This novella contains an interesting and timely idea, as AI is constantly in the news and social media. Who doesn't have questions about where AI is going in the long term and how it will affect society and what it means for humans, machines, etc. But this novella is not particularly well written or thought out. The characters are flat and two dimensional. There are some action scenes that begin and end so abruptly that nothing really seems to be high stakes. There are storylines that don't add much or go anywhere. And everything wraps up a little too neatly in the end.

This book is trying really hard to be a modern take on surveillance books like 1984 but majorly misses the mark. The dialogue is clunky, the plot is all over the place, and the main character is pretty unlikable. It was quite a slog to get through even with it barely being above 100 pages.

It felt incredibly one-dimensional regarding character motivations and the plot was a little everywhere. I think the premise of the story was intriguing but maybe the author tried to pack too much into a novella considering the ending felt rushed and made little sense.

I’m not even sure what I can say the plot is. There’s little there, so it’s tough to avoid spoiling anything. There’s wildly powerful AI. For whatever reason some guy named Nathan is incredibly important to the AI, and becomes involved in a large conspiracy as different factions vie for his capitulation.

The characters are roughly designed and completely lacking in credibility as real people. The dialogue of Nathan’s teenage daughter, who’s so cool and young and good with technology, was sparse but still nauseating and cringey. Motivations are obscure if they exist at all, relationships between people are incredibly thin but drive important decisions and plot points, things are constantly revealed that have no basis in the world that had been built up to that point. The AI is at once both omniscient and easily deceived.

The quality of the writing from sentence to sentence was overall not bad, but after reading one paragraph of dialogue that contained no less than 10 hyphens (really, I counted), I can’t say it was consistently good throughout.

This needed way more story-boarding, planning, editing, and beta reading before put out as a complete novel.

I tremendously enjoyed this novella. It has a feel of a classic like 1984 or Fahrenheit 451. It gives a glimpse into the life of the protagonist, who is thrust into turmoil. It discusses the question if you would want to know and the influence of AI into our lifes we might not realize. Who can we trust?
The story is well written, other POVs are shown in places that matter and feel right.
This book is tought provoking. If you like techno-thrillers or want to read about AI this is a book for you.

3.5
I love AI and books about AI. I was really intrigued by the story and the pacing, but the ending fell a bit flat for me unfortunately. But it was a quick and good read 😊

The link is for the book because my review is the only one there, or what I can see at least.