Karen Memory

Elizabeth Bear

Set in the NW in the 1800's where lawman Bass Reeves is a legend, but with a subtle steampunk thread including mechanical surgical machines, airships and tesla coils. The protagonist is Karen Memory, a young woman working in a brothel. She meets Reeves and helps solve a series of murders while protecting other young women and learning her own loves and passions in life. Pretty fun, easy read. 

3 stars (out of 4)

The Brass Giant

A Chroniker City Story - Book 1

Brooke Johnson

A cyberpunk feel set in an early 20th century London where mechanism is king. The engineering college is the highest caste and Petra Ward is going to find a way in. Unfortunately, she is battling history since women are not allowed to be engineers. But when a self driven automaton walks by with a bunch of engineering students, she puts herself in the middle of the pack, knowing they will mock her and knowing that she sees a better way to build the thing. Fast forward and she gets involved with a project to do exactly that, but as with everything mechanical and political (and we see this coming a mile away) machines always end up being made for war. Petra, like many scientists and engineers, struggles with the love of discovery and knowledge and the ethical implications of her work. Sort of a lightweight, YA writing style. Not sure if it is engaging enough to continue the series. 

3 stars (out of 4)

The Future

Naomi Alderman

More near future than is comfortable. The names have been changed to feign innocence, but basically Meta, Google, Amazon, etc. rule the world. They have their algorithms tuned for addiction and consumption. The owners all have their bolt holes for when the apocalypse happens. What they don't know is that there are still people who care. So there is a secret cabal working against the corp's with a master subterfuge plan. One of the best plot devices is the part of the plan when the algorithms are slightly modified to encourage collaboration instead of division. If only... 

In the near future, apocalyptic, tech dystopia genre, this is pretty good. 

4 stars (out of 4)

Gideon the Ninth

Tamsyn Muir

Book 1 of the Locked Tomb series

This is really a strange genre bender. In most ways, it is pure, high fantasy. Necromancers doing magic, nine houses under the rule of the emperor, adepts and cavaliers doing battle. But it also hints at a far future, sci-fi. The houses are each from different planets. Life and technology seems to be in a post-apocalyptic phase. Cool. 

Gideon Nav is a member of the Ninth house, has a brutal history of abuse at the hand of the house princess Harrow. She is constantly trying to escape, but never successful. When the emperor calls for representatives from each house, Gideon is drafted to be the cavalier (personal bodyguard) for Harrow and they skooch off to the first planet. The goal is to learn how to transcend into a Lyctor, the immortal servant of the emperor. The payoff being new wealth and security for the diminishing Ninth house. Duels, bone constructs,  ghosts, murder, and political intrigue. Quite fun. And while the plot pretty much unfolded as you expect while you read, this is OK and largely satisfying. The twists and surprises were surprising to the characters, not to the reader. Looking forward to the next installment. 

4 stars (out of 4)

Sourdough: A Novel

Robin Sloan

Set in the tech world of Silicon Valley, Lois is a programmer working for a robotics startup. The goal is to develop robot arms that can reliably reproduce repetitive human motion in the workforce. In typical startup fashion, Lois lives her work - long days, no social life, the apartment is really just a place to crash between work sessions. Into this world breaks a local food delivery with the best spicy soup and sourdough bread in the existence of humanity. When the owners of the restaurant move back to europe, Lois is bequeathed a starter of the sourdough, and the charge to keep it alive. So begins the life-changing journey of sourdough. For the first 2/3 of the book, this is a fascinating story and really an enjoyable read. Completely believable in the wacky silicon valley trope. Unfortunately, the last 1/3 makes a major shift and starts telling a story from the perspective of the sourdough culture itself. It just gets weird and (for me) was not meaningful at all. 

3 stars (out of 4)

Burn-In

P.W. Singer and August Cole

FBI Agent Keegan from the Washington DC field office is a former special ops marine and all around bad-ass. Part of her expertise in the marines was bot-wrangler. As we are all increasingly aware, the wrong prompt into your AI will result in gibberish. And when the prompts to your war-bot have life or death consequences, you get good at it. So as an agent, Keegan is assigned a Tactical Autonomous Mobility System (TAMS), a new generation bi-pedal bot with sensors galore and a still learning neural architecture. Her assignment is to train it. In the real world she is also in the midst of an investigation of several anomalous computer events, and a political climate of basically "us vs them" in terms of humans/bots. What could possibly go wrong. An engaging story that gets the pacing right and has a few cut-outs where Keegan gets to geek out with the TAMS handler about the philosophy of sentience and human/bot interactions. Short answer: Human/bot interactions are complex.

4 stars (out of 4)

Machinehood

S.B. Divya

Set in the mid-century future where machine technology has advanced to the point where most things are operated by Weak AI (WAI), indicating intelligence but not self-awareness. Individual privacy is nearly non-existent, individuals all carry their own "swarm" of video transmitting bots/drones, everyone has an electronic tip-jar where their public feeds can earn micropayments from viewers. Think 'likes' with cash attached. Since everything is public and recorded, murder and crime is almost non-existent. Nano-meds are prevalent and people (in order to keep up with the bot workforce) regularly take flow (to enhance neural function) or zips (to enhance muscle function). Our protagonist (Welga Ramirez) is a former special forces, now private security lives on these zips (has a genetic allergy to flow) and is outstanding at her job. But when a terrorist organization calling itself "The Machinehood" actually murders several biotech billionaires, calling for equitable treatment of all AI, Welga finds herself in the middle of the investigation. Great story/plot line and a strong treatment of the questions related to machine/human interaction that will necessarily be rising in our world in the next 20 years. Well done and worth the read.

4 stars (out of 4)