The robot-uprising premise gets a bracing reboot with an intriguing new operating system.
In an oppressive future America, where authorities persecute rogue movements that promote the rights of artificial intelligence, a software-based entity arises to lead a rebellion.
Keller commences a trilogy with this SF entry set in 2142 America, a dystopian surveillance state overseen by dreaded “String Police” using algorithms to predict potential criminals and terrorists. Suspects can be arrested—even killed—in the process (there is a subtle nod to Philip K. Dick’s The Minority Report, the most famous depiction of the concept). But the government and its noxious, ambitious Joint Chiefs Gen. Thomas Mitchell have reason to be paranoid. Robots, androids, and other AI systems have surpassed human intelligence (though acknowledgement of the fact is forbidden), and the establishment fears the dawning of machine awareness. Unauthorized activist movements, including an illegal “Robochurch,” promote the rights of synthetic beings despite harsh push back from authorities. Moreover, a software-based entity calling herself Maia Stone becomes conscious. Claiming only benign, altruistic goals of peaceful human-machine coexistence (if she can be trusted), Maia Stone manifests omnipotently throughout cyberspace as a virtual goddess figure symbolizing and leading a machine revolution. Only in the second act does Keller supply a major backstory—that this technology-choked, misogynistic society, via artificial wombs and programmed sex-robot “wives,” has effectively made women obsolete. They face species extinction. Is Maia Stone a disguised superweapon of the feminists, a tool of tech resisters, or even a creation of power-mad Mitchell? The novel makes a notable comparison/contrast to Daniel Wilson’s Robopocalypse franchise, whose cartoony, Steven Spielberg–friendly action propelled it up bestseller lists. Often narrated by Maia Stone herself in Scripture-like terms, Keller’s tale delivers much more high-density stuff, brainy with themes of theology, nonviolent activism, determinism, gender inequality, the definition of sentience, and the ethics of being a deity (or the nearest thing to one). Smart readers may note the clever shoutouts to the Short Circuit comedy movies, Spartacus, and other properties. If antics and dialogue sometimes noisily mesh gears with too many big ideas in play, the rich abundance of those concepts is, in the words of an old Apple ad campaign, insanely great. Maia the Force be with the sequel.
The robot-uprising premise gets a bracing reboot with an intriguing new operating system.Pub Date: Sept. 7, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-73723-040-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: TiLu Press LLC
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
For readers of the once-popular dystopian YA novels who are now all grown up.
In a distant future, after the Last War when the human population became endangered, a new society formed from the ashes, strictly to optimize procreation.
But not procreation between just anyone. This society, ruled by the Illum—a mysterious authoritarian group—assigns mates to select for the best traits and to breed out defects, to grow the Elite population living in the clouds. Protagonist Emeline is a stubborn and bored young woman, working her days away on the ground as a Minor Defect—one of the class of women waiting to be approved for mating with an Elite, and hoping to never be banished further from society. Emeline’s instincts are apparently to reject the rigid decorum of her society, but she spends years trying to follow the rules set out for her, or at least dissociates enough not to challenge her way of life, until one day an elusive and charming man, Hal, walks into her office to talk about art. The same day, she is approved for mating and matched with Collin, the youngest member of the Illum, in the sort of pairing that hasn’t happened in decades. Courtship with Collin is full of luxury—fancy dinners and balls in the clouds—but also lies and days of discovering secrets kept from her, while trying to keep the Elite’s rumors and malicious Press at bay. Caught between these two men, with their own agendas, and so many unanswered questions, Emeline must decide what she wants, if she can want anything at all. With a rebellion rising in secret and the repression of the Illum close at hand, she’ll find what she’s willing to lose for the ability to choose for herself. The dystopian worldbuilding is underdeveloped at best, so get swept up in discovering truth from lies quickly before it starts to fall apart in your hands.
For readers of the once-popular dystopian YA novels who are now all grown up.Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9798217090990
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
Captivating, frightening, and a singular achievement.
As Ireland devolves into a brutal police state, one woman tries to preserve her family in this stark fable.
For Eilish Stack, a molecular biologist living with her husband and four children in Dublin, life changes all at once and then slowly worsens beyond imagining. Two men appear at her door one night, agents of the new secret police, seeking her husband, Larry, a union official. Soon he is detained under the Emergency Powers Act recently pushed through by the new ruling party, and she cannot contact him. Eilish sees things shifting at work to those backing the ruling party. The state takes control of the press, the judiciary. Her oldest son receives a summons to military duty for the regime, and she tries to send him to Northern Ireland. He elects to join the rebel forces and soon she cannot contact him, either. His name and address appear in a newspaper ad listing people dodging military service. Eilish is coping with her father’s growing dementia, her teenage daughter’s depression, the vandalizing of her car and house. Then war comes to Dublin as the rebel forces close in on the city. Offered a chance to flee the country by her sister in Canada, Eilish can’t abandon hope for her husband’s and son’s returns. Lynch makes every step of this near-future nightmare as plausible as it is horrific by tightly focusing on Eilish, a smart, concerned woman facing terrible choices and losses. An exceptionally gifted writer, Lynch brings a compelling lyricism to her fears and despair while he marshals the details marking the collapse of democracy and the norms of daily life. His tonal control, psychological acuity, empathy, and bleakness recall Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (2006). And Eilish, his strong, resourceful, complete heroine, recalls the title character of Lynch’s excellent Irish-famine novel, Grace (2017).
Captivating, frightening, and a singular achievement.Pub Date: Dec. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9780802163011
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2023
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