Edward Ashton tackles AI in a way I wasn’t prepared for. Mal Goes to War is a witty, hilarious, and thought-provoking insight into a possible future as glimpsed through the eyes of an AI entity.
Mal is an AI observer of a war between the bio-augmented Federals and the puritanical Humanists. Not much for playing an active role in the conflict, Mal spends his time in the infospace. When Humanists cut off access to his home while Mal is out looking for salvaging scraps from the battlefields, he finds himself stuck inside the body of a cyborg mercenary. Suddenly thrust into the battlelines while protecting a bio-enhanced girl, Mal will find out more about being human than he could have thought in his endless simulations.
What I found exhilarating about Edward Ashton’s latest technothriller was how he established AI’s as darkly humorous and at times straight-up horrifying beings, a notion that comes with the ability to outthink humans on a large scale. As much as it is a thriller with danger and intrigue, it is also a perspective on how much AIs may learn to emulate humans, with traits like greed and survival at all costs. With the added benefit of us readers being inside Mal’s head as he goes on a journey through the wastelands, the narrative gains that extra touch of blending the book’s reality with ours as Mal acts more and more human throughout the story. Ashton also breaks away from going into much technical detail about the AI, presenting Mal as a character more than a piece of code that mutated.
Mal Goes to War is an incredibly addictive read which thrills, excites and puts you in a thoughtful ponder with supreme ease through Ashton’s fast-paced writing and stimulating characters all packed between bouts of cool hacking sequences as well as violent shootouts.
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