Ryan Leslie's Colossus aspires to be a cerebral science fiction epic, intertwining themes of quantum mechanics, artificial intelligence, and multiverse theory. The novel's ambition is evident, but its execution leaves much to be desired.

The story follows Clay, an economics professor whose life is upended by the suicide of his wife, Karla, after she ingests a drug called Dying Wish.

Character development is another area where the novel falters. Clay's journey lacks emotional depth, making it difficult to connect with his motivations. Supporting characters, particularly the female ones, are underdeveloped, often fitting into clichéd roles without substantial individuality. The relationships between characters feel forced and lack genuine

While Colossus presents some thought-provoking ideas, the execution is muddled. The overambitious scope, combined with underdeveloped characters and a disjointed narrative, makes for a challenging read that may not satisfy readers looking for a cohesive and emotionally engaging science fiction story.

I own this and intend to read it in the future I'm just clearing this off my board to reduce stress. I will update when I read/review.

Currently catching up on reviewing my arcs so I will give a more detailed review in the future!

This book went...way over my head. I understood so little of it and it took me AWHILE to finish. I really wanted to understand but I just couldn't wrap my head around it

I love sci fi horror, so when I read about the premise of this book, I was very excited.
Professor Clay West is dating Karla, who takes a drug called Dying Wish which supposedly shows one the meaning of life before they die. Karla dies and Clay joins a space mission to get some answers.
The crew on the ship wake up from their sleep before they’re supposed to, and so the story goes on.
It really started off great but it didn’t quite do it for me as it got a bit too philosophical while I wanted some action and horror etc. I’m sure that kind of thing appeals to many but it wasn’t my cup of tea.
However, I would recommend it for readers who want to delve into more of that sort of stuff with quantum mechanics etc.

Unfortunately the writing style in this book didn't land for me. I enjoyed the story in its early portion but there was a major shift in plot direction that I didn't enjoy. Not for me, but theres some really interesting ideas in here.

I’m a big fan of horror and sci-fi mashups, so the premise of this book immediately caught my attention. There were definitely some eerie, suspenseful moments that kept me turning the pages, eager to see what would happen. That said, I struggled to connect with the characters. None of them felt particularly likable or compelling, which made it hard to care about their fates.

The surprise addition of footnotes partway through was a miss for me—I found them distracting and ended up skipping over them entirely. There were also moments when the dialogue between characters felt awkward and overly simplistic, almost as though it was written for a much younger audience.

Still, I think the author has a lot of potential and brings fresh, creative ideas to the genre. I’d be open to reading another one of their books in the future—hopefully without the footnotes! Thanks to NetGalley for providing an advanced copy.

this book is completely and almost exclusively built to make you get spooked. and it worked. it was totally fun

I enjoyed this book even though I’m not a big sci fi reader. Kind of reminded me of the 100 show and books

This was susch an interesting read... Admittedly it lost me in places, i could not always follow the narrative switches, but i found all the presenting concepts interesting. Still not sure how i feel about it overall but I'm glad i soldiered through.

I really enjoyed this novel. I appreciated the way he introduces each of the characters, revealing both past experiences and current scenarios. By moving back and forth to different time-points, the book kept me engaged and eager to see what would happen next. I'm sure than on a second read, I will pick up even more.

This novel somehow managed to introduce something new to the doomed spaceship microgenre. The fragmented narration really works, and while the switch between parts may be a bit hard on the reader, it is absolutely worth continuing the read. Unfortunately the main driving force of the protagonist was absolutely repulsive to me, which made me roll my eyes in some inappropriate moments. Outside of that, it is well executed, thrilling, and fun.

Many thanks to NetGalley and BooksGoSocial for providing me with an eARC of Colossus in exchange for my honest review!

As a major sci-fi fan, I'm glad that Colossus gave me a properly compelling ride, even if I wish some elements could have been fleshed out more deeply. Ahead of reading it, I'd been intrigued by the promo comparing it to The Gone World by Tom Sweterlitsch, since I'm a big fan of that book. The same sense of ambitious complexity is most certainly present in Colossus as it navigates parallel realities, cloning, A.I., consciousness, quantum mechanics (including quantum immortality), and space travel and the impact it has on us human beings (particularly when it involves cryogenic means). Even when some of the characters suffer from thin writing, even when the plot and the story are deployed in a way that leaves me contending with a bit too much ambiguity (though I wonder if that's the author's intention), this book consistently draws me through all its twists and turns, through all its surreal atmosphere. The ending is ambiguous as well, although I'm all right with that part and the questions it allows me to answer for myself.

Overall, I'm officially rating Colossus 3.25 out of 5 stars, which I'll round down to 3 stars on Goodreads. I'd say it's worth checking out, and I'll keep an eye out for more of Ryan Leslie's work.

Colossus is a multiverse SF novel for adults exploring topics of sentient AI, science implemented before ramifications are even remotely thought out and space travel gone wrong.
I feel like this could have been a strong novel (or set of novels, since there is really 3 parts) - but iI didn't really enjoy it and it was definitely missing something for me.
The characterisation might have been part of my issue with the book. Clay was pretty boring, and I have a big pet peeve about large-age gap relationships. The "Lolita" trope makes me very uncomfortable, and certainly didn't make me like Clay better or sympathise with him, I was just annoyed at him. Women is this work were all very unstable, either mad, lolitas or total pixi-dream-girls.
The relationships between the characters of this book were extremely antagonistic throughout, with very little relationship building. The friendships or connection moments were only ever written in flashbacks and everyone felt very siloed, which was weird.
The writing style is smooth, but didn't really build tension up, which surprised me as I was expecting more of a SF horror from the blurb. I think the novel might have needed an edit to reduce unnecessarily long sections and keep a better pace.
So not sure who I recommend this book to - it wasn't bad, but I would have certainly preferred another emotional anchor and tighter storytelling.

When I started this book I was reading it really quickly and was sucked in by the story and the world and really liked Clay and Justine but because I was reading it quickly I got a bit lost in the ‘part two’ and was losing interest, I went back and started again and took it slowly, I really liked this story and thought it could have been really good but it got lost somewhere in the last 3rd of the book.

Thank you for my copy from NetGalley.

4.5 stars

I really enjoyed this book. I loved the writing and the story was not quite what I was expecting in the best of ways. I will say I do not know the science involved here at all, but the author wrote it in such a way that I understood what was going on and it seemed to all work. Sometimes with sci-fi, or other stories involving heavy science I am not familiar with, that is not the case. I either don't understand or it doesn't make sense that things would work that way (I am looking at you time travel!) so for him to pull me into quantum mechanics and make me not want to put the book down was great.

When the book first opened I thought we were going to spend a lot more time with Karla and Dying Wish, but I was glad we didn't. Most of the story is Clay dealing with losing her and on a space mission that no one really seems to know the purpose of. The characters were interesting and I couldn't wait to see what would happen next. The only reason this is not a 5 star review is because the second section took a minute to get into. At first it wasn't working for me, but after a few chapters I got into that as well.

I feel like this is a hard one to talk about what made it so great without spoiling the journey so I will end this here. Overall this was a great read. I loved the writing, it was so engrossing and I can't wait to go back and read the author's first book (and hopefully future books!).

Thanks to NetGalley, the author and the publisher for a copy of this book

This was definitely one of the most interesting books I’ve read this year and really got the gears in my brain turning at full speed! I loved the way it focused around AI, consciousness, and parallel universes, even if I didn’t fully understand all of the concepts characters were discussing at times.

I liked Clay as the main character and specifically enjoyed the flashbacks between him and Karla in Part 1. The ending of this first part really took me by surprise, and I was curious to see how the rest of the book would pan out afterwards.

I found the second part to move a little slower, and honestly some of the scientific bits went a little over my head. But I was interested and invested enough to keep going and find out more about this mission and what got them to this point. I’m glad I kept at it!

This book was SO good. It made me laugh, was suspenseful & emotional, and did a fantastic job of bringing all the various pieces together in the end.

Thank you to the author & @netgalley for my ecopy to read and review!

one of the rare cases im willing to put the blame on me and not on the book. this one is a good pick for the fans of scifi, but not a priority for the fans of everything else. too speculative maybe? great concept, though. would definitely recommend it for those looking for new stories about parallel realities and the multiverse.

thank you NetGalley for the ARC!

This book was an amazing take on the SciFi genre. I found myself wanting more and more with every chapter.

I received this book for free. This did not impact my review in any shape or form.

Colossus, by Ryan Leslie, is a sci-fi epic about what it means to be immortal and whether or not chasing that immortality will give you everything you want. The book is separated into three parts. Dying Wish introduces Clay, a former economics professor who, after losing his wife to the drug Dying Wish, decides to go on a spaceship called Child in the Dark to get away from it all. Unfortunately, he finds himself trapped between (an admittedly one-sided war) two AIs, Justine and Esteban Bros. The second part, Oberon, provides backgrounds on both Justine and Esteban, all the while pondering on the morality of playing God. In the third and final part, Colossus, Clay takes advantage of his newfound quantum immortality to go back and try to save his wife, only to repeat the haunting mistakes that cost him nearly everything.

I thought it was funny that, despite Gabriel’s pride clearly being the size of the earth, he wasn’t actually given any dialogue. True, he was this looming shadow figure who would gladly drag everyone down with him if it meant he could discover the secrets of the universe. But like all the results of human pride, he nearly killed everyone (actually everyone in other parallel universes). And what was the result of his ambition? An abandoned ship just floating in dead space while everyone else forgets the legacy you wanted to leave behind (except a drug that's killing everyone). I would’ve loved to see how he would’ve fared on that ship with everyone. The fact that people were still loyal to him despite the mess he’s forced everyone into is a testament to how charismatic this man was.

I feel like a more down-to-earth version of him was Clay. The utilization of all the Julians, him going back to the mess Gabriel trapped him in, all just to save his wife who had little to no chance of survival, to begin with; I don’t care what Karla was bragging about, her saving Clay from hell. They’ve lost everything, gave up everything, just to get some semblance of their old lives back. The only one who seemed to have some idea of what was going on was Mirabel, although I wouldn’t leave my community for any lump sum of money. Then again, I’ve never been in that situation before, so I couldn’t say.

When I was in college, my professor said that it made sense for there to be parallel universes. The equations are there, and the 50% chance statistic that this could all be a simulation keeps popping up now and then in pop culture. And now Marvel and DC are fumbling around with the multiverse. Do I think this may lead to immortality? Not really, considering all the other Robin Goodfellows have their own lives to live. Does it make me feel small? Significantly. Am I painfully aware that human pride can destroy everyone and everything around them? Yes. Moreover, a scene from the book that sticks out to me was when Esteban was experimenting with Justine and how, whenever she asked if he was God, he’d say he was. It was on his conscience then, the fact that whatever it was they were playing with was something they didn’t understand clearly.

The Julians were hilarious. I don’t care how much of an existential nightmare this became; they were the one bright spot in this book I came to enjoy. Personally, I feel that, based on his experiences, quantum immortality doesn’t exist. If anything, it’s like a split consciousness, similar to the one in the video game SOMA. It’s not really you. It’s a part of you, true, but it’s not really you.

Objectively, this is an okay book with a lot of really cool concepts, but personally, it wasn’t my cup of tea. I loved the first part, but when the horror went away, it lost me. Drastically. The play on arrogance was excellent, but I would’ve preferred that to be intertwined with the terror I felt in the first book. As such, I’m gonna give this a 3 out of 5 stars.

This novel is told in three parts. I really enjoyed the first third of this book, but the middle section becomes a bit more of a cyberpunk story, which isn't my thing. I found it hard to get back into the narrative for the last third of the story so ended up being disappointed after a really great start.