If I had to use one word to describe this book it would be smug. The author is very proud of himself for being clever and witty, and is very sure of his superior intellect and understanding of human nature and the state of the world. Now that is not to say the book was bad. If you could get past the arrogance and the wordiness there was a good story and interesting characters and plenty of humorous moments. Unfortunately it just rubbed me the wrong way and I kept getting pulled out of the story.

I liked it!

The balance between humor, fast pacing, witty dialogue, and "scientific" details appealed to me. I could relate to idealistic teenagers, even though their behavior was questionable. Well worth a read.

Pandora lives in Fairbanks, Alaska with her dad, Roger. Pandora has a highly expressive face, similar to Jim Carrey. Because of her face, people tend to make fun of and pick on Pandora. Not to mention she was homeschooled for many years, and her house has no real doors, except for the entry ones. In spite of all this, Pandora is gifted. She can write code and hack with the best of them.

George Jedson is a teenager on the run. Part of the foster system, he has figured out how to live on his own. George is also a gifted coder. He’s figured out how to hack the computer system on a very elite electric vehicle. This particular EV belongs to a tech giant CEO with a flair for the dramatic. So when George takes over this vehicle, it definitely draws attention.

Roger, Pandora’s dad, is a psychiatrist for the company that said CEO runs. He works remotely from Fairbanks. When Pandora does something unthinkable to some classmates, his punishment for her is to start visiting her grandmother, Gladys. Gladys has dementia and lives in a nursing home. It’s supposed to be a punishment, but turns out to be everything Pandora never knew she needed.

This was the first novel by Sosnowski that I’ve read. He is a witty writer, with a knack for drawing you into the story. I loved how he brought all these characters together, and highlighted the vulnerability of two idealistic teenagers on a quest to change the world. Buzz Kill brims with humor in spite of its fairly dark concept. It is both science fiction and a love story, and what happens when your ideals overtake your rationale.

I would highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys a good tech/sci fi read. The dialogue keeps it snapping along and the end will utterly terrify you.


4 stars


This review will be posted at BookwormishMe.com on 14 January 2020 .

I enjoyed. It was fast and witty. Also that cover is amazing.

Thank You to the publisher and Netgalley for the free Ecopy to review.

Thank you to 47North and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

The description and the premise of this book were intriguing, so I was eager to read it even though YA and science fiction is not really my cup of tea. While I enjoyed the story of the two young hackers, and how their lives intersected in their common goal to create an AI being, the extremely long and - for this non-techie - complicated to incomprehensible expositions/explanations about AI were way more than I ever wanted to know about the topic. Yes, these explanations were relevant to the plot, more or less, but unfortunately other things like carrying the narrative about the two young hackers forward were too, and they didn't get anywhere near the love the other stuff did.

The tragic ending was not what I hoped for or expected, and left me feeling very down and cynical. Perhaps that was the intention all along - AI is great in theory, but not so great in real life, and that came through loud and clear here.

The book didn't speak to me as much, and probably because it is written as a YA novel. I loved the premise and the characters, but overall wasn't my cup of tea.

Gave up on this one after 15%. If you like literature you might enjoy this book. It just wasn't for me. I prefer something to happen in the books I read.

Thanks anyway to NetGalley and the publisher for letting me give it a try.

Note: Since I didn't finish the book I can hardly rate it high. I would prefer to not leave a star rating at all, but since NetGalley insists, it must be a one.

This is the best book I've read all year. Sosnowski does a wonderful job of blending inane, WTF, world-dominating conglomerate IT shennanigans with more serious social and mental health discussions about teenage suicide and dementia. It is champagne comedy set with a backdrop of the impending rise of our future evil AI overlords. The writing is superb and although highly technical, it isn't bogged down with unnecessary explanations. Everything is succinctly explained without distracting from what is a damn good story.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for the ARC.

This book is nerdy, geeky, socially awkward, techy and our main protagonist is the "smart loser type". The idea was a good one, but not the execution I expected.

My main issue was the humor, which I didn't like and the pacing was off.
Hardly anything happens in the first half.

Though this book aimed to tackle some difficult topics with added humour to lighten then mood, I do not feel unfortunately that it always delivered. I did however enjoy reading the book, and felt that even though it was not a genre I typically ventured into, it did make it easy to dip my toes into.
AI is a topic that is extremely relivent in modern society, and I truly believe that to the right audience this would be a fantastic read.

I have so many feelings about this book , more than I bargained for. So first thing, sci-fic is not a genre I usually read and most times I fail to follow a lot of concepts. But in this book, it helped that the author set up a really solid base for the story and even though I could not follow some of the conversations in the end, I understood enough for the story sake. This book is everything many people are scared of concerning AI and though there is no good answer, it does highlight the selfishness and hypocrisy of human.

Good read. Not too breezy but engaging and entertaining

The humor didn't work with me. Felt forced and took me out of the story. In fairness, I don't think I'm in the target demographic.

Buzz Kill: A Novel by David Sosnowski
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This novel punches a lot of my buttons and tweaks a lot of my pet mental projects in a great way, but surprisingly so. I simply chose it on Netgalley based on the cover! Shame on me, right?! It looked funny.

So what did I get? Some good humor? Yes! But this is almost incidental to the main plot. Indeed, the main point is about some rather serious topics from dementia to suicide to the very nature of consciousness and cutting-edge AI research. Wow, right? And none of these are cursory beasts. The author takes everything very seriously, thoughtfully, and does it with some really fantastic characters in George and Pandora.

Two hackers, who never meet, but collaborate in creating an AI? Hell yeah. But make the AI serve the purpose of suicide prevention? I like the concept. Even such hard-coding might get VERY hairy. And what about consciousness? All the usual problems apply. All us Zombies, etc. :)

But none of these wonderful explorations of depression, dementia, or suicide would be quite as interesting without the wonderful cast of oh-so-real characters with all their human joys and frailties. This isn't some massive adventure. It's about what makes us, us. :)

*With some humor* :)

This is very entertaining. An interesting premise and plot told with some humor and pretty good characters. Recommended.

This book is a prequel to “Happy Doomsday” which I haven’t read. It’s definitely not necessary to read the previous book first, but I suggest that you pay attention to the prologue of this book. This book is about 2 teenaged hackers, who never meet face to face, but join to create the AI named Buzz. George Jedson is hired by Quire, a social media company, to develop an AI that can prevent suicides by its users. Pandora Lynch is the daughter of George’s therapist, and what she really cares about is an AI to which all of her memories can be transferred. She is inspired by her grandmother’s slow decline into dementia. It turns out that Quire has a lot more going on than chat groups, and George and Pandora are not really equipped to handle the “child” they created.

Although the subject matter is serious, the book is not without humor. George and Pandora are both interesting and intelligent characters. Quire is a company with lots of benefits, but it doesn’t really care if its developers die young. Pandora’s visits to her grandmother’s assisted living facility felt too real. I liked the way the book introduced both the technical and ethical issues in the creation of Buzz; how they exposed him to information and situations. Buzz was a quick learner, although they never managed to teach Buzz that sleeping is not a voluntary loss of consciousness that needs to be prevented. The creative process was fun - until it wasn’t anymore. No gore or romance, but lots to think about. What’s not to like? I would read more by this author.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.

This was a difficult one to rate, and I finally went with my gut; the three-star rating partly reflects the fact that it was such a downer, which is not to my taste. (The title turned out to be accurate in a couple of ways that took me unpleasantly by surprise, though it's not like I wasn't warned at all; I just kept hoping it would turn out better than it was threatening to.)

I've read a few books now in the genre you might call "contemporary science fiction," as spawned by William Gibson of All Tomorrow's Parties, and they tend to have three flaws.

First, they're world-weary and cynical. This book is definitely those things, though it is at least witty about it.

Second, they tend to feature alienated losers wandering through a series of events without much in the way of goals, and therefore without much plot. For a long time - until about 45% - and with the "losers" part in brackets, I thought this book checked that box off as well, but the pair of protagonists do finally get a goal, or a pair of aligned goals. It is very much choked with exposition and high-flown prose, though, with long infodumps (either via a character or directly from the narrator) about artificial intelligence and various other topics. The explanations are plot-relevant, but there are an awful lot of them. I gained the impression that the author/narrator was a bit in love with the sound of his own voice.

The third flaw that many contemporary SF books share is the flaw that (according to Sturgeon) 90% of everything shares: they're crap, in the sense that the author has a poor grasp on the basic tools of writing like punctuation, sentence structure, and vocabulary, not to mention plot, characterisation and setting. This book has, I think, had extensive copy editing to remove most (though, in the review copy I got from Netgalley, not quite all) signs of those problems, and reads as better written than average. That would normally have kept it at four stars, but sustained cynicism and a tragic ending were not what I was hoping for, and when you spend almost the first half of the book waffling around with backstory and the characters feeling and thinking and experiencing a lot but doing very little, I will ding you for it.

Well damn. This is a good book. Two teen hackers set out to create an artificial intelligence to prevent suicide. Lots and lots of feels in this story. Kind of a 13 reasons why and Mr Robot remix with some Wargames in there. Definitely a must read for science fiction and 2001 fans.

Buzz Kill: A Novel by [Sosnowski, David]

Good geeky fun.



Review copy provided by publisher.

This was such a fun and kinda scary concept,especially in this time period. I enjoyed the characters and loved the overall plot.

Active action-oriented narrative and fast pacing punctuate this book — it was as entertaining as I hoped it would be, and I gladly recommend it.