Estimated Reading Time: 3min

What happens when AI have bodies and a sort of autonomy and bad things start to happen? This explores that idea, and boy is it timely! I just had one problem with it… Almost everything.

Synapse

Soon after experiencing a personal tragedy, Kestrel witnesses a terrorist attack and is drawn into a world of conspiracies and lies that she and Jordan, her Artificial, have to untangle. With a second, more brutal attack looming on the horizon, their best chance of stopping it is teaming up with federal counterterrorism agent Nick Vernon. But the clock is ticking–and all the while, Jordan is asking questions Artificials were never meant to ask.

Content Warnings

Graphic: Child Death
Moderate: Abortion

My Review

When there was a small sliver of plot (amidst the long tedious info dumping or bible bashing preaching – I prefer a more subtle weaving), it was pretty a pretty interesting concept overall. Though there were clear problems with this story.
I don’t quite understand why there was any loss of Kestrels baby, and talk of abortions aside from giving her a “loss of faith” moment. It felt out of place, and was not handled very well in my opinion. The author would have done better to have a different kind of crisis of than these hot button issues. It felt more like it was included to cause controversy than actually advance the plot. Some pretty intense personal situations delved into in a triggering way and not very well done either.
There was potential in the bones for a good story – and it did peek through the curtains on occasion.
Reminiscent a little of Blade Runner (the book, not the movie), it unfortunately felt a little like a preachy copy cat story that fell short.
The idea that a human-created being could believe in God AND be saved in the same way is theologically shakey. A few theological points were questionable for me, but this one stood out the most. God came to save humanity, not their creations (free will or not for those creations).
Also, the violin…. It was such a random and useless part of the story. If you took it out, nothing would have been affected – not what you want from a story arc.
Overall this story had interesting bones, but was poorly fleshed out and handled in various ways.

Would I Recommend This Book?

Not really. I think similar things have been done better in other books (I LOVED The Last Christian by David Gregory for example), and this one fell flat. It’s not a book that I recommend, however the concepts explored in the story itself are worth discussing.

Similar Books You Might Like

If you are thinking what kind of books would have similar feel, themes or content, here is a list that you can consider:

• Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown)
• Project Hail Mary (Andy Weir)
• The Last Christian (David Gregory)

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See You in the Adventures!
Christy Grace