A team of scientists and geologists have been employed by an oil company to search for oil fields in New Zealand. Rangi, their Maori guide entertains them with local legends of monsters while showing them local beauty spots.

Fitz, the narrator, is a specialist in robotics. His responsibility is to control small robots, using Virtual Reality, to crawl down through small cracks in the earth looking for oil. However, the more he does this the more he feels that someone, or something, is watching him. One day, after leaving the camp to collect more equipment, Fitz, Rangi and another scientist, Tess, return to find the camp has been ransacked and the other team members are dead.

After the police investigation Fitz and Tess return to the US and things seem to get back to normal. However, something is praying on their minds.

Shrunken Souls is a nice mixture of Maori mythology, science fiction, murder mystery and just a touch of romance. Through a series of events our two main characters are thrown together, supporting each other through some difficult times as they try to establish exactly what is going on.

Michael Cale has written a good, gentle little story with realistic characters and a well-paced comfortable style. The ideas within the tale are new and refreshing and the use of present-day technology makes for a pleasant change.

Well written and thoroughly enjoyable!

Synopsis
In the early twenty-first century, smart metals and nano-technology steer a quiet revolution.  Humans use virtual reality systems to pilot unimaginably small machines of seeking and surveillance.

From the far reaches of pre-history, a force lies waiting.  Its existence is its own reason and its weapon is fear.

And Fitz is just a man.  Or, maybe, he's something else.  Strung out between his own phobias and the wreckage of his life.  Trying to hold onto his identity as he splits his existence between the real world and that of the 'Fly', the tiny machine he pilots.

*****

In a remote land, the members of an oil exploration team disappear.  All except a single, raving madman.  Fitz, a member of the team but away from the site when disaster strikes, escapes whatever fate overwhelmed his colleagues. But whatever affected these lost souls is still with him when he returns to his 'normal' life.  Piloting the nanomachines, he starts to lose himself in their tiny, separate existence.   When his employers force him to use his machines to infiltrate crime scenes, the horrors he witnesses trigger hallucinations and he feels his mind start to unravel.

He comes to see that there is only way to defeat the remote force that is driving him insane.  He must travel back to the site of the ill-fated expedition and 'become' his machine to travel down into the earth, to where the soul-killing power is greatest...