08/05/2024
In near future Atlanta, self-driving aircars, invasive government surveillance, and the NeuroNet—a system that allows dying humans to upload their consciousness into a synthetic android shell—are cutting-edge technology. NeuroNet’s artificial intelligence mirrors human-like responses but also prevents its androids from evolving, to assure predictability. When NeuroNet’s cofounders—Teagan McKenna and her childhood friend Carter Smith, head engineer Tito Ngata, and Aya Wakahisa—discover some of their androids have died by suicide, they’re stunned, prompting Teagan to wonder “why would someone who was saved from death want to take their own life?”
Casey (author of Song of Lyran) delivers snappy storytelling and an intelligent, persistent hero in Teagan, who undergoes several events that test her resolve, including her cancer-stricken wife, Em, whose insistence to be uploaded into NeuroNet troubles Teagan. Together, the team must quickly uncover why the androids are killing themselves, a quest that poses philosophical questions on the nature of humanity and its need to evolve. As the characters ruminate on the ethics of keeping loved ones around versus letting them go in a natural way, they come across a hint of something deeper at play: some of the androids seem to be exhibiting potentially homicidal intent as well.
Casey’s characters are a satisfying mix of flawed and honorable, commendable for their good-hearted intentions, as Teagan—struggling with her devotion to her wife despite their frequent arguments and disheartened at her role as Em’s “guardian” once she’s uploaded into an android—reveals she “created NeuroNet so that you’d never have to say goodbye to the ones you love.” When Teagan undergoes a tragic event, a frank and emotional discussion of death, grief, and loyalty ensues. Readers will appreciate this sympathetic and forward-thinking consideration of humanity’s future, made all the more enjoyable by Casey’s dramatic and shocking twists.
Takeaway: Smart—and humane—scientists probe human evolution vs. AI.
Comparable Titles: Piers Furney’s Alkaline Dawn, Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun.
Production grades Cover: B Design and typography: A Illustrations: N/A Editing: A Marketing copy: A
