Impressive AI mayhem and thematic parsing for SF fans.
A sequel describes a future Pacific Northwest splintered into competing nation-states where the emergence of automated artificial intelligence city states from hibernation threatens to do more than just shift the balance of power.
SF author Otto focuses on the intricate dystopian realm he created in his novel Detonation (2018) but mostly with another set of characters. Prolonged conflict has broken out over advanced AI, reminiscent of (but a bit more thoughtful than) Daniel Wilson’s Robopacalypse franchise. In the process, major cities are destroyed. Human society continues in diminished, Balkanized form, with a major force being the “Essentialists,” a caste trying to persevere without high technology. The Pacific Northwest and coastal waters of the former United States and Canada are now varied seagoing nation-states technologically regressed to something approximating the age of fighting sail. There, a ticking time bomb of advanced AI exists: several regional “Independent City States of Morganis,”built 80 years ago. Meant as utopian havens of automation and protection, the idealistic city states turned dangerously against humans and one another. Now, after a ruinous clash and generations dormant, these city states—each more sophisticated than the last—have been somehow triggered to gradually come back online. To competing expansionist forces—especially an opportunist “Prefecture,” a throwback to imperial Japan—the power and potential weaponry embodied by the city states are an irresistible lure. Dryden Quintain, an anthropologist disgraced by his alcoholism, studies ICSM history as an intellectual pursuit, but he soon finds himself a pawn in the intrigues. So does Lexie, a spirited female pirate who becomes a prisoner of the “Observers,” a monkish group that keeps watch over the dangerous tech. Ironically, to do so, the Observers resort to neural implants and connections that have made them somehow inhuman. Via these characters, the author skillfully invokes principles such as “value-loading” and other logic paradoxes that strive to explain how machines designed to be humankind’s faithful servants can become the masters (or exterminators) instead. While not short of striking combat scenes and violence, as war droids and drones fill the landscape, this tale is also SF with major ideas, as much so as Isaac Asimov’s iconic “Three Laws of Robotics.” Otto’s bio notes that he runs a nonprofit that promotes the ethical use of AI.
Impressive AI mayhem and thematic parsing for SF fans. (science fiction)Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 521
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: May 12, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
Equal parts biting social commentary and page-turning thriller, a disturbing glimpse into humankind’s possible future.
The first installment of Liu’s Julia Z saga is an SF thriller set in a near-future “post-truth age” where the use of AI and the inundation of digital disinformation and data pollution have blurred the lines between delusion and reality.
Julia—whose immigrant mother, a divisive political activist, was murdered during a border protest—has lived on her own since she was 14. A brilliant hacker now 23, she’s been trying to live in online anonymity, acutely aware of the multitude of ways she can be identified and tracked. Living in a Boston suburb and struggling to make ends meet, she inadvertently becomes entangled with a lawyer named Piers Neri and his search for his artist wife, Elli Krantz—famous for her experimental work in vivid dreaming—who may or may not have been kidnapped. A prime suspect in his wife’s disappearance, Piers goes on the run with the help of Julia—and together, they begin putting together pieces of a mind-bogglingly intricate puzzle that links Elli to a powerful criminal with a global reach. As Julia digs deeper into the appeal of vivid dreaming and the criminal’s ruthless endeavors, she discovers the sham that is the American Dream: “America was corrupt and steeped in sin. The powerful had rigged the game for themselves and turned the country into a panopticon to imprison the rest of us. Anytime one of the powerless—it didn’t matter the color of your skin, the language you spoke, the place you were born in—was on the verge of climbing out, they would be ruthlessly tossed back into the pit.” And amid the backdrop of dealing with unresolved childhood trauma and the need to find her place in the world, she finds something unexpected—herself.
Equal parts biting social commentary and page-turning thriller, a disturbing glimpse into humankind’s possible future.Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9781668083178
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Saga/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2025
Gripping and heartfelt, this prismatic novel is more than worth its salt.
A Jesuit and a nuclear inspector are polar-opposite pillars of (dis)belief in a biblical apocalypse hastened and hindered by social media.
The Vatican sends Father Avelyn Brocken back home to Hreodwater, a remote salt-mining town in England, to investigate the supposed miracle of another priest turning into a pillar of salt. Twelve years ago, young Avelyn left Hreodwater for the church, hiding his distinctive violet eyes behind contact lenses and lasering off his intricate tattoos, inked in tribute to the Hreoda’s slumbering cult idol, the Salt King. At the Dead Sea, Dr. Tallis Osho, a nuclear safety inspector accustomed to epileptic hallucinations, investigates phenomena similar to what’s happening in Hreodwater, particularly the eerie “salt light” shorting out electronics and eventually infecting humans with something akin to radiation poisoning. These two compelling, complicated figures anchor an end-of-days plot that is both global and intensely personal, as salt light spreads across the planet while Avelyn is drawn back into the dark thrall of the Salt King and his imminent waking. Having jumped among an alt-history 19th century, far future Mars, and the Bronze Age in her previous books, Pulley now transports us to a wholly recognizable 2030, where everyone has a persistent Covid cough and monks and doctors need likes and subscriptions so they can join in the cultural conversation. Drawing on some of her favorite narrative elements—time jumps, perspective shifts, mammoths—Pulley cleverly reckons with thorny questions of truth versus belief, faith versus institutions, and whether it’s better to navigate the unimaginable alone or with a companion whose very presence you doubt. Seeing is believing—or perhaps believing is seeing. Though the novel deals in prophecy and cataclysm, it champions free will down to its very last moments.
Gripping and heartfelt, this prismatic novel is more than worth its salt.Pub Date: Aug. 18, 2026
ISBN: 9781639737291
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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