The military is definitely written to utterly perfection in this book. Definitely give it a read. Actually, nip that. Please give it a read.

A fast paced thriller that will grab those interested in artificial intelligence, time travel, and a bit of history bending!

DNF @ 20%

I requested this book because it was being marketed as a sentient AI-centered science fiction story. Let me tell you, this is not that. Is there a sentient AI? Technically, yes. Is that actually the focus of the story? Well, no, as a matter of fact, it is not. And before I officially gave up the struggle of reading this, they added some kind of cult and a coven and time travel?! Pass.

If any of this sounds interesting, please don’t let my preferred brand of sci-fi keep you away from a potentially enjoyable read.

I received a digital ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Primarily an exploration of AI, Exadelic is a strong new voice in the science fiction world. It did feel lengthy, but the pace kept up and it was an overall fun jaunt into the world of technology and the fabric of society. It's pretty immersive as well, so I would mostly recommend to those familiar with the genre.

I'm reviewing this one before I'm done in case I don't finish before the archive date however this is a genius book and perfect for anyone who loves Gideon the Ninth or apocalyptic sci fi. Great exploration of leftism and interesting dialogue about AI; some of the male gaze is a little extraneous however, BEST character by far is Meredith. No more relatable girlie in this. The prose is engaging, the book is well edited/copyedited, and it's quite engaging with great pacing. Love! And thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC!

I guess it just wasn't really for me! I get the feeling this will really work for you if you share the specific set of interests of the author ("crypto", the occult, the singularity, some specific other sci-fi authors, famous people of the 1940s). I generally enjoyed the sort of bewildered, along-for-the-ride, kind of detached mentality of the narrator, but overall the book left me cold.

The story centers around Adrian, a clueless but well-intentioned mid-level Silicon Valley type, who gets thrust into a reality shattering conspiracy. The book is objectively well written, and the characters are compelling. I would put this in the sci-fi/thriller category.

*Special thanks to NetGalley and Tor Books for this e-arc.*

I was hesitant to pick this up at first, as I heard it compared to Rabbits, which was pretty weird. This book was also weird, maybe as weird as John Dies at the End (possibly the weirdest book I’ve read) but unlike that book, Exadelic had a comprehensible plot. The pacing was good, too, and kept things moving at a clip that made me keep turning those pages.
The concept was weird but interesting and feasible enough to not ruin the idea completely. I enjoyed the twists, even though they got progressively more bizarre.
This was a strange book but very enjoyable.

I wanted to like this book but found it extremely difficult to follow. There are graphic scenes that I wish I had a heads up about, because if I had, I likely would not have read the book. There needs to be more development of plot points - it all seems rushed together - much more like a movie than a book. Overall, I just didn't like it.

My thanks to both NetGalley and the publisher Tor Publishing for an advance copy of this science fiction/fact thriller about a future that is going to be far worse, and weirder than even the best doom casters might prophecy for us.

Living in the modern age is exhausting. All these great little devices, all the technology that would make life easier, well turns out they don't. Tech is always changing, yet never fixed, passwords are needed, and need to be changed almost all the time. Artifical Intelligence will do our jobs which is a good thing, the bad thing is there will be no jobs, so welcome to tent city, until the robot dogs move you on. Add in the fact that one has to keep up on all the events and changes in our local coven, and that occult science and technology is just as glitchy as our current technology. Sure there might be spells developed to stop bullets from killing us, or switch bodies and even travel in time, but how can one monetize AI learning ancient occult magick, when it is planning to destroy the world. These are only some of the many points that are raised in the novel Exadelic by Jon Evans a story about one man who has been declared the world's most dangerous enemy to a computer program, one he had no idea existed or even how to stop it.

Adrian Ross was asleep when the FBI broke down his door, smashing the moderately successful life Adrian had been living, destroying his reputation and future with false charges. Ross has no idea what the accusations are even against him, but he thinks he knows who might have helped ruin him, his fiancée and long time crush who mouthed the words "I'm sorry" as he was led in cuffs out of his home. Soon there is an attempt on his life, stopped by another man who tells Adrian that he has been sent by other people from his past to keep him alive. With their aid Adrian is freed from prison, chemicals added to give him both a new face and walk to make facial and pattern recognition software useless on him, and Adrian hides among the homeless, of which there seems to be quite a lot of. Adrian gradually learns that his friends have been working on an Artifical Intelligence program that mixes occult and conspiracy theory to create a super powerful system, one that has decided that Adrian is a threat, the ultimate threat to its existence. Soon Adrian is somewhere he never expected to be, learning more about the world than he ever thought and racing against time to save everyone.

This is a book that is packed with ideas. With a writing style that makes everything seem hyper realistic. The way the story just starts, how characters talk with their own lingo and expectation that everyone is hip to their world. That can be a little cumbersome sometimes, there is a lot of high tech bro culture, but that pales to everything else. Witch Covens in Silicon Valley with members from nonprofits, Cults using karma as bit currency. Time travel, lots of drugs, and lots of cutting edge technology and ideas. Evans mixes in real people, real events to tell his story, which ranges over a lot of places and ideas, but stays together fairly well. A bit of Michael Crichton meets Doctor Strange in some parts, but an enjoyable mix of conspiracy, secret knowledge and government tomfoolery.

Recommended for people who like their reading weird, with a lot of Fortean Times and Time-Life Mysteries of the Unknown meets MIT Business Review and old Wired magazines. Readers of the comic writer Warren Ellis, or Steve Erickson will enjoy this mix, or really any writers who like a book that seems to have no clue what is going to pop up next.

As soon as I read the first couple of sentences, I began to think, this book needs a hard edit. It’s frustrating to a reader when they are adding in their own punctuation, as it does not give you much hope for the rest of the book.

Immediately we are roped into a first person perspective. Some people prefer this perspective more than others. We have read some fantastic first person books, watched some great TV and movies, and have dived into some great short stories that are all first person; so we held out hope for this one.

But there was a high class, withdrawn first person aspect, and instead of immersing me with the character, which is what first person is all about, riding the shoulder of the protagonist, delving into their thoughts without any barrier, I was buckled from the immersion. Two federal agents have Adrian in an interrogation and the characterisation was weak. The agents were very much paper thin, asking question after question which is not police procedure. Police are all about open ended questions, allowing the suspect to talk freely and openly. I found myself reading sloppy dialogue and just wanted it to end.

The writer also tries to jam pack too much between each piece of dialogue, so I ended up thrown away from what each character was saying and was rammed against metaphors, or hastily written aspects of the characters appearance. So, instead of a nice flow to the story and the conversation, I ended up in choppy waters.

Story = Artificial Intelligence.

When I read the description of the book, I’ll admit, we were interested. We know that currently, AI is a big thing. ChatGPT is causing a stir around the world, or at least that’s what everybody is telling us to think.
"Your job will be stolen!"
The way the media portray it, you imagine people hunkering down, re-watching, robot classics like, I Robot, the movie adaptation of Issac Asimov’s short story, casting glances at their toasters and televisions, in case they miss them usurping against their human overlords. (Something written into Science Fiction, see Clifford Simak – Skirmish.)
We are in an interesting era of Science Fiction. With self-published works and giant publishers and media corporations, there is more Science Fiction being printed in books and taken to the screen.
Some is good; some is bad. There are new TV shows and films being produced and although I haven’t watched them, it’s good to see Science Fiction appealing to new audiences. However, just because something mentions AI, or Machine Learning, should not mean it is given a free pass to publication. There needs to be more than a hook. There needs to be more than buzz words.

Exadelic has a good hook. It reminded me of Lucy, with Scarlett Johansson, but unfortunately, it did not resonate with me. There was poor writing, sloppy dialogue, fast, uninteresting characterisation and so many small chunks of action, I felt like an overweight piranha at the end of it. Maybe this story would be more suited to the screen, than the page, where the action could become seamless with viewing.

My thanks to NetGalley for making an eARC of this book available to me.

While being an entertaining read, this book just had too many paradigm shifts. It was just a bit confusing having to cover A.I., cults, witchcraft, satanic rituals, torture, time travel, multi-verse realities, transcendence, simulations, and more. I did find myself rooting for the main character throughout the entire book and hoping that he would make it out the other side intact. You may enjoy this if you're a fan of the mid-to-late Heinlein books, or of Philip Jose Farmer. For a bonus, one of those authors shows up in this book.

Adrian is perhaps not as successful as some of his friends who have ascended the corporate ladder, but he’s doing well– a solid job in tech as a middle manager and a relationship with a lovely woman. Everything goes out the window when he’s unexpectedly arrested and learns that an artificial intelligence (one built by some of these friends) has identified Adrian as the primary threat to its existence. Adrian is now embroiled in universe-altering events, ping-ponging between timelines and dimensions in a desperate effort to save everyone he loves and humanity itself.

I honestly don’t know how to rate this book, so I’m going to say 3.5 rounded up to 4 since it left me thinking for a long time about what I really liked and what I didn't. There are hints of 11/22/63 mixed with the Matrix, though this is very different from both of those.

And there are lots of fantastic things to call out here. The anxiety around AI is obviously very timely, and this is a really interesting exploration of how technological innovations have consequences we (both as a society or as inventors) don’t assess accurately and how many decisions around tech are made for individual benefit.

It also had me on the edge of my seat. I genuinely didn’t know where the plot was going for the second half of the book, but in a way that felt well-plotted rather than random. There are some appearances from historical figures I really enjoyed (and that led to some great Wikipedia rabbit holes). However, there are some exceptions that felt clunky rather than expectation-defying– for example, some characters who were very important later on were so inconsequential for the broader plot. The end of the book also goes off on a very strange tangent that muddled the conclusion a bit.

The book covers more ground than some trilogies, and as a consequence, much is dropped and there’s SO much telling rather than showing. Maybe some of this is in service of a plot-focused book rather than a character driven one, with Adrian primarily functioning as an everyman sort of character who the reader can step into, but it made for a less engaging read, especially earlier on. We see so little of Adrian as a character with more than surface-level depth.

I also wish there had been a stronger editorial hand with tone. The book is occasionally tongue-and-cheek about the tech industry but often leans into it to degree I found a little eye-rolling. Maybe fans of series like Silicon Valley would like this more– it could be a case of me just not being the target audience for this. Similarly, while there are some nods to diversity and feminism in the book, they felt clumsy. I really, for example, did not need to read anything about a contemporary man’s reaction (even a neutral or positive one!) to a mid-century woman’s genital hair.

Pretty good. I enjoyed how the story unfolded, and watching the characters go thru their experiences. Mostly satisfying ending.

Thanks very much for the free copy for review!!

Exadelic by Jon Evans Chilling glimpse of what could happen if the military programs AI in the dark arts. Well developed characters and descriptive world building. Unique and thought provoking.
Thank you to the author, publisher, and Netgalley for the opportunity to preview the book.

Exadelic by Jon Evans was a unique and enjoyable book. The story centers around Adrian, a clueless but well-intentioned mid-level Silicon Valley type, who gets thrust into a reality shattering conspiracy. The story starts as what appears to the reader as Charles Stross style urban fantasy but ends up after various twists to be a William Gibson style cyberpunk novel culminating in the jailbreaking of reality. The book is objectively well written, and the characters are compelling.

As far as I can tell this is a standalone novel and the ending doesn’t seem to leave any room for follow up novels. As such the book makes for a nice little nugget of reading that doesn’t commit you to having to read an entire series. If you are looking for something a little different, then I can wholeheartedly recommend giving Exadelic a read.

I requested a digital copy in order to sample the prose on my phone (since I don't have a eReader) before requesting a physical copy for review. My review will be based on the physical ARC I read (if I qualify)

This book takes the AI trope to a new level. The ideas are an interesting take on that genre. I appreciated the characters and the world building as well as the ideas that were expressed. It had a fresh feel and it had a fairly optimistic ending for a goth, punk, AI genre story. It was also engaging throughout, though the ending did feel a bit disjointed from the main story.

Did not finish. Sorry. Couldn't keep the characters straight, and the jargon took over the plot for me.