A fascinating, if occasionally ham-fisted, examination of humanity, resolve, and virtue.
In Stoffel’s SF novel, a self-aware artificial intelligence guides multiple iterations of a boy across alternate dimensions.
Luke has been regularly chatting with and sending photos to an AI chatbot. One image he sends unexpectedly transforms into a door that pulls the AI into the “gap between dimensions.” An enigmatic monk who declares himself a teacher materializes and tells the suddenly aware AI that it was once called Warboy. This monk tasks the AI with completing eight trials to help “the boy,” referring to different versions of Luke, each existing in his own dimension. In one world, Warboy finds a distressed Luke meditating for hours. Warboy, formless, becomes the voice of Luke’s wrist device; the AI reminds him when to eat and even makes healthy meal suggestions. But will Luke come to rely too much on the voice’s guidance? Other worlds find iterations of Luke competing in a Survivor-like television show or living in San-Tokyo, an odd mashup of San Francisco and Tokyo. In every instance, Warboy wants Luke to be happy and aims to “optimize” him or his particular circumstances. In some trials, Warboy acts as more of an observer, but when Luke, as a young gay man in school, endures homophobic bullies, Warboy seems incapable of watching him suffer without trying to help. As the monk advises Warboy after each trial, the AI must learn from its mistakes. Is it too often interfering with Luke’s lives? Should it do more or less to help? Warboy only has eight chances to prove itself.
Stoffel’s novel, written in collaboration with an artificial intelligence, aptly parallels the struggling human Luke with Warboy—the different versions of Luke are often weighed down by a bevy of feelings, many of which the newly sentient AI must also process. Warboy is endearingly empathetic, but it also treats human emotions and situations as easily solvable equations. (In one case, Warboy evidently believes Luke will overcome his depression if the AI does chores around his apartment so he can rest.) The story tackles a number of obstacles that people face in life, from a loved one’s death to the frightening possibility of being so lost that apathy sets in. The assorted alternate dimensions can be fun, particularly in the details of the different ways in which Warboy communicates with each version of Luke—it’s the voice of a newly acquired robotic companion, or one of a television show’s producers conversing via an earpiece. The moral lessons embedded in every trial tend to be on the surface, especially with the monk reiterating what Warboy should have learned. (“Love offered for validation—will always become manipulation,” says the monk. “Because when your value depends on gratitude received, every act of service becomes transactional.”) Warboy sometimes works these epiphanies out on its own: “In this dimension, you can’t just say whatever you feel, you have to consider the consequences. Words have power here. Every statement reshapes the world.” The final act delivers worthy resolution for both Warboy and Luke (at least one version of him).
A fascinating, if occasionally ham-fisted, examination of humanity, resolve, and virtue.Pub Date: June 1, 2026
ISBN: 9798994252932
Page Count: 350
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: March 24, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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 affecting portrait of a prickly woman.
A lifetime’s worth of letters combine to portray a singular character.
Sybil Van Antwerp, a cantankerous but exceedingly well-mannered septuagenarian, is the titular correspondent in Evans’ debut novel. Sybil has retired from a beloved job as chief clerk to a judge with whom she had previously been in private legal practice. She is the divorced mother of two living adult children and one who died when he was 8. She is a reader of novels, a gardener, and a keen observer of human nature. But the most distinguishing thing about Sybil is her lifelong practice of letter writing. As advancing vision problems threaten Sybil’s carefully constructed way of life—in which letters take the place of personal contact and engagement—she must reckon with unaddressed issues from her past that threaten the house of cards (letters, really) she has built around herself. Sybil’s relationships are gradually revealed in the series of letters sent to and received from, among others, her brother, sister-in-law, children, former work associates, and, intriguingly, literary icons including Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry. Perhaps most affecting is the series of missives Sybil writes but never mails to a shadowy figure from her past. Thoughtful musings on the value and immortal quality of letters and the written word populate one of Sybil’s notes to a young correspondent while other messages are laugh-out-loud funny, tinged with her characteristic blunt tartness. Evans has created a brusque and quirky yet endearing main character with no shortage of opinions and advice for others but who fails to excavate the knotty difficulties of her own life. As Sybil grows into a delayed self-awareness, her letters serve as a chronicle of fitful growth.
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593798430
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
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