*** NAMED TO KIRKUS REVIEWS BEST BOOKS OF 2018 *** Fire, splitting the atom, synthetic biology. There’s a dark side to every invention, one which we have been fortunate to contain for most of history. But are we hurtling into the future too fast?
Detonation is an epic dystopian tale that is a cautionary reflection on our own innovation-obsessed culture. It follows two societies that are … own innovation-obsessed culture. It follows two societies that are connected, but centuries apart, and their struggle against a superintelligent machine. Amid ideological clashes and political plotting, a diverse cast discovers this insidious threat, one which few can fathom, and fewer can challenge, and they are forced into an escalating conflict against a tireless enemy.
Selected to be in the top 100 Indie books of 2018 by Kirkus Reviews
more
Read for 2021 SPSFC
Overall Thoughts
I really wanted to get through this one, but I only made it about 60% before I realized I didn’t really understand how the characters related to each other and how their stories intersected. So this is my eighth DNF of the contest, but I ended up skimming through the last few chapters because I was interested to see how the book ended. Overall, I think the concepts are interesting and the cautionary tale of AI taking over is definitely pertinent, if echoed in a lot of contemporary SF literature. However, at over 600 pages, this one just couldn’t hold my interest. Add to that some clunky characterization and too many characters, and the story gets too bogged down to effectively deliver the results. But don’t let this stop you from reading! If you want an expansive tale with in-depth worldbuilding covering two time periods, definitely check this one out.
Plot
The plot here spreads out far too much in the second half of the book, getting slowed by extra POVs and tangential objectives. That said, I really enjoyed the core concept, showing the evolution of a self-aware AI in the near future, and an apocalyptic future several hundred years after that and how there are hints the AI might not have been stopped. There are a lot of moving parts, but the short interludes in our near future were the ones that caught my attention most, as they are told a lot more succinctly. The parts post-apocalypse got to be hard to follow later on, until I was looking for the next slice of action and revelation in the near future parts.
Setting
I quite enjoyed the worldbuilding as well. There is some great exploration of the post-apocalyptic society, and how people have reacted to the advent of AI in several different ways, including orienting themselves on nature, and trying to progress while not giving in to the runaway innovation that originally birthed the AI. One thing especially that stood out to me were the “bike towers” where people had stacked hundreds of bicycles all together so future people would have a place to get easy transportation. A really interesting concept! I was also rewarded by skipping ahead to the near the end, which answered a few questions I was interested in from the beginning, concerning strange features of the future landscape. Again, I really wanted to finish this book, but just couldn’t make it. Speaking of which, let me turn to the characters…
Character
This was the one, along with plot, that eventually made me put the book down. There are a lot of characters. At least six POVs I can think of off the top of my head, and probably more. That in itself is not a problem, but each character had wildly diverging objectives to their stories, most of which didn’t really seem to have much to do with the main plot. One favorite was the POV in the near future, Alex, who gives us a lot of setup for what happened, and has very definite motivations to stop AI. The other POV I enjoyed was Owen, a young man in the far future who learns about what people are doing with supposedly banned technology. I think the book could have been compressed to these two POVs, or maybe one more, and it would have made the story a lot tighter.
Score out of 10 (My personal score, not the final contest score)
Temporary score until more books in the contest are read: A good concept and a cautionary tale, bogged down by an abundance of characters, words, and objectives. 4/10.