatile American frontier of 1859, trusting readers to hold both timelines and feel how the past keeps exerting pressure on the present. The prose has an unusual texture—brainy and emotionally precise, playing seriously with questions of identity, memory, and moral compromise without ever becoming dry. The collaboration itself shapes the book's rhythm, giving different characters genuinely different inner lives. It rewards readers who enjoy fiction that thinks while it moves.
