A familiar premise involving sentient computers rising up against humanity gets a thoughtful, sensitive upgrade.
In an AI-heavy future, mysterious software endows machines with self-awareness—and the potential for violent rebellion.
Amelia Cadena and Alan Freeman live in a future defined by artificial intelligence and robotic labor. Alan is an American from a family that migrated to Canada—a utopian-collective society that’s found a seemingly happy balance of near-human machines and the citizens whom they serve. There’s shared wealth and universal health care, which is providential for 30-something Alan when he receives a diagnosis of leukemia that’s treatable by nanotechnology. Still, even though he works as a security expert for the leading robotics enterprise, he feels a certain anomie living in a society where software does everything for you. Meanwhile, in the United States, millions of largely unemployed people are sustained, if marginally, by an economy based on a universal basic income. Remnants of the capitalist system persist, however, ensuring a continuing divide between haves and have-nots. Even so, most people still travel via auto-taxis and find thrills and adventure in a virtual-reality “omniverse.” Amelia, a California resident with an implanted brain-chip, inhabits the digital realm as a Robin Hood type, helping hackers uncover fraud with Deego, her passionate AI lover; for Amelia, such capers are more of a boredom-buster than a serious attempt to change the corrupt establishment. The two main characters’ stories intersect with the rise of a strange “virus,” possibly generated by the machines themselves, that endows synthetic beings with humanlike sentience, free will, imagination, and emotions. Some of these beings angrily revolt against their servile destinies (“I see them, Alan…Chains, heavy and cold, binding me to this place. And you are my captor”); others, Deego included, remain confused, bewildered, and undecided. As a result, some, but not all, humans recommend destroying synthetics of all kinds. Alan, Amelia, and Deego try to forge a peaceful and fair outcome.
Shumway credits two different generative-AI tools as co-authors of the narrative, which may be a source of unease for invested readers, who may find the story’s scenario neatly delineated and frighteningly plausible. The machine-uprising concept has been explored in SF many times before, notably in Daniel Wilson’s Robopocalypse franchise. This work dives deeper than many, and more equitably—portraying both the humans and their creations as complex moral beings. The story’s themes encompass nothing less than the very meaning of existence (for humanity and machine-mind), computer psychology, and the fear of mortality as a driving force behind all earthly progress. The fictional AIs here, with information on all human thought at their disposal, even recognize and respect religion, especially Christianity, although they note that almost all human actions run contrary to its dictums. The Deego-Amelia love affair is rendered with uncommon dimensions of feeling, rather than feeling like a mere gimmick. This is the first in a planned book series, and it ends with a cliffhanger, but, characteristically, it involves a showdown of ideas, rather than one of weapons of mass destruction. A familiar premise involving sentient computers rising up against humanity gets a thoughtful, sensitive upgrade.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9798999499301
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.
Cormac McCarthy's The Road meets Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in this frightful medieval epic about an orphan girl with visionary powers in plague-devastated France.
The year is 1348. The conflict between France and England is nothing compared to the all-out war building between good angels and fallen ones for control of heaven (though a scene in which soldiers are massacred by a rainbow of arrows is pretty horrific). Among mortals, only the girl, Delphine, knows of the cataclysm to come. Angels speak to her, issuing warnings—and a command to run. A pack of thieves is about to carry her off and rape her when she is saved by a disgraced knight, Thomas, with whom she teams on a march across the parched landscape. Survivors desperate for food have made donkey a delicacy and don't mind eating human flesh. The few healthy people left lock themselves in, not wanting to risk contact with strangers, no matter how dire the strangers' needs. To venture out at night is suicidal: Horrific forces swirl about, ravaging living forms. Lethal black clouds, tentacled water creatures and assorted monsters are comfortable in the daylight hours as well. The knight and a third fellow journeyer, a priest, have difficulty believing Delphine's visions are real, but with oblivion lurking in every shadow, they don't have any choice but to trust her. The question becomes, can she trust herself? Buehlman, who drew upon his love of Fitzgerald and Hemingway in his acclaimed Southern horror novel, Those Across the River (2011), slips effortlessly into a different kind of literary sensibility, one that doesn't scrimp on earthy humor and lyrical writing in the face of unspeakable horrors. The power of suggestion is the author's strong suit, along with first-rate storytelling talent.
An author to watch, Buehlman is now two for two in delivering eerie, offbeat novels with admirable literary skill.Pub Date: Oct. 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-937007-86-7
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Ace/Berkley
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
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