I think this book is embarrassing for Ken Liu in light of the quality of what he's published before. Here is a cyberpunk thriller with no thrills. No subtlety. I'm so glad I got a free e-ARC from NetGalley rather than buying the hardcover on release like I often do for a book I'm excited for. I would not advise spending money on this book unless you try it first -- if you can't get an ARC, try to grab it from the library to give it a go and see if you like the style. I can see this hitting for some readers, but it is just far below his usual writing standards, and if you share my reading taste to some degree then I recommend staying far far away. It just does not have the same page-turny appeal of a Blake Crouch sf thriller, and it's way too cheesy to appeal to the sci-fi readers who prefer more heady stuff and are hoping for something more akin to the denser style of a William Gibson when it comes to this subgenre.

In the acknowledgments, Liu said his editor encouraged him to expand what he had originally written as a novella into a full-sized novel, and I'm very curious what he had before vs what was added at that point, though I think the root causes of my issues with the writing in this book are more fundamental and would've still been present in a shorter version, just easier to overlook maybe. When Julia is interacting with her AI assistant or solving problems in very clever ways with her hacking skills or custom-made shapeshifting drone, I was having a great time. If only that were a larger percentage of the book.

On a macro level, I couldn't stand Liu’s choices around narrative perspective. The omniscient narration did little except sap any sense of thematic intrigue or weight, delivering nonfiction-like mini-essays on this near-future's technology and the tech's cultural ripple effects that felt like Liu hitting me upside the head with his theme-hammer time after time. Oh, it also sapped any mystery around the characters, dumping backstory on us early and often for our protagonist Julia Z, or showing us inside the puny mind of the mustache-twirly villainous supposed criminal mastermind and his brain-dead henchmen. There didn't seem to be any rhyme or reason for when things went more limited to the thoughts and perceptions of a single POV vs a more removed omniscient narrator. I can't for the life of me figure out why he didn't keep this whole thing close and limited to Julia's POV.

Julia is a very likable protagonist...a genius lonely hacker with a sad upbringing with a heart of gold who really loves helping people in need...her likability is not the problem, but the way Liu writes her with no subtlety or subtext. Instead of hints at her backstory, or giving little drips of it over time, we get told exactly what happened to make her childhood so traumatic, as well as exactly what she's thinking and feeling at any time. His style with Julia is to give us no mystery, no showing, just telling it as plain as day in inelegant omniscient asides or internal monologue.

The lack of subtlety is most distracting though when the omniscient narrator just starts talking about about the ills of technology. There are some incredible techno worldbuilding elements on display here, and they could've just spoken for themselves amidst the action on the page -- we didn't need all the author commentary to go along with it, removing any chance for us to mull these realistic future developments over ourselves. Often when we are in sections with that very removed omniscient narrator, occasionally there would be some injection of authorial voice or judgement that just didn't seem to fit with the usual neutral tone of the narrator and that came from nowhere -- which just felt very odd and clunky. I think I would’ve appreciated having none of the omniscient interludes in the novel, and instead maybe a companion essay by Liu that explores these same ideas but in a more suitable format for them. He is such a deep thinker who has a real pulse on all this new AI technology society is dealing with, but this melded approach just did not deliver a satisfying novel experience for me.

One of my biggest gripes in general with sff is cheesy villains, and this book may be the worst offender I've ever read on that front...their dialogue is just so utterly cringey every time they're on the page, and I just can't accept that Liu can't do more realistic or well-rounded antagonist characters. Every time we switched to the main villain POV or the henchmen, it was a cringe-fest.

With all that said, I think this has potential to grow into a solid series with hopefully some of the clunkiest character and worldbuilding exposition dumps out of the way and maybe more interesting plots and antagonists to come. Liu puts forth an extremely believable near future where AI has become so integrated into people's lives as personal assistants and tools for just about everything, and I really enjoyed seeing his vision of what the tech might look like and be capable of and how it influences people's personalities and the culture at large. But if Liu takes the exact same approach with his prose and narrative perspective as he did here, it'll never be for me. I'm gonna go reread The Paper Menagerie to remember what Liu is actually capable of.

We enjoyed this but it didn't knock our socks off. Our bookseller reviewed it at 3.5 stars and said he enjoyed the technobabble and would probably recommend to someone who enjoys spy thrillers and futuristic sci-fi settings.

I really wanted to like this book, but it just didn’t work for me. Ken Liu is clearly a talented writer—his prose is sharp and intelligent—but I found myself struggling to stay engaged. The technical depth and complexity, while impressive, ended up feeling more distracting than immersive.

The biggest issue for me was the character development. I didn’t connect with anyone in the story, which made it hard to care about what was happening, no matter how interesting the ideas were. The emotional core just wasn’t there for me.

I can see how some readers might appreciate the ambition and craft behind this, but it wasn’t an enjoyable read in my experience. If you’re into deeply conceptual, cerebral fiction, you might get more out of it—but I personally wouldn’t recommend it.

My feelings on this are somewhat conflicted because while I thought this was good, it could have been excellent. So first I'll start off with what I really liked. It was entertaining. I was never bored or found myself losing interest. I found it to be well written, and I liked the writing style. I loved the main character and the whole vibe of the book. I'm definitely eager to see where he takes it and will definitely be checking out the next book. With that said, there were areas that could have been better. The pacing was weird. The first two-thirds of the book felt like a completely different story than the last third. It didn't feel cohesive at all. The character development, mainly for the side characters, was weak. I think it also needed more depth to the characters and in the plot.

All that We See or Seem is a significant departure from Ken Liu's previous publications. I am a huge fan of his previous works and have positively reviewed his original writings in The Hidden Girl and Other Stories (and the subsequent adaptation as Pantheon) as well as his translation work for Cixin Liu's Three Body Problem trilogy, but this felt different. My exposure to his previous works prevented me from properly appreciating what this novel does well, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

ATWSOS is a story about Julia, a young Orphan woman who is an extremely skilled hacker. After a woman named Elli seems to disappear, her wife, Piers, comes to Julia for help in tracking her down. What they undercover is an international conspiracy. With a heavy focuses on generational trauma, the value of art, our overreliance on technology and AI, Ken Liu shows off his impeccable ability to consider technology's impact on people and society and I expected absolutely nothing less.

Ken Liu has never shied away from embracing the intersection between accessible prose and worlds influenced by advanced technology, but this didn't quite land right for me. Admittedly I am not the most tech-savvy person and my understanding of AI is surface level at best, but there were just too many passages of techno-jargon that skirted the line between real and speculative that rather than capturing me in this web of advanced tech, I found myself detaching and hand waiving whatever shotgun of terms came my way. Maybe it's my personal lack of (and hostility towards) use of AI in everyday applications, but rather than threading the needle of a near-future that I will see within my lifetime, it felt simultaneously overwhelmingly technical and mundane. I stayed because I deeply respect the author's thoughts on AI and the value of art, but there were many sections in between where I felt my eyes glazing over. Maybe what I'm looking for is a 2 hour TED Talk, but that's beside the point.

My other main issue with the story is pacing. The more discussions I've had about pacing, the more I realize that nobody can agree on it. Some will say a story is rushed, others will say it's heart pounding and exciting. Some will say a story is slow, others will call it sentimental or contemplative. In this case, the story has a notable climax about 60-70% of the way through then shifts into a second act of sorts - it reads like there were two short stories that have been connected. It's more elegant than I'm describing, but the idea is sound. I personally found the 2nd part to be more interesting of a story, but the 1st part to have more to say. Regardless, the radical shift in plot isn't unenjoyable by any means, but it felt odd and I couldn't shake the feeling of this having originally between two short stories with a shared main character, rather than a single unified novel.

Overall I'm giving this one a 3/5. The strengths are extremely evident and if you find yourself thinking about AI and its impact on society, then this is very much the story for you. If AI is nothing more than the thing you try to avoid engaging with, like me, then I'd highly recommend looking into his other works.

All That We See or Seem mixes action, sci-fi (in what feels like the not-so-distant future), and enjoyable prose to take the reader on a wild ride. If you enjoy sci-fi that feels completely real and is likely to occur during your lifetime, this book will deliver.

This was a new sci-fi sub-genre for me and felt a bit too real therefore it was a bit hard for me to find the motivation to pick the book up. Minor critiques primarily revolve around character building and a slightly unusual plot structure. I would have loved to see more character growth in present time, our main character seems to observe her reality very objectively for someone that has so many struggles with her identity and relationships with others. Perhaps the social commentary is a bit heavy handed, however it feels fair and relatively unbiased, a balance that is often more difficult to strike.

Overall, it is clear that Ken Liu is an extremely talented author, crafting a realistic world with fascinating new technology. I would not be even a little surprised if many of the components of this world come into being during my lifetime (personal AI, combined AI-human performance, etc.).

I am going to be interested in other peoples' reactions to this book, because this assumes a near-ish future in which AI has come to dominate our lives, but broadly speaking, it's portrayed as a good thing. There is a bit of a flirting with the darker side of the internet (bot farms, indentured servitude, bad dudes in charge of dark conspiracies who see themselves as the good guy), but the prevalence of AI is never really questioned or portrayed as a broadly positive thing. There's a kind of imagined world of AIs as only positive helpers for humanity, and it might be the prevalence of AIs stealing from creatives that make me inherently skeptic about this and may make it more of a sticking point for me than it may for others. There's a really well done mystery plot and expose the mysterious dude thread, and an interesting story while we're at it. There's a little bit of a hopefulness that feels a bit cardboard to me (we can free people from the bot farms!!), but that may just have been my frame of mind while reading it.

All That We See or Seem is a science fiction thriller in which the hacker Julie Z agrees to help a lawyer who's famous artist wife Elli has suddenly disappeared. Elli is a dream artist who weaves the dreams of her audience into an emotional experience using their memories. . However, she had also been dreaming with a mysterious criminal who joins the hunt for Elli, demanding the return of his dreams. Julie Z uses her digital skills and AI in searching for Elli while hiding from the ruthless criminals who are searching for both Elli and Julie.

This novel delves deeply into the future impacts of artificial intelligence on society and social media. I found the first half of the novel to focus excessively on the possible future developments of social media and artificial intelligence. The concepts and possibilities underpin the novel's plot but remain hidden until the last half of the book. At that point the story line becomes more of a thriller in which Julie Z works to unravel the mystery.





Julia Z, a young woman who gained notoriety at fourteen as the “orphan hacker,” is trying to live a life of digital obscurity in a quiet Boston suburb.

But when a lawyer named Piers—whose famous artist wife, Elli, has been kidnapped by dangerous criminals—barges into her life, Julia decides to put the solitary life she has painstakingly created at risk as she can’t walk away from helping Piers and Elli, nor step away from the challenge of this digital puzzle. Elli is an oneirofex, a dream artist, who can weave the dreams of an audience together through a shared virtual landscape, live, in a concert-like experience by tapping into each attendee’s memories and providing an emotionally resonant narrative experience. While these collective dreams are anonymous, Julia discovers that Elli was also dreaming one-on-one with the head of an international criminal enterprise, and he’s demanding the return of his dreams in exchange for Elli.



Unraveling the real and unreal leads Julia on an adventure that takes her across the country and deep into the shadows of her psyche.

Resourceful, relentless, contemptuous of authority, trying to do her best to move on from a troubled past, never giving up hope even when all around her is darkness—Julia Z is my favorite literary creation since the Dandelion Dynasty.

Also, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the future of art in a world of AI. How will AI challenge us to be more human? What can artists do with AI that they couldn’t? Many of my thoughts have been put into this book, and I can’t wait to share it with you.

Quick very high level summary.
AI dream artist has gone missing. Her husband, a lawyer hires Julia for her hacking skills to assist in the search. Julia soon finds out that this is more then just a simple job. Its a deep dive into a digital crime underworld. It appears the kidnapping is linked shared dreaming experiences that kidnapped woman was working on. Julia is suddenly forced to deal with her past while to confronts the criminal enterprise involved.

My Take.
Right away you see just what an amazing writer Liu is. This story takes places in a near-future and explores issues around AI-driven art and the challenges that AI brings to humanity. It goes further then what a person writes or illustrates in this novel. It goes into your dreams. With AI currently being used in dream analysis, even to generate dream-like imagery to potentially influence the dream itself currently taking place its a perfect time for this book. I will say that there is a lot of tech talk in this novel so some times it can feel a bit like listening to Ted talk that you do not really understand. At least for someone one like me with limited AI knowledge. But Liu is such an amazing writer that he is able to keep the reader engaged and break down what he is saying so that the average reader understands. My only major issue with this novel is I never felt any emotional connection with the characters. I never really got attached or emotionally invested. Overall a well written and intriguing read.

All That we See or Seem by Ken Liu
Thanks to Saga Press and Netgalley for the complimentary ARC. All opinions provided are my own.
I was wildly excited for All That we See or Seem when it was first announced without knowing the plot. I am a huge Dandelion Dynasty fan and also loved Pantheon, which is based on his short stories. It did not disappoint.

This is a modern thriller in the style of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo with a science fiction take on the future of Ai. Structured like a thriller vibes and pacing are important. I finished the book in three days, mostly hooked.

But what makes this 5 stars is the layers beyond the story. Ken Liu is a student of the classics and it shows here at times for those in the know. Latin phrases and nods to history are recognizable to those familiar. It is also the depth of themes.

The book explores a technology to share dreams while exploring the meaning of the American dream from an immigrants perspective. Julia is both a Chinese American and a badass woman. There are some excellent quotes that comment on the state of Ai and the immigrant experience.

Julia is also a compelling character who thirsts for justice and leaves me wanting more at the end. Since the story is largely self contained there is no reason to hold off on reading before more books are released. All That we See or Seem is one of my top books of the year and will appeal to a wide audience.
5/5

When I first started reading this book I wasn't super drawn in, but that changed as the story unfolded. To be honest, I saw the ending coming the minute we found out what happened to our missing person, but I was shocked that her fate did not extend to her husband. I think this book did a good job of showing the main characters need to isolate being at odds with what she learns about herself throughout the book. I didn't realize this was going to be a series so I thought the end was actually great for a standalone because it left you wondering. I really liked the techy parts of this book and the concept of group dreaming. Overall a good read.

In ALL THAT WE SEE OR SEEM, Ken Liu channels Blake Crouch and Stieg Larsson to create a suspenseful and smart crime thriller set in a future in which AI has become fully integrated in our lives. While I would have liked more emotional investment and more nuanced character development, I remain a Ken Liu fan, in awe of his extrapolative imagination and what it can envision.

Don’t go in expecting the Dandelion Dynasty, The Three-Body Problem, or even The Paper Menagerie. The style of ALL THAT WE SEE OR SEEM feels like it could have started life as a story from The Hidden Girl—one of the more middling and forgettable ones, at that.

While the speculative science is smart, it doesn’t really make for punchy reading. While the world that Liu portrays, of excessive information/data farming and a more nuanced use of AI, is plausible, it doesn’t always translate into engaging reading, to learn more about the science of this near-future world. At times, it feels like clunky attempts to make social commentary on current issues—such as politicians’ lack of empathy, or the ease with which people will give over all of their data—is shoehorned in, rather than arising organically from the story.

There are many reasons why this reminds me of Stieg Larsson’s fabulous Millennium trilogy. Like Lisbeth Salander, Julia Z has had a difficult childhood, and is much more comfortable working with AI than with people. There is a far greater villainous scheme at stake, which is revealed as the story goes along. Some other secondary characters also seem to fit the role that certain villains played in the Millennium trilogy.

Unfortunately, ATWSOS lacks the painstakingly detailed yet effortless finesse of the Lisbeth Salander books. Attempts at character development happen randomly throughout the chapters; whole chunks of the characters’ backstories are dumped within a few short pages, then rarely returned to. From this we are supposed to believe that we have fully gotten to know all the characters. Yet there was always something lacking for me, from Julia to the key villain, an over-the-top, yet only vaguely sketched out, man that I pictured to be like the Engineer from Miss Saigon.

So, is ATWSOS worth reading? That depends. If you are a die-hard Ken Liu fan, as I am, then you may be able to overlook his imperfect attempt to write a thriller. I would not, however, recommend it as an intro into Liu’s capabilities as a writer. If you’re not a typical thriller reader, but you heard of this one and were curious, you might find the limited character development disappointing. And if you read thrillers regularly, I’m not sure if you’ll think that the ending wraps things up satisfactorily. Getting into this book required/requires some suspension of disbelief, which is always disappointing when I want to be so engaged that I lose track of my surroundings.

Will I continue reading this series? Ummm, as of now, I’m not sure. I may need to (re)read some other of Liu’s works to reset my expectations moving forward.

Thank you so much to Netgalley and Saga Press for an eARC of All That We See or Seem by Ken Liu! This was my first introduction to Liu's writing after hearing great things about his other works. I was really intrigued by the premise of this book but unfortunately it ended up just not being up my alley! I had a difficult time connecting to the characters and the storyline and have decided to dnf rather than push through. Just because it wasn't for me, doesn't mean it won't be for you- and if you pick this title up, I hope you enjoy it :)

This book feels like a precursor to cyberpunk or an alternative cyberpunk that in some ways feels less grim but also less hopeful. It left you feel scared of the direction we are headed and feels more like science fiction then most science fiction that comes out these days.

Before I get into my thoughts on this new Ken Liu Book, I feel like I have to give some context for my relationship to his existing work. I had never heard of Ken Liu until about halfway through 2020. The pandemic was in full swing, and I was living separated from my then partner (who worked in the service industry) because my mom was sick with cancer. To minimize the potential of passing covid to my mom, my partner moved in with her parents for a while. All this is to say that things were grim, and no one knew when the end to any of that hell would be.

One glimmering spark of hope amid that awful year was that I had started a book club with some buddies of mine, some of whom I had not seen in ages. Much like many others, the pandemic provided an excuse to reach out to those you had lost touch with, since everyone was losing touch with everybody during the pandemic. We caught up over video chat and discovered that we were all avid readers. What else was there to do to fill the time than start a book club?

The first book chosen for the club was Ted Chiang’s collection of short stories, Stories of Your Life and Others. We finished the book within a month or two and all agreed that it was phenomenal – so phenomenal that I started to tell all my friends and family about it. My mom decided to give it a go and ordered it online. She loved the book as much as I did. Shortly afterwards she messaged me saying that she was going to order another book that was on the recommended list based on her purchase. That book was The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories by Ken Liu.
Independently of the book club, I bought my own copy of The Paper Menagerie, and it immediately struck a chord with me. Setting aside the merits of the book and how much I enjoyed the stories themselves; it was also the last book that I ever read with my mom before she passed. She instilled a love of reading in me from a very young age, and to be able to read a book together and talk about how it made us feel was one of the best parts of my living on this earth. If you’ve read the titular story from that collection, you’ll probably understand just how much that book has stuck with me since her passing.

In the years since, I have read almost all of Ken’s writing and have become somewhat of a dedicated follower. (I’m still working on the last Dandelion Dynasty book – it’s so good that I’ve been spacing the volumes out and taking my time with them). What I appreciate about his work is that no matter what genre he is working in, there is a deep appreciation for philosophical ideas and communication. He does this with prose that isn’t particularly flowery or overly romantic. If anything, his economy of words is about as efficient as you can get. With that said, the ideas he presents are often explorations of what it means to be a person and the relationship we have to the people and ideas around us. The Dandelion Dynasty, his silk-punk fantasy epic, is littered with long conversations between characters debating different schools of philosophical thought. That series is also very much about the progression of society as it relates to technology and human innovation. Some of the most invigorating and memorable scenes in those books are akin to watching someone discover fire for the first time. Liu’s work, whether set in a fantasy world or the near future seems to always be asking, why does this technology exist and where will it take us?

Speculative fiction is nothing new, but Liu’s new novel, All That We See or Seem, has come along at almost the perfect time as our very real-world plunges headlong into a post-AI future. This sci-fi thriller, the first in a planned trilogy, follows Julia Z – a young hacker with a past painted by the horrors of living in the public eye in the modern age. When we meet her for the first time, she has built herself a modest life, taking on small hacking jobs in place of the more dangerous assignments from her prior life that are alluded to early in the novel and elaborated on as the story goes on. However, as is often the case in these types of stories, Julia is pulled out of her quiet life and into a plot involving a psychotic criminal overlord and a woman gone missing.

While All That We See or Seem has the familiar feeling and pacing of other thrillers (think Girl with the Dragon Tattoo mixed with Digital Fortress), the book is operating on another level with its ideas and reflections on artificial intelligence and where we might be headed soon as a society. Within the confines of the book, AI has not become some supreme being that rules our world, but has instead become a multipurpose tool that enhances actions big and small, good and evil. Most notably, AI has enabled two technologies essential to the story being told: neuromeshes and oneirofexes.

You might be thinking, what does that mean? Don’t worry, I’ll tell you.

Neuromeshes are essentially a personalized AI that can take all your data, your habits, your tendencies, and become a digital assistant so attuned to you as a human being that it acts almost as an extension of your brain. Juilia’s neuromesh is named Talos, and her digital sidekick is useful to her in almost endless ways throughout the book. As she and the husband of the missing woman, Piers, go on the run, Talos is essential to her ability to maneuver through the world and solve problems. Liu doesn’t present this AI as some magic automatic solution to all of Julia’s problems, but rather a tool that is only as useful as Julia is intelligent.

The other key term you will read a lot in this book is oneirofex, which is essentially an artist who uses AI to conjure shared, curated dreams for their audience. Elli, whose disappearance acts as the catalyst for the plot of the book, is an oneirofex, and not only that, a pioneer of the nascent art form. Oneirofexes like Elli create “shared virtual landscapes”, conducting a concert of sorts for theaters full of people, drawing on their shared thoughts and feelings to create experiences more immersive and personal than any other art form. These performances are most often a display for an audience of many, but as the story unfolds, Julia and Piers discover that she has been providing one-on-one dream experiences for the aforementioned psychopath crime lord known only as The Prince. With Elli missing and the encroaching threat of The Prince on their lives, Julia and Piers go on the run.

As I expected given Liu’s prior work, All That We See or Seem is filled with meditations on the role of AI in our lives, examining everything from its place in the creation of art to its undoubtedly terrifying implications for the future of surveillance. Personally, I am very skeptical that AI has much good in store for us as the years roll on. As I’m writing this, we are seeing the emergence of Google’s Veo 3 video generation software, which is creating footage that is becoming harder and harder to distinguish from reality. Wouldn’t you know it, All That We See or Seem takes that as a given and explores the difficulty of proving the legitimacy of any video in a court of law. Additionally, the presence of oneirofexes in the book provides an excellent canvas to reflect on the evolving nature of art and our authorship over it. Liu handles the discourse around AI with nuance that is hard to find on the internet as we know it, and makes for a thriller that is as intellectually stimulating as it is propulsive and addicting.
It will take some time for my opinions to fully settle, but at least in this moment, I feel that this book is a winner. While not as sprawling and ambitious as The Dandelion Dynasty, All That We See or Seem is a compelling page turner that meets our current moment perfectly. Only time will tell if this version of the near future will resemble our own, but I have a strong suspicion that it will. What is certain about the future is that I will be counting down the days until the second Julia Z book is released. The man does not disappoint.

A William Gibson-esque thriller with AI and virtual reality. Is it the 90s again? No, it's Ken Liu doing his best Gibson impression while folding in his ultra-liberal viewpoints. Liu fails at creating a unique thriller in this doorstopper of a novel where the MC never fails and is apparently the greatest hacker since Neo.

Thank you to NetGalley and S&S/Saga Press for the ARC!

The main character is Julia, a young hacker who gained notoriety at 14 as the “orphan hacker.” Now she’s trying to live in the shadows, but her past catches up to her when a lawyer named Pierce asks for her help in finding his missing wife, while a criminal network is after his wife too. Julia gets pulled into a dark and dangerous game.

The sci-tech backdrop adds to the atmosphere, showcasing the impact of AI, media art, and digital paranoia on identity and the self. There's no shortage of atmosphere here.

The story starts with a lot of information, which makes it a bit hard to follow at first (or maybe that was just me)

The premise intrigued me, but overall, I found the pacing slow and the story a bit dull at times. (For me)

This was my first book by the author, and while it didn’t fully work for me, I’m not giving up, I’ll definitely check out his other series that everyone seems to recommend.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, which I'd rate as a solid 4-star read. The premise is fascinating, the characters are well-developed and relatable, and the exploration of AI and technology's impact on society is remarkably relevant. The dreamer storyline was engaging, and although the pace was occasionally slow, the author does an excellent job of explaining complex sci-fi concepts in an accessible way. This was my first novel with this author, and I'm eager to read more!

This book had a huge focus on AI and its seemingly limitless abilities to integrate itself into every single aspect of our lives. It was creepy how possible this all felt. I think one of the best parts of this book was how creative (or logical if you want to think of it that way) the usage of AI was.

We follow Julia Z. as she helps Piers track down his missing wife, Ellis, who has been caught up in the path of a dangerous and mysterious figure called the Prince. I personally enjoyed the Prince and his right hand man, Victor's perspectives because they just felt so gung ho, showing how deluded these characters were.

I thought the ending of some characters were a bit underwhelming, but the epilogue was such a nice touch. Also, something lacked in Julia. I believe it might be because the struggle with her Asian American identity and her relationship with her immigrant mother was a brought up enough times to show that there is more to Julia then a talented hacker, and that she has real world problems, but not enough that it felt chucked in and not explored.

Thank you to NetGalley and S&S/Saga Press for the advanced copy!

A riveting sci-fi tale with a very human center. Ken Liu writes a captivating narrative filled with cool tech and dark humanity.