Age of Extinction by Mark Gomes (book cover is in image) is a story of how Artificial Intelligence could lead to the eventual extinction of humanity due to humanities complacency. The structure of the book is a bit jaring on multiple levels. It describes impacts on a micro and macro level as well as being repetitive at times will turn off readers. The Idea was for this book was great but the execution could use some refinement. Nonetheless, this a an ambitious endeavor and interesting plot for a debut novel and do recommend it.

Thank you Cameron Publicity & Marketing Ltd and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this ARC.

Rating 3 Stars
Pub Date Jun 03 2025

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I picked up this book because I was interested in the themes.

Overall I enjoyed the book but felt there could be some changes to make it great. The language was quite repetitive in places, which feels like something that should have been caught in editing.

I also think a number of the plot lines felt unfinished. What happened with Molly and Ethan? Their story was just beginning and it was the closest the book got to getting some investment in the characters. Why did BigQ explode? This could have been addressed by revisiting Ethan in the epilogue. What about Jansen?

I went into Age of Extinction really wanting to love it. The concept is timely and unsettling, AI as humanity’s undoing, with an archaeologist warning that we're heading toward our extinction event. Gomes raises important questions about how AI could reshape everything from local communities to the global economy, and that part honestly rattled me.

But despite the high-stakes premise, the characters didn’t pull me in. I struggled to connect with them, which made it hard to stay fully engaged. Still, the book does a solid job of highlighting how close we might be to real consequences if AI continues unchecked. I wish it had gone a bit deeper with the storytelling to match the weight of the ideas.

Professor Jansen, an archaeologist, is convinced that AI will be our “dinosaur extinction event”—a chain reaction we won’t be able to stop. The effects that AI control over our world would include social fallout, economic collapse, and so much more. However, Nolan Scent and his company, Scent Technologies, are determined to change the world with their AI neural chips. Their testing ground is the small town of Harmony Falls. Harmony Falls could change the world, or it could be humanity’s end.

This one really messed with my brain. Gomes outlining how AI could potentially change/shape our world on the macro and micro level, was distressing to say the least. I think overall it could have been fleshed out more, but it did raise some alarming concerns for the future.

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I would say this is a really good introduction to speculative AI fiction. I have a bit more experience with it so it came off as cliché and almost exaggerated. I do think this will be a great introduction to people on the consequences to AI and could really cause people to stop, think, consider how and when they use AI. There are certain pages with repeated paragraphs from earlier pages, it kind of took me out of the story. Overall, I think this will be very informative if marketed to the right group of people. To people who haven’t considered the consequences of AI rather than someone who has more experience with AI doom scores. I do wish there had been some mention of also the environmental impact of the AI systems but that’s not as necessary in this story.

I was intrigued by the concept of this book, particularly given the current AI evolution taking place. It is a concern of mine, and adding in the concept of an implanted chip to "enhance" the human workforce really struck a nerve with me.

I liked how the author broke up the macro and micro events throughout the story, and compared human to extinction to other extinction events in history, highlighting how this time it's on us, not a natural event we can't control. I also liked a couple of the main characters in the book, even though it was clear early on who the bad actor was, and what their end game was meant to be. I did not accurately predict the outcome, however, which was gratifying.

What I wish had been done better was descriptions of environments. I feel like a thesaurus would have been handy, and the word "sleek" could have been used less. Sometimes it felt as though the author was standing in the room, observing the conversations and goings-on, but other times seemed to be a distant observer, as of they were recording events, but didn't have all the information.

All in all, I did enjoy the book, and it kept me engaged until the end, which was not predictable, but sort of fizzled out without feeling fully wrapped up. Maybe that was the intent. It did give me something to think about.

I'd like to thank NetGalley for providing me the opportunity to read this ARC.

I really wanted to like it but the writing style is not for me. I just could not get into it unfortunately but I wish the author the best.

— 2.5 ✷


I requested for an arc because of this sentence:
"The extinction of humanity was never going to be a singular, apocalyptic event. It would happen in stages, a slow collapse we built ourselves, believing it was progress."
It felt so dark and gritty, and was a sentiment I wanted to explore more of. However, the execution ultimately didn’t live up to my expectations.


The author had a distant bird’s eye view sort of writing style. I was always at an arm’s length from everyone, we were always told what the characters were feeling but never shown. The fact that most of the focus of the plot is on the top 1% of the societal hierarchy also didn’t help; I wasn’t interested in how it (wouldn’t) impacted the rich, especially the ones controlling said AI. I would’ve liked a more balanced point of view of the different social classes.

The book was separated into seven parts — seven stages of an extinction. It was an aspect I really liked, it was cool to see how each domino fell and contributed to the outcome. But, I felt like there wasn’t much distinction between each stage. I understand that it’s written to be a slow unsuspecting process, but the lack of distinctive events in each stage made separating things into stages meaningless.

The writing style also came in here and made things worse. The author had a habit of ending some paragraphs and most of the chapters in this foreboding, ominous, philosophical way:
“he left the room, shoulders tensed with unease”/“the world was shifting, chaos underneath”/“he looked out the window, at the world soon to be controlled by him”/“she ignored him, but his question continued to gnaw at her”
These are all my bad paraphrasing but spending most of the story seeing these at the end of nearly every chapter made things redundant and honestly, exasperating. It felt like I was back in my English class and the teacher was reminding me to recall back to the essay topic at the end of every paragraph.

There were also some discrepancies in some chapters that, I’m hoping, were only there because I read an arc version.
- In one scene, the first ever sentence was that character A slipped into the room unnoticed, where they were discussing about topic 1. But there were no other subsequent mentions of her, and in some scenes later, when someone else told A that topic 1 had happened, she was so shocked that it had happened. As if she didn’t hear about it before? Discussed in the very room we were told she silently entered??
- In another, someone reported to character B about a specific condition happening to the patients under surveillance. B called A and told her there were some anomalies but he couldn’t get into the specifics. I repeat, he did. not. specifically say which condition. But later, when A spoke to her father, she’d already known what condition that was and even said it was B who’d told her.

I normally never notice these small details so I was surprised when I did in this book. What an achievement.

What’s more, things ended in such a wishy-washy way, I didn’t feel any climax of the plot or a point I could pinpoint as being impressionable. Everything fizzled out.

I’m giving this a 2.5 because I didn’t actively hate it. But I’m disappointed.


Thank you to Vita Nova Press, Cameron Publicity & Marketing Ltd, Mark Gomes and Netgalley for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

I really enjoyed the concept of this, working in tech this did give me several mini crises. The macro and micro views of the different stages were awesome to review the impact on the world and on the individuals, and kept it interesting.

I do think this book would benefit from more of a 'show me don't tell me' edit, some of the descriptions of the people or presentations felt quite flat and could have used some depth. "someone suffering from significant trauma" for example could be fleshed out.
The use of the word "sleek" was also really heavy, I'd love to know how many times it cropped up.

The characters were likeable if a little shallow, I'd be interested to read more about them in a future book!

overall I enjoyed this as a quick read :)