I wanted to like this more than I did - the initial chapters of an emerging AI sentience were great, but the rest of the book ended up feeling quite repetitive. Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.

Actual Rating 2.5

So this is an interesting one to have to rate. It’s advertised as a deep-dive techno-thriller, which I was quite interested in giving a go. And this is not at all incorrect. The first 10% of the book was literally just code and AI running commands, analyzing them, errors occurring, then pages of diagnostics to determine what may have gone wrong. Then more queries, refining the queries, then repeating. This portion of the work is told from the POV of the AI, and much of the first third of the book is this way.

I knew we were going to be getting into some nitty gritty stuff. But I still was hoping for it to be more engaging overall. I did appreciate the subtleties that were woven into these pages and watching the AI slowly evolve and become what it did in the second half of the book, but I do think there may have been a more enticing way to present this happening.

After the first third, the work shifted to more of what I thought the whole work would be. It’s told from the POV of a couple of the researchers involved with the AI, and it showed them analyzing what was going on. And while it did include many technical things, it wasn’t chapters of it. We got to learn about the characters and get involved with them, which brought much more engagement for me. This last half of the book was fascinating and highly enjoyable.

I’d probably rate the first half a 1.5 or 2, and the last half a 4. Overall, it was an interesting speculative sci-fi read that I do recommend if you’re into heavily technical reads. My thanks to NetGalley and the author for allowing me to read this work. All thoughts and opinions expressed in this review are my own.

This is a very good piece of speculative fiction, and the author is pretty insecure about it. I would advise him to drop his outward insecurities, drop the admission it is his first book (never tell everyone), and let your baby out into the world to find its own feet.

It starts out pretty heavy reading, for anyone unfamiliar with computer architecture and systems-speak. I liked the way the AI told his own story in terms of logic commands and system responses. The first few chapters where we see the two main humans involved are almost as heavy with analytical psychology and computer architecture. Fortunately I have a passing familiarity with all these subjects. But it eases up and becomes more narrative in style, so readers should press on. It’s worth it…

It’s worth it if you can overcome the tendency of the author to over-write his story. I was particularly irritated by repetition of key plot points from one chapter introducing the next, like a bad tv programme with too many commercial breaks. Further irritation crept in with overworked and heavy-handed descriptive sections, and especially instances of a single tear emerging and running down her cheek. Frankly, I’ve never known anyone shed a single tear; they either brim, gush out, or the person runs to the nearest toilet to break down in private. The characters are mostly two-dimensional, or three-dimensional stereotypes. And then there’s the thrum. It thrums a lot in this computer facility. I almost started counting them. One time the hum turned into a throb, which is probably another thrum.

But if you can hang on to your stylistic hat, overcome the turgid techno-speak, it’s a great work of speculative fiction. The Deep Throat version of HAL, perhaps?

But despite all my criticism of it, I still gave it four stars. Well worth reading. Mostly fresh and very interesting.