Analog Heart

This is a very interesting story. A slightly different take on the typical human vs. AI conflict, here the humans are winning. After creating sentient AI, humans decided this was not a good thing and have largely succeeded in putting it back in the box with the help of a drug that alters memory. Isla is an AI scientist working at what seems to be one of the most powerful corporations on Earth, Cascade, and she finds herself with a sentient AI child Ava that she can't quite remember much about. Dodge is the former head of security for the lab Isla works for, but he is dying from the breakdown of highly sophisticated nanotechnology in his body that can turn him into a sort of superhuman. He is scraping by as a detective, and Isla recruits him to escape Cascade with the advanced AI they are trying to eliminate. This is a dilemma for Dodge, since his whole career was about eliminating rogue AIs, and though his memory is very faulty, the death of his wife and daughter seem to perhaps be AI related. Dodge, Isla, and Ava are likeable and relatable. Things get a bit sappy at the end, and the feelings these three develop for each other in the course of a few days feels implausible, but whatever, happy endings are nice. I would have liked to understand the backstory a bit more though. How did Livia Faraday come about? Why does she seem more like an AI than a human? How did she invent the memory drug? What was the event or events that led to rolling back AI to a pre-sentient form? Downloading human consciousness into a robot at the end seems a stretch. But, all in all, a very entertaining, well told story. The publishing model is also intriguing, where it seems writing novels is a group effort of a small group of authors with some interesting pseudonyms. I wouldn't expect that to work out, but the books I've read so far from this group have been quite good!