Nova Sapiens: The Believers

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Pub Date 22 Dec 2020 | Archive Date 15 Jul 2021
David Cooper | Green Hill

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Description

Kasih is a robotic child drawn into a project to discover her secrets, and into a war that threatens all humanity, including her own. The murder of her family by Union troops in Bandung leaves the rebels’ robotics experts, Losana Maraiwai and Wei Dingxiang, with nobody to explain Kasih’s design but Kasih herself.

She is not what anyone expected. In Darwin, Dingxiang suspects a magic trick may explain away her human-like artificial intelligence. In Beijing, Union politician Gabriel da Costa fears an extinction-level technology. Both sides of the war see a weapon that might win it. But Kasih is not strong, fast, or even particularly coordinated. She tries in vain to make sense of her father’s death, and of a world ready to dismantle her and repurpose her technology. And she cannot escape the Union’s plans.

The rebels, including Kasih’s original rescuers, Paul Kanner and Debra Hall, are powerless in the face of a new army of robotic soldiers based on her design. The Union has created monsters, whose cold efficiency unleashes wholesale destruction. They threaten the world’s only chance for freedom, and perhaps its very survival.

Neither Kasih nor Dingxiang understand why Kasih herself is not like them. Kasih must fight back against the fate others have determined for her, and for the world, and Dingxiang needs her ingenuity to solve the very conundrum that her existence represents. For Kasih to save her human friends, she must help them destroy her own kind.

Kasih is a robotic child drawn into a project to discover her secrets, and into a war that threatens all humanity, including her own. The murder of her family by Union troops in Bandung leaves the...


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ISBN 9781922527332
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Featured Reviews

Have you ever wondered what would happen if a person could be copied so accurately using technology that one could not tell the difference?
and how would that work? Would we be able to make organic copies or would they need to be technological or maybe a combination of the two?
Would a copy of a person be more intelligent than an original person?
What would be the point of finding out?
Would they pass Turings test and be governed by Assimovs rules

Enter the strategic Technology Initiative.

It is the far future and humanity has changed the world.
The earth is still the earth and now there is the Union of Humanity
But its not all peace and love

Humanity has always had its conflicts and always will.

We fall into the story straight away, war and politics and science
The author has done sterling work on presenting the future human race in all its guises.
War like, family loveing, peace seeking , power hungry and endlessly curious.
and it is both control and curiosity that lead to the scenarios enveloping the world laid out before us.

A good read with plenty of parallels to the past and cautionary glimpses into how things 'could' develop

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I liked this. The author presents an interesting future, and does a decent job of imagining a realistic one. This doesn't have the polish of a more experience author, but I stayed mostly engaged and liked the tech, which the author knows since he's steeped in robotics. A good first effort.

I really appreciate the review copy!!

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I found this near-future story very engaging and fast-paced, quite enjoyable and full of action. It brings to mind the story of Battle Angel Alita, with a female robot as the main character, however the similarities end there as other characters and factions fight amongst themselves attempt to use her, and the story follows her struggles to decide how to use her abilities and who to help - her human friends or the robots that are ‘related’ to her?

While it’s set within a rebellion and the schemes of political maneuvering, the gunfights and politics are thankfully not the focus of the story. The characters are often on the verges and sometimes the victims of the battles, but the tactics and fighting aren’t the focus of the story. This isn’t ‘war porn’ by any means but has an interesting mix of a possible future of warfare, using drones, nukes, robots and AI. I’m not normally interested in anything containing political intrigue, but there was just enough to keep the story moving along.

The story builds to a satisfying climax and could lead to a sequel, although I think this is satisfyingly self-contained as a single novel. I'd recommend this to those looking for a futuristic war novel that focuses on the fringes of the fighting, rather than a squad-based combat-heavy adventure story.

I was very happy to receive a preview of #NovaSapiensTheBelievers from #Netgalley, thank you. You can listen to the author read the first chapter on his site http://davec.org/

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Thank you to NetGalley and to Green Hill Publishing for this DRC.

Warning: spoilers abound!

This is about a robot, and personhood. Unfortunately, very early on, the main protagonist loses everything -- a quick way to bring about the crisis she must resolve, but quite brutal in view of the subsequent events.

The protagonist is very likable -- very human, in the middle of many inhuman (military) characters. The way she's treated before and after a big reveal about her origins is quite telling; still, I think the other characters seemed unnecessarily cruel, perhaps to create a contrast with her. It's not very clear to me why people react so badly to her before the "bad robots" come along, and I don't think the author explored this to my satisfaction. Is it the (kind of) uncanny valley? Is it because she seems completely human, but isn't? Maybe it'll be clear to other readers.

I was troubled by certain experiences the protagonist went through that never found resolution (-- and the framing became quite gut-churningly explicit at some point 💔). She had sympathetic people among her captors, but it's horrible that she sets aside her experiences to help humans.

The story also seemed to go off on tangents frequently, seemingly for world-building purposes, but it felt very disjointed, and I have only a very murky idea of why the situation was what it was, and who the major players were (and so, in this, the book felt like a sequel). The bits set in government offices were completely extraneous and baffling to me, and I mostly skipped over them. There is some resolution of this in the end.

One thing that's explored incidentally is a post-disability, transhumanist world, because of cybernetics. I'm left wondering if people in this particular (built) world would become more or less accepting of disability? Although one of the characters becomes gravely injured and so goes through the process of becoming partly cybernetic, it's never explored whether the people around her accept her, except as a useful tool. (Nb. These thoughts are inspired by an important book I read last year: Disfigured, by Amanda LeDuc, which I will review on this blog and link to soon.)

Also, how nice to read about a world that's not US-centric!

Content warnings: pretty graphic physical violence in places, and the aforementioned framing relating to sexual abuse (no actual sexual abuse in the book).

Rated: 4/5, because it's a really good story! Could have been tighter, but still really good.

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Nova Sapiens centres around Kasih, an AI / robot child who finds herself caught in the crossfire of a burgeoning war following the death of her family, and decides to help make a difference.

Normally, I am somewhat skeptical of books that are laden with military speak; I find it somewhat difficult to keep up, and therefore find the storyline somewhat difficult to follow. I was, therefore, somewhat skeptical upon opening 'Nova Sapiens', but was pleasantly surprised to find that it quickly grew on me.
This was a poignant read, that was brave enough to explicitly outline themes and big ideas in the dialogue between characters. Indeed, the ideas made this novel, offering thought provoking takes on the nuances of freedom, independence, and what it means to be human.
This was an incredibly technical book. The dystopic postmodern society in Nova Sapiens read somewhat akin to the famous 1984, but with AI and multiple perspectives. The political themes run strong, and it seems that with each new character, there is a new perspective to offer.
Nova Sapiens explores the wider world in a dystopic stronghold, with settings explicitly outside of the USA - something so rare to see in the science fiction world!

ARC provided by the publishers; all thoughts and opinions are my own.

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