I’ve become a big Ray Nayler fan. I’ve read his other two books (The Mountain in the Sea and Tusks of Extinction) and thoroughly enjoyed them. So when this latest novel came out recently, I quickly put in on my list. And late last week, I finished reading it.

The story takes place in a near future where two main forms of government exist. The Federation is a totalitarian surveillance state. Everyone is watched all the time. They use a social credit system to keep everyone in line. Violence and fear are pervasive and everpresent. The president changes regularly but it is always the same person whose consciousness is transferred to a new body each time. The West is governed by a system run by AI Prime Ministers who are meant to be objectively more efficient and peaceful. Naturally there is resistance in the Federation. And in the West, a new Republic that just received its first AI PM, struggles with the adjustment.

This is exactly my kind of human/AI story! Most stories about AI are about how it becomes smarter than humans and subjugates them in some way. This is much more complicated than that. And that complication is what makes me appreciate this novel. In general, there are no straightforward answers. Like real life, things are messy. Human emotion interferes with logic. The author does with this book what all good science fiction authors do: he explores today’s issues by exploring them in made-up future. This is not prediction. It is exploration. And what a thought provoking exploration it is!

My rating: 5/5