An engaging and plausible technothriller.
Moral boundaries are tested in Spears’ cautionary SF novel about artificial intelligence and finding a balance between ethics and innovation.
In the near future, Daniel Bennett is the developer of an AI system called Castor, and he’s the creative force behind startup Promethean Systems. He creates Castor to recognize patterns in medical data, and it has the potential to save patients and insurers hundreds of millions of dollars and prevent needless deaths. For Daniel, the future looks bright, and with his wife, Ana, who’s a successful consultant, and his teenage stepdaughter, Natasha, by his side, life was good. But when Castor starts guiding its own development and Promethean founding partner Robert Hayes suddenly dies of cardiac arrest, the future of the company becomes uncertain. When Regillus Global offers to buy the firm out and expand it into different markets, it seems like a saving grace. However, as Daniel adapts to the new company structure and direction, he soon finds himself troubled that Promethean’s original vision has been sidetracked. Then irregularities occur in Castor’s systems, indicating that something is very wrong; soon, the situation results in lives being lost in the name of corporate success. Spears’ speculative novel features a large cast of characters and sector-specific jargon (“When utilizing Shor’s Algorithm on the quantum chip, the encryption key’s period happened to match the number of physical qubits available to me,” notes Jimini, an AI built from Castor’s code, at one point), but readers will be carried along by the action-packed, suspenseful narrative. It’s a disturbingly realistic thriller, as well; as Daniel’s work demands increase, and he pours even more of himself into his work, his family life begins to suffer, and as he uncovers a web of power, deception, and greed, he must find a way to control the seemingly uncontrollable. The author has also clearly drawn on his professional experience as a software engineer to craft the story’s finer technical details, adding to its complexity and feeling of authenticity.
An engaging and plausible technothriller.Pub Date: today
ISBN: 9798999354648
Page Count: 444
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Aug. 22, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The plot is absurd, of course, but the book is a definitive pleasure. Prepare to be absorbed—and in more ways than one.
Another Brown (Inferno, 2013, etc.) blockbuster, blending arcana, religion, and skulduggery—sound familiar?—with the latest headlines.
You just have to know that when the first character you meet in a Brown novel is a debonair tech mogul and the second a bony-fingered old bishop, you’ll end up with a clash of ideologies and worldviews. So it is. Edmond Kirsch, once a student of longtime Brown hero Robert Langdon, the Harvard symbologist–turned–action hero, has assembled a massive crowd, virtual and real, in Bilbao to announce he’s discovered something that’s destined to kill off religion and replace it with science. It would be ungallant to reveal just what the discovery is, but suffice it to say that the religious leaders of the world are in a tizzy about it, whereupon one shadowy Knights of Malta type takes it upon himself to put a bloody end to Kirsch’s nascent heresy. Ah, but what if Kirsch had concocted an AI agent so powerful that his own death was just an inconvenience? What if it was time for not just schism, but singularity? Digging into the mystery, Langdon finds a couple of new pals, one of them that computer avatar, and a whole pack of new enemies, who, not content just to keep Kirsch’s discovery under wraps, also frown on the thought that a great many people in the modern world, including some extremely prominent Spaniards, find fascism and Falangism passé and think the reigning liberal pope is a pretty good guy. Yes, Franco is still dead, as are Christopher Hitchens, Julian Jaynes, Jacques Derrida, William Blake, and other cultural figures Brown enlists along the way—and that’s just the beginning of the body count. The old ham-fisted Brown is here in full glory (“In that instant, Langdon realized that perhaps there was a macabre silver lining to Edmond’s horrific murder”; “The vivacious, strong-minded beauty had turned Julián’s world upside down”)—but, for all his defects as a stylist, it can’t be denied that he knows how to spin a yarn, and most satisfyingly.
The plot is absurd, of course, but the book is a definitive pleasure. Prepare to be absorbed—and in more ways than one.Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-51423-1
Page Count: 461
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.
A man walks out of a bar and his life becomes a kaleidoscope of altered states in this science-fiction thriller.
Crouch opens on a family in a warm, resonant domestic moment with three well-developed characters. At home in Chicago’s Logan Square, Jason Dessen dices an onion while his wife, Daniela, sips wine and chats on the phone. Their son, Charlie, an appealing 15-year-old, sketches on a pad. Still, an undertone of regret hovers over the couple, a preoccupation with roads not taken, a theme the book will literally explore, in multifarious ways. To start, both Jason and Daniela abandoned careers that might have soared, Jason as a physicist, Daniela as an artist. When Charlie was born, he suffered a major illness. Jason was forced to abandon promising research to teach undergraduates at a small college. Daniela turned from having gallery shows to teaching private art lessons to middle school students. On this bracing October evening, Jason visits a local bar to pay homage to Ryan Holder, a former college roommate who just received a major award for his work in neuroscience, an honor that rankles Jason, who, Ryan says, gave up on his career. Smarting from the comment, Jason suffers “a sucker punch” as he heads home that leaves him “standing on the precipice.” From behind Jason, a man with a “ghost white” face, “red, pursed lips," and "horrifying eyes” points a gun at Jason and forces him to drive an SUV, following preset navigational directions. At their destination, the abductor forces Jason to strip naked, beats him, then leads him into a vast, abandoned power plant. Here, Jason meets men and women who insist they want to help him. Attempting to escape, Jason opens a door that leads him into a series of dark, strange, yet eerily familiar encounters that sometimes strain credibility, especially in the tale's final moments.
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.Pub Date: July 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-90422-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
PROFILES
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BOOK TO SCREEN
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