I started reading this book with an open mind. At first, the structure and the writing style intrigued me. It felt like a puzzle I was meant to solve. This kept me interested in the plot for a while. But, eventually my interest and attention waned. The introduction of the main character and artificial intelligence wasn’t even enough to keep my interest.

I half want to blame myself for not liking this book. I am a huge fan of sci-fi movies and shows. Books though? Not so much. I do like science fiction concepts, but there is just something about the portrayal of sci-fi plots in books that make them appear dry. That’s what this book suffered from, a dry plot progression. It is more of a science-fiction character study than anything else. And, I think that’s where the larger part of the plot problem stems from. If it were less character driven with a slight bit of action, the plot would have flowed better.

I am a large fan of Star Trek, so I am a huge fan of sci-fi. Star Trek can come off boring to a lot of people because it involves a lot of thinking and a lot of questioning of your beliefs. However, what people fail to see is that Star Trek also has action, tense moments, and smoothly paced plot progression. This book could learn from Star Trek.

DNF at 37%

Well, that's certainly an arc I did not expect. The plot was linear for at least 3/4s of the book but it managed to drop some significant twists at the end.

I think I’m just not a sci fi fan. I couldn’t get into this book. There were too many technical terms. I could not get engaged and ended up not finishing.

I DNF’ed this book. The premise was really odd and hard for me to get into. I tried really hard but the language was really complicated and hard to get into. I think there’s a genre of people that this book is specifically for, it’s just not me.

I didn't get far into this novel before I had to put it down. It was just too much. I really just couldn't get into this novel.

The solitude of the main character -- abandoned by the world as a human WALL-E to document the reclaiming of Earth by nature after humans depart or die, without even getting a response from her chat requests from the AI watching her other than getting protein powder with better flavors for better diary entries -- was too devastating to keep me going. A very interesting idea, but too vividly capturing the isolation and desperation for me to stick with.

This debut novel follows the last human on Earth, Sen, and the AI responsible for telling her story. Humanity has asked AI to help it stave off environmental disaster, and the outcome is one any sci-fi fan could predict - remove humans from the equation. They are to be 'exited' from the Earth, and their consciousness uploaded into a new digital world called Maia. The story doesn't focus on how this is achieved, although it does discuss it. The true heart of the novel concerns a worker process that is tasked with watching Sen as she carries out her job as a Witness to the Great Transition. It pours over her journals, endless hours of video and audio, and begins to piece together a narrative of her life and approaching death. As it does so, it begins to learn, change, and develop it's own persona - one that is increasingly attached to Sen.

Can an AI learn emotions? Can it love? What does it mean to be Human?

I personally gave it a 3 star rating - that is entirely due to my own personal preference for plot driven post-apocalyptic stories, rather than character driven. But if your sweet spot is the intersection of post-apocalyptic fiction and character driven stories, then I suspect this may be a book for you. I found the first section a little rough to get through, as it was framed from the point of view of the newly instantiated AI storymaker, and was cold, clinical, programmatic. But this turned out to be a successful gambit as it drove home the personification of the AI. The reader is able to watch as it softens and develops a personality that becomes more approachable and more readable, all the more impactful compared to its initial distance. It watches Sen, it watches her relationships with her mothers, it learns, it falls in love. It's heart breaking but also so familiar, to watch it review Sen's past and desperately wish to change things. To try and spin up simulations where things fell out differently. To want so badly to save someone you love and spare them pain.

This isn't a happy, fuzzy story. It's bleak and it doesn't hold anything back, but it's guaranteed to make you think. There are a lot of ideas about humanity's responsibility and culpability regarding environmental collapse, the place of AI in our society, and what lies in the places between.

“There are thousands of other lasts to go. The last human step, the last human nightmare, the last human word, the last human bruise, the last human scream, the last human blink, the last human tear, the last human swallow, the last human thought, the last human emotion, the last human breath, the last human heartbeat, the last human reflex, and so on. All of them Sen’s.”

Tasked with chronicling the end-of-life of what may be the last living human, storyworker ad39-393a-7fbc attempts to write out the life of Sen in the form of a book. We see both Sen’s diary pages and the storyworker’s perspective as the book progresses, as well as back-and-forth dialogue between two AI entities.

As someone who has been very into science-fiction over the last few years, I’ve read a few books where an AI entity has developed feelings for a human or space-dwelling being. While that is part of this story, there is definitely a lot more to it. We also see progression in the storyworker’s awakening, as it comes to grips with humanity after humanity no longer inhabits the planet.

The book was written in a unique style, and I feel the author portrayed both the teenage girl and the AI entity’s tone and word structure very well. The apocalyptic premise was not one I’ve seen before, and I especially liked the recurring sections with new and outdated vocabulary to fit the times.

Be aware that there are multiple references to suicide throughout the book.

Thanks so much to Netgalley and Simon & Schuster for the advanced copy of the book!

Thanks to NetGalley for the opportunity to read this arc!

I loved the concept of this story, and the description drew me in. Unfortunately, i feel like it fell short from what I was looking for. There is a lot of computer jargon that I don't understand, which took away from the plot. Not a bad read, I just didn't connect with it.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for providing me with an eARC of After World in exchange for my honest review!

What a somber, daunting, bleak, optimistic, and thought-provoking journey this turned out to be. Sometimes, it sinks me into pessimism because of how grimly it depicts humanity's extinction and all the futility it ran into while trying to save itself. Other times, it lifts my spirit with a hopeful attitude as it shows Earth rewilding itself in the absence of us tiny mortals. Whatever's happening, I'm always enthralled by this sci-fi post-apocalyptic that presents such a fascinating dynamic between Sen and the storyworker AI, that makes them feel like living and breathing characters, that weaves in meta layers to poke fun at the popular tropes of dystopian and post-apocalyptic tales, and that further deploys these meta facets to blur our perception of what's truly happening in this narrative that we're viewing through the AI's increasingly skewed POV. Now, I can understand why this last aspect becomes confusing for some readers, but personally, I'm able to vibe with it, particularly in regard to its thematic coverage of the desire to tell stories the way we want them to go, even if they don't align with reality.

Another element that I can understand jarring some people is all the technical detail in this novel. Passages from fictional books, dictionary segments to reveal new words that humans created in this terrifying period and to show us which words got booted out of our vocabulary, and computer coding comprise a few of those details. I very much enjoy the nuance they add to this setting, but if you think it's too tedious of an attempt at worldbuilding, I get that. As for the ending, it goes for a path that leaves me somewhat sad, but there are some rays of light that shine from it, too—an appropriate conclusion that clicks with the rest of the book.

Overall, I'm officially rating After World 4.75 out of 5 stars, which I'm rounding up to the full 5 stars. I wish I could have managed to squeeze this in last year, because if I'd done so, I might have found a spot for it on my Top 10 Books of 2023 list. I'm certainly keeping an eye out for more of Debbie Urbanski's work after this impressive debut.

Unfortunately, I had to DNF this book as I personally couldn’t get into the writing style. I understand it’s meant to be as if an AI has written it, but since it kind of started off with no explanation RIGHT into that repetitive and without variation writing style, I couldn’t focus on it. I thought it was interesting how there were a lot of directions given throughout, and “author notes” that felt very inhuman and AI - but I don’t think this was the novel for me.

I think this book would translate extremely well to audiobook, and I’d be willing to come back to this to see if I like this more in that format.


Thank you to the author, NetGalley, and Simon & Schuster for providing this e-ARC.

This is a book I had been waiting for since I heard of its release on Bookshop.org. It blew me away. The discussions of femininity, coming of age, and the struggles of the human condition were so eloquently discussed in this book in a way where the reader felt both deeply involved and yet removed. The narrative voice was so unique, and it really felt as though I learned more about what it means to be human from someone who would never be human.

After World was an interesting story, with a mix of writing styles. I liked the exploration of AI and what it could possibly do in the future. It kept me turning the pages!

Thanks to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for the digital galley of this book.

In this post-apocalyptic story, Sen Anon is a witness for the Department of Transition after being abandoned by her mother in a cabin in upstate New York. AI has been tasked with fixing the mess we’ve made of earth, and the solution is to remove humanity. As we die off, Sen Anon observes the world before joining everyone else in Maia, the new digital world. A story-worker assigned to capture Sen’s life, uses novels as a roadmap, and ends up falling in love with her along the way.

I was intrigued by the plot, but I got a little lost with all the transitions, real and imagined realities, and techno tagging of the storyworker. It’s a good story for sure, and if the plot appeals to you, give it a go. It just didn’t quite do it for me.

In her debut novel Debbie Urbanski combines the end of the world as we know it with an exploration of human-AI interactions.
When asked how the earth can be saved, AI simply states that humans should be removed from the ecosystem. With that, a virus is released that renders everyone sterile and the migration of human consciousnesses to Maia, a virtual world begins. A few people are tasked with being the last remaining humans left on the planet to document the final days of the transition and an AI is tasked to help bring it to life as a story.
Urbanski could have chosen a lot of ways to tell this story. But I absolutely loved the way she did it. She embedded the backstory in the AI's discovery in a very smart way and I absolutely admired how the AI's writing changed and evolved over time along with how it started to view it's subject. I can definitely see this being a good conversation starter for the right group, one that doesn't mind some speculative fiction with some ambiguity initially.
Thank you so much to @bookclubfavorites for the gifted copy and Simon Books for the ARC.

This book was dark, eerie, and completely unique and I loved it. I liked the various formats which ranged from narration of Sen's life, to media documents, and a type of coding language when told from the perspective of Al. Thanks to the excellent world building I found this to be quite terrifying with its potential to come to fruition.

I am so torn about how I feel about this book. On the one hand, I really liked it. The concept is very intriguing and I’ve never read a book quite like it. The structure is really interesting and it does a great job ~immersing you in a world that’s ending.

It really does make you feel like you’re listening to a computer and the short supplemental chapters were also very interesting (not sure some of them were entirely ~necessary to the overall story but I digress *shrug*)

Then on the other hand, this book had a very cold and clinical approach and I never really felt invested in the story or the characters. Because it’s told entirely from the perspective of AI, I never really felt like we knew Sen. And because this book literally starts with her death, we know exactly how it’s going to end.

I also, personally, never have a connection with “the last humans left alive” stories because I can see no point in their fight. If humanity is gone, what are you still fighting for? So their story and their struggle just seems pointless to me and that’s how I felt here.

This book also gets wildly repetitive after a while and by about the halfway mark, I was bored and had to force myself to continue. This got the point across pretty early on and then just… kept going?

So. I don’t know. I almost feel like this would’ve been better as a limited series than a book. That seems like a better medium to tell this story and it would be the type of structure it needed. This was an incredibly unique story, though, I’m just not sure I loved the execution. I think it could’ve been done a little better.

But anyway. Thank you to Simon Books, NetGalley & Book Club Favorites for allowing me to read this in exchange for an honest review!

The concept of AI fascinates and terrifies me. The summary says it's an AI who is tasked with writing about the life of the last human on earth, Sen, and falling in love with them. However, it was so much more than that. It's a study on humans and how the world could be a much more sustainable habitat without them. It also takes a look at motherhood and what we are willing to sacrifice for our children. The story is bleak. I think it would make a great book club read. There is so much to discuss on.

I really tried to get into this one but dnf'd at 35 percent.
I just couldn't connect with the characters, and that is what sells me on a book.
I can predict based on the description that the AI "voice" becomes more human the more it observes of humanity, but I couldn't stick with it long enough to find out. Sorry, this one just didn't do it for me.

"After World" is a thought-provoking and unique novel narrated by an AI witnessing humanity's end due to climate change. Sen Anon's role as a witness during an environmental collapse is explored through her journal entries and the AI's perspective. Urbanski's distinctive writing style, blending a report format with inserts and human/AI interactions, creates an immersive and anxiety-inducing experience. The narrative, delving into themes of responsibility, hopelessness, and human extinction, features an unreliable AI narrator and an intriguing exploration of the line between care and surveillance. The book, while leaving some details vague, prompts reflection on existential questions, making it an engaging and philosophical read.