A thoughtful, involving tale about remarkable human allies fighting an insidious AI.
A software engineer finds herself ripped from her present and drafted into a battle against a rogue artificial intelligence in the future in this SF thriller.
Harper Lewis, Mulligan’s protagonist, discovers that she can roll with the punches (in some cases, literally). One minute, the software engineer is trapped with a snake inside her car on a busy Florida highway. The next, she’s waking up in a sterile room and being greeted by an attractive man. The man, Dalian Garcia, informs her that her consciousness is inside the body of Ambassador Prayze Hale, one of the human leaders of Atlanta in 2123, a city now run by AI partially designed by the diplomat. Dalian soon betrays Harper, handing her over to Ebba Shaw, the leader of one of the “natural” (unenhanced) villages that eschew technology. Harper, who is tortured, gets rescued by Linaria, Prayze’s fellow ambassador and on-again, off-again lover, and they take Kade Murphy, a “natural” in need of medical care, back to the city with them. They piece together that Mazin, the AI security chief, has created a method to control humans, forcing them to either leave the city or do his bidding. With Mazin conspiring against them, Harper/Prayze, Linaria, and fellow ambassador Hiran Patel have to develop a way to erase the security chief without disrupting the comfortable lives of the city’s citizens. Mulligan, once a coder, has clearly given a lot of thought to the implications of AI leaders, which form the foundation of her novel. Harper gets to see one potential future stemming from her type of work, while Prayze observes the negative results of her well-meaning innovations. Despite chapters alternating between Harper’s present and Prayze’s recent past and a familiar rise-of-the-machine backdrop, the narrative unfolds smoothly. A high point of the book is watching Harper and Prayze attempt to operate in each other’s eras. Harper, a nobody in her own time, rises to the challenge, making selfless choices to save a future that’s not her own. The genius Prayze is less adept at becoming a part of Harper’s world. But both protagonists are needed to rescue a flawed future in this engaging and provocative story.
A thoughtful, involving tale about remarkable human allies fighting an insidious AI.Pub Date: Nov. 15, 2021
ISBN: 9781737787525
Page Count: 370
Publisher: Mullory Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.
Atwood goes back to Gilead.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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