Cortexia swore by their implants, they may not make you superhuman but they would definitely make you a better human. Smarter, prettier, skinnier, everything so many of us dream of being every day, all you needed was a tiny implant in the back of your brain. At first it was only the Elites of the world that could afford, but Cortexia, wanted to ensure everyone had access to their groundbreaking technology, so they rolled out payment plans. Within months millions of people have been implanted changing almost every aspect of human society. Sure there were strange mutterings about people hearing voices, but, it was most likely nothing, probably heard them before the implant anyway. This all changes on G-Day. The day that the implants Glitched and every single implanted became nothing more than the living dead.

First of all, if you follow me on Bluesky I will not apologize for anything I said about Walt.

Moving on.

Right off the bat I am going to say that if you hate GenAi this is going to be the book for you. Sure, it is absolutely a standard dystopian hellscape and yes, I can guarantee there are going to be a million books written similar to this one, however, I don't think you'll find one more brilliantly done.

On our first level of brilliance we have Dalton our MC, ex con and drug dealer extraordinaire. To understand Dalton we have to understand the situation he finds himself in. Dalton was as far as I can tell a kid from a perfectly decent background who decides to become a drug dealer and ultimately ends up in prison on trumped up bs charges. Upside here is he never gets implanted because of this; downside is that he basically becomes cannon fodder for what replaces the U.S. Government. Dalton's job as an ex con turned sacrificial lamb for the government is to go out into what has become a no man's land of GenAi implanted zombies to kill the "host" and then recover its implant.

Now as the story progresses, we find out, as one does with the U.S. Government, that they lied. About a lot, which means Dalton has done some shit that he's not exactly proud of and that people are going to view him as a monster for. The phrase "just following orders" gets thrown around. Now, this could have gone in one of several ways with this story. Dalton could have completely shouldered the blame for everything. He could have pointed out that as a product of the American prison system, he's learned that he doesn't think for himself the government thinks for him and taken absolutely zero blame. Or he does the much more difficult dance of being able to say "Yes, I made some mistakes, but this is not all on me." For one it really drives home what a complicated mess this is in terms of fault (more on that later). In terms of Dalton as a character, it simply makes him more interesting, because I don't think that would be the route most people would take. Accepting fault (even when it doesn't belong to you) is an easy route. Choosing to place all blame on others is even easier. The middle ground is hard; it actually takes self-reflection, asking really hard questions of yourself and of those around you. Not a position most people like to be in. Makes it a tad bit more difficult to write too when you've got to stop a zombie apocalypse with a kid as the action hero who is in his own head a lot. But Ryan pulls it off wonderfully. That's just who Dalton is from the first page of the book. He's just a human trying to survive and he's had to make choices but he's willing to admit which of those choices are wrong.

In terms of pacing this definitely moves quickly, but in the best possible way. There isn't a lot spent on worldbuilding, which I found to be absolutely fine. It doesn't take much to picture a dystopian hellscape in anywhere Southern Ca. Or maybe it was Tx, doesn't really matter, a dystopian hellscape in Anywhere, USA. Lots of fire fights that were blessedly short (guys, I mean that as the highest of compliments. Way too many people drag out gun battles for way to freaking long, like they have a military grade weaponry, it really is over in a few minutes) but perfectly timed to push our heroes forward, and a freaking cat. Yeah, a cat. Because every dystopian hellscape needs a cat. It's the rules. It's all very much expected of a dystopian story.

Where I think the most time is spent (outside of in Dalton's head) is going over the morality of the whole thing and especially who exactly is to blame. This is also where it starts to get scaringly hard to distinguish between reality and the story. You would think that these topics are brought up as dialogue and while that certainly does happen, it's actually quotes at the beginning of each chapter where these conversations really take place. Quotes that begin to look very, very familiar, ones that more than once I was almost positive, I had seen one come across my Bluesky feed just that day from some tech bro. Did I? No probably not, but there were a few times when I had to convince myself that I hadn't and not to go looking for it. Because here's the thing; sure this is supposedly down the road in a future that I am hopefully not around for and yet, no it's actually not.

It's right now.

Right now, as I type this someone is online pushing the idea that GenAi can make you better. That's I think what many people miss in this debate and while I can't say for certain it's Ryan's point here I can say that it is brought up often enough that it has to be brought up. What GenAi offers users is the supposed ability to be smarter, more creative, more articulate, more everything. The people who push GenAi reinforce this idea and they purposefully target those that are already the most vulnerable to this type of manipulation. As the story goes on and more of these quotes are brought up it's difficult to not begin to feel like that humanity has sold its soul, the very things that make us human en masse for a chance to be a doll. And I think you all know by now that I am not very religious so when I say that if any one book ever convinced me that the human soul was a real tangible thing, it's this one. For me that hit harder than any of the rest of it. Tech Bro Billionaires are greedy assholes, so I don't care about them. What I do care about is that what they are truly selling and what was absolutely sold to the masses in this book is that humans aren't good enough. I don't like a world where that thought even exists.

The worst part though is as these quotes hit closer and closer to our own reality it's hard to not see how it's not just one person's fault but all of ours. Yes, each and every one of us. The world is an absolutely flaming mess right now, the U.S. the worst of all, so many important topics get pushed to the back burner, GenAi is certainly one of them. We currently have no regulations for it at all, the U.S. and other countries are selling huge swaths of land and energy for the creation of data centers, people are becoming paranoid that what they purchased was AI generated someone just yesterday posted that they wanted to buy something but they were so concerned they'd actually buy something AI generated they ultimately didn't. So, the trust between consumers and retailers and consumers and artists is diminishing at an astounding rate. And for the most part we as individuals do absolutely nothing about it. I certainly don't have a perfect solution here, but I do know finding one will take an effort from all of us.

I absolutely loved this book from beginning to end and of course I recommend it!

As always thanks to Blackstone and NetGalley for the eArc!