Amazon editorial review from Germany, 12. Februar 2023
The SF novel with over five hundred pages is a stunner – intensive, fascinating, visually stunning, interesting, very exciting, emotionally gripping and multi-layered. 80% dystopian, but with an ending that gives hope. Some of the characters are very complex, learning and developing. It’s a novel that gets under the skin, that disturbs, that man cannot forget. A novel that shows where bigotry, morbid ambition, misused science, too much power in one hand and trusting AI can lead if empathy and love are left out. Wanted the best for mankind and blindly led into the abyss.
Anyone who knows my many book reviews knows that I rarely spoil things, but here it was more or less a MUST for me because the book is simply breathtaking and I want to get many readers to read it. But I won’t tell you the details of the plot! In some parts it’s not far from reality. The plot makes you think and raises questions such as how we all will/want to live in the future. And how close can we let artificial intelligence into our lives.
In the year 2051 there will be two worlds on earth – a natural, self-sufficient world and a sterile world controlled by AI and by few people. A world without animals, plants, without any germs, bacteria and viruses – created to protect people from epidemics.
Both worlds have no contact with each other.
In the sterile environment, children from the age of six to eighteen live completely isolated, each and everyone for themselves, without reference persons. They only see each other, learn and play together virtually. Even the food is served by the artificial intelligence, as well as the medication, which drives her emotion level to zero.
But suddenly everything is different, nothing works anymore and a cruel chaos breaks out. The children and adults young and old have never learned to take care of themselves. Their psychological resilience is not up to the situation, their unmet needs lead to quite strong emotions and inhuman behavior, they behave like animals at times – ‘eat or be eaten’. Since everyone lived absolutely germ-free and sterile in the AI world, there is practically no immune system, which is now taking revenge, because many people become seriously ill because they are suddenly in the ‘normal’ world situation.
A young girl and a small group around her, but is different. They seek contact with the other living environment and there are interpersonal encounters of a positive and negative kind. Both groups learn from each other to survive, to trust each other, to build relationships and to stand up for each other.
But the artificial intelligence has repaired itself, revised itself and sees itself as the sole ruler over humanity, trying to break all resistance and subjugate people from both worlds as work slaves for the rebuilding of the sterile world. It is best to read for yourself whether artificial intelligence can do this.
One thing I can tell you, there’s a lot of action, there’s something happening on every page of the book, it’s a book-sized film, one that’s worth reading.
Chapeau, Andrew G. Berger!
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