An ex–office worker, banished to a treacherous apartment district, fights to survive thugs and a rogue artificial intelligence in this SF sequel.

Kim once worked at the Artificial Intelligence Company in an AI–run dystopian city. But after drones caught her making loveto a woman named Shan,she was branded a criminal in a future world that rejects any kind of individuality. The punishment was exile in one of the crime-ridden outer districts. Her new apartment and assigned manual-labor job aren’t great, and Kim has never before lived without constant AI assistance or a bot brewing her coffee. She isn’t in District 33 for long before danger tracks her down: A couple of hooligans accost her and continually threaten her in later run-ins. They seem to know too much about her, which makes Kim suspect that someone—or something—is pointing them in her direction. The telltale buzzing sound of a drone overhead indicates it’s likely Kimberly, the AI that Kim created for her old company and that’s since turned against her. Luckily, Kim makes some new friends and scores a side gig as a “pedicabbie,” at which the skilled bicyclist excels. Things take a significant turn when she agrees to a pickup in the elite District 2 and a drop-off somewhere on “the outside”—the ungoverned land just beyond reinforced concrete walls. This ultimately precipitates Kim’s deep dive into virtual reality, which she frequented in her old life. There, she may find a way to fix Kimberly and take a stance against her former employer and the authoritarian Hierarchy.

Stanfill delivers a faster-paced follow-up to series opener Terms of Service(2021)—one in which Kim’s fight briskly moves back and forth between real life and VR. The protagonist also faces more urgent predicaments than she did in the first novel. She’s determined to find Shan, who’s now hiding as a “Blank,” having successfully ditched her ID chip with Kim’s assistance. Moreover, the perpetually hostile thugs keep popping up, and some in Kim’s group of allies think that she may be a traitor. Despite Kim’s reliance on AIs, she manages to roll with life’s punches and adjust to her new circumstances with relative ease. She doesn’t want to kill anyone, but she won’t hesitate to flash her switchblade to ward off a threat. Meanwhile, a fascinating cast surrounds her. Their local language, Panglobal, doesn’t recognize gender, so this “translated” narrative uses only she/her/hers for all characters. Stanfill, as in his earlier book, animates the pages with lucid details, as when Kim visits a nightclub (in the real world): “Spins, lunges, leaps, surges, all the usual moves but stronger, more intense, more vital. She danced as if all the devils of Hell were nipping at her heels. She had nothing left to lose, no future, no past, only the present.” Scenes in VR, however, are equally vibrant all the way until the tale’s ending, which offers surprising resolution.

A smashing, energetic installment in this futuristic series that keeps getting better.

In this SF debut, an employee gradually defies authority in a distant-future city that corporations own and artificial intelligence runs.

Kim purposefully leads a mundane life in an unnamed future city. Corporations like The Transportation Company and The Food Company have their hands in nearly everything, each with its own terms of service. AI systems not only assist in providing services, but also monitor citizens for any violations of the companies’ terms. Kim actually works at The Artificial Intelligence Company but not with any AI; she trains automatons that can’t think for themselves. As such, she pores over surveillance data in search of customers’ potential violations. It’s a tedious job but something she can easily do while she, as a customer herself, abides by all those terms of service. Even her recreation, from a baseball game to a beach party, is done in the manageable environment of virtual reality. But when Kim’s best friend from school, Shan, contacts her, the two go bicycling in the real world. The ride with Shan, who was something of a troublemaker in school, prompts a stockpile of citations from The Parks and Recreation Company and The Transportation Company. But something is off: The AI monitors seemingly let violations accumulate before notifying the cycling friends. Even stranger is Kim, who was convinced she’d lose her job, getting a promotion. Now, she’ll train an AI, conveniently named Kimberly, in “investigative techniques.” But as frequently malfunctioning Kimberly questions The Artificial Intelligence Company as well as the city’s governing Hierarchy, the AI’s possible self-awareness leads Kim to take a closer look at the totalitarian rules.

Stanfill offers a memorable but fairly light dystopia. Some of it is outright depressing; children, by the time they’re 4 years old, must leave the care of their “birth-giver” to live with a harsher “mentor.” But the story isn’t as dark as other SF outings. For example, there’s not much at stake; violating terms of service generates bans from certain activities or places or a hit to one’s social cohesion rating, which just leads to further citations. The author also sprinkles dry humor throughout, like days of the week known as oneday, twoday, etc. Kim is a sympathetic, tragic figure who staves off bouts of loneliness and misses the birth-giver she hardly remembers. Her narrative touches on a few SF staples, including an AI developing human qualities (for example, Kimberly’s envy of humanity’s free will) and VR becoming more real than reality itself. These bolster Kim’s slow but enthralling evolution, sparking a denouement that’s an unmistakable setup for a sequel. At the same time, there are hints of backstory left for a second installment to expand on, like the Turmoil and the AI war, which were apparently catastrophic. Stanfill adorns his prose with vivid descriptions, even when the protagonist dons a VR headset: “Kim dropped into VR at the beach and walked over to a shady spot in a grove of palm trees, where” her friend “Quinn was strumming away on a beat-up old guitar and singing....Kim was still listening when Shan came riding up on a rusty old bicycle, looking sad and forlorn.”

A worthy introduction to a captivating dystopian world.