I really wanted to like it but the writing style is not for me. I just could not get into it unfortunately but I wish the author the best.

— 2.5 ✷


I requested for an arc because of this sentence:
"The extinction of humanity was never going to be a singular, apocalyptic event. It would happen in stages, a slow collapse we built ourselves, believing it was progress."
It felt so dark and gritty, and was a sentiment I wanted to explore more of. However, the execution ultimately didn’t live up to my expectations.


The author had a distant bird’s eye view sort of writing style. I was always at an arm’s length from everyone, we were always told what the characters were feeling but never shown. The fact that most of the focus of the plot is on the top 1% of the societal hierarchy also didn’t help; I wasn’t interested in how it (wouldn’t) impacted the rich, especially the ones controlling said AI. I would’ve liked a more balanced point of view of the different social classes.

The book was separated into seven parts — seven stages of an extinction. It was an aspect I really liked, it was cool to see how each domino fell and contributed to the outcome. But, I felt like there wasn’t much distinction between each stage. I understand that it’s written to be a slow unsuspecting process, but the lack of distinctive events in each stage made separating things into stages meaningless.

The writing style also came in here and made things worse. The author had a habit of ending some paragraphs and most of the chapters in this foreboding, ominous, philosophical way:
“he left the room, shoulders tensed with unease”/“the world was shifting, chaos underneath”/“he looked out the window, at the world soon to be controlled by him”/“she ignored him, but his question continued to gnaw at her”
These are all my bad paraphrasing but spending most of the story seeing these at the end of nearly every chapter made things redundant and honestly, exasperating. It felt like I was back in my English class and the teacher was reminding me to recall back to the essay topic at the end of every paragraph.

There were also some discrepancies in some chapters that, I’m hoping, were only there because I read an arc version.
- In one scene, the first ever sentence was that character A slipped into the room unnoticed, where they were discussing about topic 1. But there were no other subsequent mentions of her, and in some scenes later, when someone else told A that topic 1 had happened, she was so shocked that it had happened. As if she didn’t hear about it before? Discussed in the very room we were told she silently entered??
- In another, someone reported to character B about a specific condition happening to the patients under surveillance. B called A and told her there were some anomalies but he couldn’t get into the specifics. I repeat, he did. not. specifically say which condition. But later, when A spoke to her father, she’d already known what condition that was and even said it was B who’d told her.

I normally never notice these small details so I was surprised when I did in this book. What an achievement.

What’s more, things ended in such a wishy-washy way, I didn’t feel any climax of the plot or a point I could pinpoint as being impressionable. Everything fizzled out.

I’m giving this a 2.5 because I didn’t actively hate it. But I’m disappointed.


Thank you to Vita Nova Press, Cameron Publicity & Marketing Ltd, Mark Gomes and Netgalley for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

I really enjoyed the concept of this, working in tech this did give me several mini crises. The macro and micro views of the different stages were awesome to review the impact on the world and on the individuals, and kept it interesting.

I do think this book would benefit from more of a 'show me don't tell me' edit, some of the descriptions of the people or presentations felt quite flat and could have used some depth. "someone suffering from significant trauma" for example could be fleshed out.
The use of the word "sleek" was also really heavy, I'd love to know how many times it cropped up.

The characters were likeable if a little shallow, I'd be interested to read more about them in a future book!

overall I enjoyed this as a quick read :)