I had literal chills when I finished this book.

It immediately gave me Illuminae vibes, which made me super happy because I LOVED the Illuminae series. This wasn't set up in the same super quirky way, but I was immediately thrown into a technical deep end and provided juuuuust enough context to (mostly) understand what was going on. One of the main themes throughout is how easy it is for miscommunication to creep in, and that is super mega important when you're in a spaceship in deep space days away from any other (friendly) life(?).

I also immediately related to the oftentimes annoying specificity you have to use when you are trying to tell a computer to do something. The AI in this case, CONTEXT, did exactly what it was asked to do. It did not infer connections like a human would, and therein lies the complexity that creeps in far faster than a layman would realize. I am not an expert, by any means, but work with some simple computer language systems during my day job. It certainly helped me understand where the book was going, although there were still bits and bobs that went over my head.

I love when authors start the book by telling you exactly where you're going and then still have you sitting at the edge of your seat or biting your nails as you read. I don't know how that works (or perhaps I would be a mega successful author too), but this book gave it all to me. I'm slapped in the face with death, then taken back to where the first tiny clues that perhaps a scythe was on the horizon started getting scattered everywhere.

This was a masterful story that helped provide some vocabulary for me to be able to explain to my aging parents why you can't take everything an AI engine spits out at you at face value. By putting the hapless crew and technically fully operational AI out in space, where one blown gasket could mean the death of all breathing crew, Hanhart is able to give us a vivid picture of everything that can go wrong when you don't have all the information or don't take the time to understand the information and definitions you have. Like I said, I left with chills.