Review: Testament of Leaves

Testament of Leaves by Carolyn Ives Gilman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

In contrast to some books I've read that I wished could be chopped right in half, this slender novella (97 pages) could have easily gone half again its length, with its dense worldbuilding and characterization. It's certainly a testament to the author's mastery of her craft that she managed to pack so much into a shorter story without making it feel too top-heavy or hard to follow. The ending, while finishing up this particular situation, also leaves open the possibility of further stories with these characters, and I for one would certainly read more.

This is a murder mystery set on a human-colonized planet with a very intriguing backstory. This is revealed bit by bit as the story progresses, just enough to whet the reader's appetite without becoming overwhelming, while leaving the impression that there's much more to be discovered should the author wish. It's also, as we discover, a tale of colonialism and exploitation, and the terrible cringing condescension of those who think that just because they have technology they are superior to the people who have learned to live on an alien planet.

Said alien planet and its ecosystems are also revealed to be possibly genetically engineered, by the ancestors of those who now inhabit it:

"They knew how to make and change living things. They created the creatures of the thicket for their gardens. When the cities were destroyed the garden creatures escaped and multiplied. Eventually they crowded out all the trees, except the ones in the Refuge. Those were the trees the ancients created to be their memory, in case everything else was destroyed." She looked around at the massive archive of leaves. "The trees remember, even though we have forgotten. Every year they write on their leaves in the language and ancients taught them. All of history, all the knowledge of the world is here. We can't read it, but we keep it anyway. Some day we may learn to remember."

I don't know about you, but this idea of a forgotten, fallen, enlightened past, with ancestors who accomplished great and near-godlike things, and their descendants living in the remains and trying to understand them, is catnip for a lot of readers, including me. Andre Norton did that sort of thing with her Forerunners. Gilman's version is different, but just as fascinating. This is also a story of language and assumptions, and misunderstandings, and how a simple inability to talk and be understood can spin into a profound tragedy.

This story doesn't have galaxy-spanning stakes; it's quieter but just as significant, to the characters and world. This is, I think, a story to be read slowly and savored. It takes a little while to sink in, but give yourself time to digest it. It's worth it.

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Review: The Sixth Nik

The Sixth Nik by Daniel Kraus
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This is the weirdest book I have read in quite a while. It's also rather unsettling for several different reasons (including one icky plot point I will get to), and the sheer amount of ooey gooey oozing wriggling body horror will put a lot of people off. (I thought I was fairly used to that sort of thing--being a T. Kingfisher fan--but there was more than one point in this book where I almost yucked out.) Having said all that, this is a book of sweeping ambition that aims high. I don't know if it's a complete success, but at the least it could be termed an "interesting failure."

Our protagonist is nine-year-old Sisilla, a "Niffakoq" raised in Greenland Inuit culture (though she herself is not Inuit) and implanted as a baby with the titular "Niks," possible alien tech designed to jumpstart her brain's growth. (The first indication that this book is going to be riddled with body horror is in the very first chapter; one of the niks migrates from its implanted spot and she digs it out of her eye socket with a freaking spoon.) Due to this artificially accelerated growth, Niffakoqs are assigned "Chores"--duties important to Earth society that they carry out--and then die; no Niffakoq lives past the age of 12. (They are also all female--an early indication of the misogyny weaving through the Nuna Naavoq group, which we find out is pretty much equivalent to a cult. There's also the nasty little detail that many parents want their daughters to become Niffakoq due to their prestige and importance--and despite the horribly limited lifespan--with the result that those parents hire people to take their infant daughters to the Nuna Naavoq territory in Greenland, where many babies are left abandoned to die.) Shortly after her ninth birthday, Sisilla's Chore is assigned. She will travel with a small handpicked group to a far distant exoplanet, Fem, which has gone radio silent, to reestablish contact and find out what is happening with the colony.

(The people on Fem are former prisoners exiled to the planet because of a bizarre viral disease, Wolosis, which causes ingrown hairs to spread through the flesh and into the body cavity, filling the inside of the body with hair that never stops growing and kills the patient. Said hair reaches a point before the patient dies where it sprouts out of every orifice. See, I told you a lot of this book is gross. You have to be prepared.)

Sisilla and her group, which consists of four other people--Feng Chaon, biologist and medic; Jayne Mae Marilyn Bardot, engineer and mechanic; Murder 005, Sisilla's bodyguard and head of security/tactical; and Captain Creg Arzan, a NonModded human who hates Sisilla and has a complicated history with her, as we will find out. They all meet aboard the organic ship The Sickness, which is spun up from "moltvats" using stem cells, and which, according to Sisilla, resembles a giant tumor. (It also spontaneously generates rooms with organ tissue and instead of having hallways, sports "throatways.") All these weird-ass and damaged people set out on their journey to Fem, which includes a year and a half in a sort of organic suspended animation, as the ship creates its own wormholes and pulls itself through. This, however, is interrupted by the crew's being awakened by (and this is one of the places where I almost gave it up) a giant placenta that breaks open their chambers and tries to kill them.

Nevertheless, despite all this, the ship reaches Fem and Sisilla sets out to solve the mystery of the planet and its inhabitants. The planet Fem is one of the better parts of the entire book; the setting drips with alien atmosphere, and its metal seas are fascinating. Of course, there are secrets here, which eventually come to light in an explosive climax that reveals that the Wolosis virus has returned and just what is keeping it at bay (just beware of the "superfruits." Gah). This latter section also concentrates on Sisilla's character growth, as she realizes the tribe in which she was raised never cared about her as much as they claimed to, and in fact, exploited her and the other Niffakoq. The ending is a bit abrupt and ambiguous: I personally think Sisilla is dying, but at the last she breaks through the nik-inspired emotional constraints that have been with her all her life and manages one simple but very important thing: she smiles.

This is a challenging read that I for one will likely never return to, and be warned: you have to have a strong stomach to even attempt it. Still, I don't think it's like any other SF book out there. The author takes some very big swings at the fences with this, and your mileage may vary about whether or not he succeeds, but I for one had to admire the effort.

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Review: Daggerbound

Daggerbound by T. Kingfisher
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I've read (and own) many of T. Kingfisher's books, but this one is delightful. It's not quite what could be called a "cosy," since it has some fairly high stakes and tense moments, but it has some terrific characters. This is set in the author's previously established "World of the White Rat," with dead warriors bound into magical swords, talking animals (including a giant pillbug, who just about steals the show), and, typical for the author, a wonderful slow-burn romance.

Learned Edmund, a brilliant young scholar associated with the Temple of the Many-Armed God (there are many different gods and pantheons in this world) is delivering some books and artifacts--including the aforementioned magical sword, though he has no idea what it is--when he is attacked by brigands on the road and accidentally releases the warrior in the sword, the Dervish. The Dervish is several hundred years old (being bound to the sword, he doesn't age) and is, as we find out, a walking bundle of PTSD and trauma. This is explored over the course of the book. Learned Edmund is leaving behind his temple because he is tired of beating his head against the hidebound elders there--they think women are inferior, among other things--and does not know what he will do now. But this meeting with the Dervish, where Edmund becomes the immortal warrior's wielder, and is bound to him--will change his life.

This is an adventure story, and a tender romance, but the characters are where it really shines. In particular, the aforementioned talking intelligent pillbug (!), Large Francis, is a freaking delight. (I hope she gets her own book someday.) There is a lot of laugh-out-loud humor in this story, humor based on the characters, not slapstick. It's plain to me that the author had a ton of fun writing this book (particularly Chapter 14), and therefore I had a ton of fun reading it.

Just a sample:

"It-would-be-wise. We-know-that-our-appearance-is-often-startling-to-humans." Large Francis flexed her antennae worriedly. "We-had-encountered-several-in-our-journey-and-they-often-ran-away. I-have-made-a-sign-to-help-but-I-do-not-think-it-worked."

"A sign?" asked Edmund.

"Yes-friend-Edmund." Large Francis reached into her pack and pulled out a length of tightly folded cloth. She shook it out and held it up between two legs, forming a banner.

In clear block letters, it read: I DO NOT EAT HUMAN MEAT.

"Oh no," said the Dervish.

I like stories with layered themes and important observations on our real world as much as anyone else, but sometimes you just need a rollicking good adventure. That's what this is.

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Review: The Tapestry of Fate

The Tapestry of Fate by S.A. Chakraborty
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is the second book in the Amina al-Sirafi series, featuring a swashbuckling ex-pirate captain who is over forty with an eleven-year-old daughter. That alone would be enough to set this series apart, but this particular book deals with the ramifications of said ex-pirate captain, who has tried to leave her previous profession behind for a decade, being dragged back for one more job. Which, of course, is a familiar trope in itself, bordering on wrinkled and gray-haired, but when it's done this entertainingly, the reader doesn't mind (or at least this reader didn't).

If you think this book likely to be funny or rollicking, however, you are dead wrong. It's pretty dark, and harrowing in places. Amina is tasked with retrieving a so-called Transgression, a magical spindle which, as we come to find out, collects souls and forcibly inhabits bodies. It pairs up with a dying woman and grants her a rather ghastly immortality, and the two of them go on a rampage across the centuries, doling out revenge. Eventually they offend one of the powerful elementals of this world, and are imprisoned on a magical, isolated island. But humans have a habit of washing ashore on this island, and Queen Lab, as she comes to be called, builds a city and society...both based on illusions and lies, and imprisoning people in a never-ending torture in a world that is literally too good to be true, under the guise of "doing what is best for them."

Amina and her crew aboard her ship, the Marawati, sail to said island, and also wash up on the shore. At first, they are taken in by the queen's illusions. One member of the crew, the Mistress of Poisons, Dalila, goes so far as to join up with the queen and express a desire to stay. Dalila is an experienced con artist and seems to be playing both ends against the middle here, with a hidden agenda that eventually comes out (Amina has been poisoned when she rescued Dalila from captivity, and the latter is trying everything, even pretending to suck up to the queen, in her quest for a cure). Amina and Dalila's friendship goes through quite the upheaval in this book, with some nice character development for both.

Amina's estranged husband, Raksh (spirit of chaos, demon, elemental, djinn? Amina still doesn't know for sure) plays a prominent role in this book, with Amina finally agreeing to "let you make me a legend" in exchange for his help in destroying the queen. Raksh seems a right bastard most of the time, but he comes through in his own twisted way when the chips are down. The queen is defeated, the city's survivors brought on board the Marawati, and Amina sails across the ocean to reunite with the family she left behind...only to discover, in the last scene and page of the book, that...and I'm not going to reveal this here. Go to Goodreads to find out. 

Oh my god. When I got to that last page, I let out a shriek. I need the next book, like, yesterday.

There's some relevant themes of hubris and power in this story, and a ruler actually thinking they have the right to impose their will on their subjects, all with the idea of making things better for them. The hatred of those subjects who were never asked, and their desperate need to escape even if such escape ends in death, makes a pretty indelible impression, both on Amina and the reader. This book is definitely not for those who want their pirates light and frothy and repeatedly exclaiming "arrr, me hearties." There's quite a bit of grimness to it, so be prepared.

Nevertheless, this is a worthy follow-up to the first book, if you can stand that cliffhanger and all of its implications. It certainly turns the series upside down, and I hope the follow-up lives up to it.

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Review: A Trade of Blood

A Trade of Blood by Robert Jackson Bennett
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is the third book in the series formerly titled "Shadow of the Leviathan," but now known simply as "Ana & Din Mysteries." That is indeed what the books are, but I much prefer the previous series title. These mysteries are set in a fascinating fantasy world, with giant kaiju monsters that come ashore every year, and an empire that kills them to fuel an economy based on genetic engineering, made possible by substances extracted from the creatures' bone and blood. The Empire of Khanum has a centuries-old history, and the books are slowly pulling back the curtain on that history, most of which seems to be dark indeed.

This book, for example, tackles Khanum's meat industry, and the giant cattle they engineer to meet the demand for beef. Ana Dolabra and Dinios Kol are again our protagonists, the former a genius who tries to hide away from the world, the latter with an altered brain that forgets nothing. Din gathers information and reports, and Ana analyzes, evaluates and finds the hidden truths in everything Din witnesses. They work for the Imperial institution tasked with bringing justice, the Iudex. But there are also secrets both held by Ana and Din, and in particular this time around we are given more hints as to who--and what--Ana really is. (The author has been hinting and dancing around this revelation for the past two books, and I hope in the next one he blasts Ana's true identity wide open.)

There is a lot of body horror in this book, of the fungal Last of Us kind, so if you're sensitive to that, be warned. But the central conflict is far more familiar: family. A younger generation that wants to throw off what it views as the shackles of the elder, and an older generation that does terrible things for the younger--a father preparing for his son to inherit via manipulation, murder and mayhem, all the things his son never asked for.

"He will not come," I said to him.

"N-no," he whispered. "He must. He must come."

"He will not. He was clear."

He swallowed,eyes swirling in his head as he thought. "Will you carry a message for him, then, Iudex? Tell him..." Again he swallowed, face wrinkling with pain. "Tell him it was...it was all for him. I did it for him. And it did work, yes? She has...she made him heir."

I said nothing.

"I knew it would be so," whispered Trikao. "And I knew my...my sister would not live long. I fade, yes. But I fade victorious at least."

"Your son will not come, sir," I said. "But he has a message for you."

"Oh? Please, t-tell me."

"He says he intends to sell all the Armenta spread when he inherits."

His eyes opened wide. A low, creaking cough came from deep within him.

"Wh-what?" spat Trikao.

"Ippeas will sell it all. He intends to sell it and leave this place. He will not sell it to one buyer, either. He intends to sell it to many different holders. Many families, many drovers, many operations. He shall split it all up into dozens if not hundreds of little farms and put an end to the house of Armenta."

A weak, unhappy wheezing came creaking out of Trikao's mouth. "But...no. No, I...did it for him. Doesn't he see that? I,I did it for him..."

"So you say," I said. "But he wished me to tell you--I never asked for it."

This theme of the tangled web of families is also bleeding over into our main characters, with what is revealed about Din and especially Ana. But the main draw for me is the worldbuilding: this horrifying, fascinating world, with its dark history and darker secrets, including an apparent genocide. This third entry in the series is leaner and meaner than the second, and every bit as good as the first book, The Tainted Cup (and that book won both the Hugo for Best Novel and the World Fantasy Award), if not better. There's not a lot of authors I auto-buy in hardback, but Robert Jackson Bennett is one of them.

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Review: The Killing Spell

The Killing Spell by Shay Kauwe
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a pretty interesting fantasy debut, dealing with language and magic, assimilation and colonization. The author is a native Hawaiian. I think this book illustrates the value of so-called "Own Voices," or people other than generic white authors publishing stories reflecting their ethnic groups and cultures. I doubt a white person could have written anything like this.

In this future, the Hawaiian Islands have been destroyed by an apocalyptic Flood, and the native survivors are living in and around Los Angeles. The Flood also released magic into the world, a magic that depends on languages and linguistics. The future federal government cannot cope with this at all, and a governing Board and Guild is established in LA to police and ultimately control magic users. There are eight recognized magical languages: Latin, French, Italian, Spanish, Arabic, Cantonese, Mandarin, and Japanese. Magical practitioners speaking these languages are highly regulated, and Casters or Smiths (the two designated levels of magical users) must be licensed within city limits to be able to practice their magic.

Our protagonist is Kealaokaleo Petrova, a young unlicensed Smith living on Homestead, a coastal region where the last remnants of the Hawaiian people settled after they were displaced. Homestead is rife with magic (called "mana" in this world) and magic-spawned monsters, and Kea is the struggling leader of her clan, trying to work and help her family survive. She is abruptly dragged in to see the Board (by the other protagonist, the Chinese Caster Sora Kaiser) because a murder has been committed: murder by magic, by someone spellcasting in an unregulated language. They have no proof it was done by Kea, but suspicion is falling her way, and she agrees to hunt down the murderer to spare her people from the Board's wrath.

There's some interesting worldbuilding here, built on languages and particularly the Hawaiian language, which does not have a written form. The author herself being Hawaiian gives the story an extra authority, as the reader can trust she knows what she's talking about. The impacts of colonization are also explored, along with the greed and hubris of those who have power and think they can dictate to others they view as "lesser."

This is a first novel, so it does have some hiccups, but overall it's a promising debut. It will be interesting to see what the author comes up with next.

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Review: Fold Catastrophes

Fold Catastrophes by Peter Watts
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

(The reason I'm able to review this early is because I have a legitimate copy: I just came back from this year's Worldcon in Anaheim, CA. The publisher, Tachyon, had a booth there and I was able to pick up a copy of the book.)

In 2006, Peter Watts wrote a novel I consider one of the best SF books so far this century: Blindsight. This is a hard SF tale of first contact mixed with a philosophical discussion of consciousness and self-awareness, and boasting some of the strangest protagonists (including a scientifically justified vampire) you'll ever run across. This pretty much sums up what Watts tends to explore in his work, which carries over to almost all of these stories--and adding, in this book, a greater emphasis on climate change, artificial intelligence and privacy concerns. These stories also boast Watts' trademark bleakness: I don't believe the man could construct a happy ending to save his life. As a former marine biologist, he knows just how screwed humanity is because of climate change, and this pessimism tends to show up in whatever he writes.

That's certainly the case with the stories here. My favorite, "The Twenty-One Second God," chronicles the aftermath of a mass interlinked mind that existed for all of the titular twenty-one seconds, and what happens when those who were briefly part of a hivemind drop out again. "ZeroS" chronicles a Black Ops squadron made up of (again, scientifically justified) zombies, and how they realize that their subconscious, which has been promoted to a sort of "evil twin" taking over during their raids, is committing war crimes. A new story, "Game Theory," has another of Watts' typical fascinating premises: a future where it has been proven that the known universe is nothing but a giant virtual-reality computer simulation, run by....what? Cross this with an examination of religion in the aftermath of this world-shattering discovery, with a focus on the Catholic Church (and an examination of its sins as well; one character says it fits the definition of a "terrorist organization").

None of these stories are cheerful or uplifting, but their ideas are followed through, even though in most cases they go to the darkest of places. It's a testament to Watts' genius that you still want to read them, even if you want to crawl into the corner and shake afterwards. Granted, this collection may be a better place to start with his work than his novels, if only because the length restrictions don't allow for his usual dense, layered, crunchy prose. So, yes: read this first, and then, if you think your brain can handle it, dive into Blindsight. Either way, you're in for a treat.

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Review: Foundling Fathers

Foundling Fathers by Meg Elison
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This story is an SF cloning story with a "d," with the Founding Fathers re-created Jurassic Park style in our time, hence the titular Foundling Fathers. It's also a novella, which means that the book is too short for the author to get into the nitty-gritty of how this was done--presumably digging up their bones to extract their DNA? That mystery is left unsolved, and for very good reason: it's not the author's focus and point. This story is a sometimes vicious satire and skewering of the myth of American exceptionalism (sorry, there is nothing "exceptional" about a country built on slavery and genocide, a country that refuses to reckon with its bloody past to this day), as well as the people who are trying to bring back an idealized past that never existed.

Our titular protagonists are four teenaged clones of the Founding Fathers: George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, raised on an island off the coast of Virginia in total ignorance of the modern world. They think it is the year 1750. Everyone around them is forced by non-disclosure agreements to go along with this fantasy, and the pre-Revolutionary War culture and level of technology is painstakingly re-created--even down to the servants, who appear to be undocumented immigrants forced into this little charade. The women in particular are denied modern birth control. This, of course, plays right into the hands of one Thomas Jefferson, who is just as much of a rapist in his second incarnation as he was in his first.

The four boys are sharply and expertly drawn for as short as this book is. It also features one of the best opening lines I've read in a while, right up there with "It was a pleasure to burn" and "The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel":

"It took Benjamin Franklin twenty-seven minutes and fourteen seconds to discover there was pornography on the internet."

This revelation comes via a cell phone left in the privy by the boys' mother--or at least the woman who carried and bore all of them, which isn't quite the same thing. This sets off a chaotic twenty-four hours in which the boys discover their entire lives are based on lies, and the world out there has advanced more than two hundred and fifty years beyond them. When the servants have finally had enough of being imprisoned on this island, break into the armory and start shooting, the boys manage to escape on the supply ship. They are abruptly dumped into the modern world, and meet up with the narcissistic billionaire who financed their cloning, where they are told why they were made:

"And that's why you need us to lead," Jefferson said. "That's been taught to us all our lives. And also the lie that's been fed to us. We are the founders of the past; not the builders of the future. You need us so that you can reverse the arrow of time."

"We need that. Desperately," Stephens said, turning to face Jefferson. "That's it exactly. We have to go back. We must regain the vision we've lost. We need you to lead, and it's got to be now."

"You want us to change this country," Washington said slowly, "by deriving power from the way it is now. Remake it in the way it was made before, some three hundred years ago. But you want us to do it in the way that you tell us to. Because we're special and we can do it in a special, very old way. Because we've been bred from preserved stock like so many showhorses. And you think we won't refuse because of benefits we've never been shown, in a country we've never properly lived in, and have been lied to about every day of our lives. Does that make any sense to you, Tom?"

Needless to say, that does not work out. The reader ends up feeling sympathy and pity for these poor kids, born into a strange world they know nothing about, bred to spearhead some egomaniacal billionaire's revolution against all the progress made in those two hundred fifty years. (And at the end, we find out he has more clones ready to go, another fresh batch to replace these "duds.") The ending is rather a downer, as you realize there is a non-zero number of people in this country, some of them in the higher echelons of government, who want to return this country to its mythical founding hierarchy, when white land-owning males were on top and everyone else knew their place.

This gives you a very uneasy feeling as you close the back cover, which is exactly what the author intended. Maybe it's a good thing the book is short, as it could easily have descended into a dystopian horrorshow. But the broad, brief sketches of what she draws here are more than enough.


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Review: Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands

Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands by Heather Fawcett
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This second book in the Emily Wilde fantasy series continues the saga of Professor Wilde, dryadologist who studies the many species of fae, and her fellow professor/secret exiled king of Faerie Wendell Bambleby. This could also be called a "cosy" fantasy series (although this storyline gets a bit dark), with a focus on the science of dryadology in this alternate universe where faeries and alternate realms exist.

The highlight of the series is the prickly, sometimes hilarious relationship between the rational, matter-of-fact Emily and the fussy, eccentric (and often terrifying, when he lets his Faerie powers loose) Wendell. Wendell is trying to find a back door to return to his kingdom, and his evil stepmother has sent assassins after him. Wendell has also asked Emily to marry him, which prospect occupies a good deal of the plot because, as Emily says, marrying a Faerie king would be most unwise. Nevertheless, I suppose love in the end does conquer all, as she agrees to marry him, in between her efforts to open a door into his realm and the various hijinks that ensue.

These books are quite charming. The author hadn't been on my radar before, but now I am trying to track her books down. That's one of the great delights of reading, when you stumble upon someone you never heard of before and realize their books are right up your alley. If you like something along the lines of Marie Brennan's Memoirs of Lady Trent, this series is similar and worth checking out as well.

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Review: Ode to the Half-Broken

Ode to the Half-Broken by Suzanne Palmer
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Suzanne Palmer has written several award-winning stories, including the Hugo Award-winning "The Secret Life of Bots." Many of her stories involve robots and artificial intelligence, and she excels at depicting nonhuman characters. I've read and enjoyed several of her stories, but I haven't sought out her novels--until now. The quality of this story is such that she gets bumped up to my "auto-buy" list.

This book is loaded with nonhuman characters. It's in a near-future setting, about forty years from now when a combination of environmental collapse, war, famine, and pandemics (both natural and, as we find out, artificial) have reduced the human population to a billion. A post-collapse society is in the process of being formed. Before the civil war that tore apart the US, great breakthroughs were made in artificial intelligence, courtesy of one Dr. Milton. Milton is a genius--but we also discover he is a ill-tempered misanthrope who is disillusioned with the human race generally and also feels he has been screwed over by the corporation he has been working for. This leads to him creating four war mechas, which he names for the biblical Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse--Death, War, Famine and Pestilence. These are nigh-unstoppable killing machines, and he sends them out into the world, with the express purpose of bringing the human race down.

Twenty years later, our protagonist is one of those war mechas who threw off its original programming/control and tried to reverse the harm it did before it gained free will. It has been living in isolation for twenty years. As the story opens, it wakes up in a bathtub in a trashed apartment in mostly abandoned New York City with one leg missing. Its quest to find its missing limb, and the friends and purpose it discovers along the way, is what makes up this lovely story of identity, responsibility, and coming to terms with one's past and changing the future.

This is mostly told from the first-person POV of the war mecha, who later names itself Be, and is a very good example of an author's thinking through how an artificial intelligence would think and react to the world. Another important character is the dog Atticus (who does not die by the way, so you don't have to worry about that), who is a cyborg--a combination being with an artificial intelligence implant. Atticus' true identity is revealed later on, and ties in to the discussions about personhood and responsibility:

"You could have told me," I say.

"Tell you what? I am not that mech you knew anymore, even less so than you are the mech you once were. Why can't I just be me and you be you?" he says. "We can choose not to live in our pasts. Isn't that the very thing you and Ver tried to convince me of, back before everything went to hell?"

Be goes through quite the journey with its friends (including some delightful rail mecha, one of which ends up inhabiting an old VW bus). Along the way, it discovers two of its siblings it thought was dead are not deceased at all. One sibling, formerly known as Pestilence (who created one of the artificial nanotech-based pandemics still plaguing humankind), has been captured and imprisoned by Derek Litchfield, who used to be Milton's boss. This Litchfield is a pretty nasty character, who tortured Be's sibling and forced it to use the manufacturing facility run by post-humanity free mechas to manufacture chips that will be used to enslave them and bring them under Litchfield's control. Be's quest to find both its sibling and Litchfield and stay out of the clutches of one General Sawyer, representing the last remaining dregs of the US government, come to a climax in Dr. Milton's ruined underground lab where Be was created.

This book is a little bit on the "cosy" side in that the new society the mechas are creating is based on cooperation and helping one another, and helping the humans they associate with. In fact, one important point that Be makes in talking to Sawyer (who keeps trying to kill it), is that Sawyer, basically, represents the past and the free mechas the future, and she is the one who needs to change:

"Since I left my santuary, I have had occasion to spend a lot of time contemplating the nature of my own existence and purpose," I say. "I have also had time to observe the world, and all the people in it, and how much has changed since the days when you and I were on opposite sides of a war."

"We still are," she [Sawyer] says. "No conversation is going to change that."

"I also," I say, "have observed many things that have not changed, that should have. Please do not take offense, but you are one of them. And if you are going to save your people, you need to evolve, because I cannot stop what is happening to your people and fight you at the same time. On the contrary, I need your help. And you need mine."

(These are not Terminator-style artificial intelligences, for the most part. In fact, Be's other surviving sibling, Ver, has a planetwide network dedicated to rebuilding a more ecologically-friendly civilization and cleaning and rewilding the planet.)

This is an altogether delightful story, with complex characters and thought-provoking themes, and a triumphant, satisfying ending. I loved it. It's one of the best books I've read this year.

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