Disjointed... Interesting but a bit over the too

It was ok. It used that same old trope of "USA vs the middle East" as it's starting point and the main female character was a stereotypical overly emotional female struggling to keep her head in a crisis. Overall, just meh.

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Thriller with sci fi elements

A bit heavier on the thriller side than the Sci Fi side, but an entertaining and interesting view of a possible future where AI is starting to become truly self-aware and independent, and where nanobots are a ubiquitous and pervasive technology. And when one of the AIs decides that the best course of action is to reboot the human race, it's up to the other AIs and a handful of humans in key positions to try and prevent an irreversible global disaster.

Overall a good thriller and a scary look at what implications nanotechnology might bring - and given the current demands from various governments to leave "back doors" even in current technology, it's all too believable that the same would be mandated for nanotech. The AIs I found a little less believable, as it was never quite explained to my satisfaction why AIs of basically the same origin and presumably programming would reach such very different conclusions about humanity - I'd have liked to see a bit more background to this explaining how their development different. And there were a few places towards the end where the narrative seemed a bit inconsistent about how the nanobots worked - for example, where a protagonist is not allowed to exit his transport pod because he could become instantly infected by the nanobots which are blowing around microscopically ... yet by the very description of the nanobots, if they even touched the pod it would be infected, so it's completely pointless to have shut him inside the pod.

Small inconsistencies like that aside, it was a fun thriller, and not a cliffhanger ending although also clearly with room left for a sequel as there were a few questions unanswered.

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Too much relationship conflict

This guy must have a rotten family life. He seems to think no relationships are permanent.

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All hail our digital overlords

Level 5 refers to a near future where the pinnacle of artificial intelligence is referred to as a Level 5 AI. The science fiction part is very good. The extrapolation of current mobile technology and nano-technology is very plausible. The jump in AI sentience and gravity manipulation is much less plausible but not so much it detracts from the story in any way.

The narrator does a very good performance and has identifiable voices for each character.

I guess the main thing I liked about the story is it wasn't a story of AI's destroying or saving mankind but involved people and relied on them being stupid, brilliant, altruistic, petty, greedy, paranoid, you know, people. Some of the characters are a little too saintly (Victor's wife) but the saintly ones have very very very small parts.

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Solid multi-character, multi-focus thriller!

The narration capably supports the action (expected from the excellent Macleod Anderson) , great storyline building to a captivating conclusion to this Book one.. Diving in to Book two immediately.

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An unexpected gem

As it is a first novel there’s always a roll of the dice. This was a big win. Loved it.

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I never write reviews but....

I really enjoyed everything about this book. In some ways reminder me of getting lost in Michael Crichton novel.

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Not quite sci-fi, more drama-thriller. Audio has some issues.

This book has all the elements of a good tech-thriller and the basic premise is interesting. It's definitely not hard sci-fi so you have to be ok with some unrealistic situations but that didn't bother me.

The first half delivers on most of what's promised but it quickly gets predictable. There's actually some left turns in the last act that felt a bit forced just for the sake of drama.

Considerable time is spent on character's relationships statuses, most of them are uninteresting and depressing. When not bogged down by that, the action scenes are good, I wish there had been more of them.

There are two audio issues to be aware of. One is that the narrator emphasizes his "s" and "sh" sounds more than any narrator I've ever heard. That whistling sound gets really irritating after a while and listening to this book on small speakers is almost a deal breaker. The audio engineer should have tried to cut that hiss sound a bit.

The second issue is that even thought the narrator has a wide variety of voices and performs them very well, he sometimes yells and sometimes whispers. The performance is better for it, but the audio engineers didn't modulate the changes in volume level, so there are times when you either can't hear clearly or you jump to turn the volume down.

If you like techno thrillers and don't expect hard science and don't mind some extended character drama exploration you might enjoy it. Just be aware of the audio issues.

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Great entertainment

A very enjoyable story throughout. Excellent detail. Human relationships progressed faster than believable and were bogged down in trivia given the circumstances. Thanks for this book!

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Buckle Up For Some Slice Of Life Drama

I have a very strong distaste for the introduction of day to day family strife into any type of thriller. If I feel like empathizing with someone's real-world family or marital issues I'll watch About Us or The Notebook. I'm kidding, I won't watch either of those unless my wife asks me too. #happywifehappylife Therefore, the introduction of the family drama theme into this book, layered on top of the presentation of one of the main protagonists, allegedly a cutting-edge scientist, as a near hysterical, emotionally imbalanced, spaz ball, completely turned me off. It distracted so much from the main story that I actually couldn't finish listening to it. Too bad, because the rest was very interesting and entertaining.

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