Tag: #ArtificialIntelligence

HomeAdrift by Soheil Mirchi

On By @f33lthesunIn AdultLeave a comment

Blurb

How far can you go before the silence breaks you?

Commander Solene Ellis has left Earth behind forever. Now she drifts through the void aboard the colony ship Nia Kvara, watching over 100,000 colonists in hibernation. Only Ava, the ship’s AI, keeps her company.

The voyage spans 3,000 years, but for Solene, time comes in fragments—fleeting moments of wakefulness between long, frozen sleeps. Hours blur into decades. Memories unravel. In the stillness, she begins to lose track not only of time, but of herself.

And solitude in deep space doesn’t stay quiet for long. Whispers echo where no one should be. Shadows shift just beyond her vision. A mysterious vessel appears in the void. Even Ava starts to act… strangely.

As reality fractures, Solene must face a terrifying is something out there hunting them—or has her own mind become the true threat?

Review

I am not sure where to start this review. So many thoughts going through my mind.

I absolutely loved the book, a character led, sci fi space horror told with deep philosophical resonance. Tension and emotion poured off the pages. So much to think about, small details become rabbit holes in my mind. Bigger ideas like isolation, survival, home, privilege, AI, time… they feel insurmountable.

I am not often a fan of an unreliable narrator, but the author merged Solene’s reality and hibernation dreams flawlessly, and had me questioning everything. In a good way.

Even after she reprogrammed Ava, the ships AI who went rogue from a previous hack, I was still unsure if what Ava said was true or not. Did the original destination planet really have a virus that made it uninhabitable for humans?

One thought that kept recurring for me was that Solene was awake for the equivalent of about a month, but thanks to years in hibernation for the space jumps, the time that actually passed in Earth years was millennia. That feels like such an unthinkable premise, incomprehensible. Solene had no time to process her feelings,her grief, her wonder.

Her awake time was spent reading reports and data collected when she was hibernating, as well as checking the ship’s functions and status. Things that happened 300 years ago when she was last awake felt like yesterday to her.

One quote stood out for me… “Extended life, for all its promises, has left me with a lingering sense of emptiness. The prospect of living for centuries – does it make me any more human, or does it strip away what it means to truly live?”

Such a huge question. I will be sitting with this and the rest of Solene’s story for a long time.

Thanks to @The_WriteReads and the author for a copy of the book to read and review.

Book Info

Genre: Science Fiction

Age Category: Adult

Number of Pages: 326 Pages

Publication Date: November 12, 2025

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/238567071-homeadrift 

Storygraph: https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/6869bb8c-a35a-431d-b5f2-cfcf02be5650 

Amazon: https://a.co/d/9RCpUhx (Canada) https://a.co/d/iHzeWY8 (USA) https://amzn.eu/d/abYuHWP (UK)

Skylark in the Fog by Helyna L Clove

On By @f33lthesunIn AdultLeave a comment

During the BBNYA2024 competition, I read the 2k and 10k extracts and really wanted to read the whole story, so was happy to sign up for this tour. It thoroughly deserves its place as the 9th place finalist.

Blurb

So when the universe falls to pieces, it doesn’t mean your life has to, right? That comes later.

Jeane Blake, captain of the spaceship Skylark, makes her living by looting dead worlds, planets fallen prey to naturally occurring wormhole-like rifts plaguing the cosmos. She survives the only way she knows how: avoiding commitment and arguing with her dead foster father’s ghost. But when her crew stumbles upon an alien device that could collapse the wormhole network and wipe out all sentient life, they catch the hungry eyes of the Union, a tyrannical empire hunting the sinister tech.

As she flees the Union’s brainwashed agents, Jeane is forced to take on a shady mission and gets stuck assisting the runaway monarch of a technocrat planet. Queen Maura Tholis is seeking the aid of an interstellar resistance to reclaim her war-torn world, with another trouble-magnet device as her bargaining chip: a glove that allows her to command AI systems. Jeane couldn’t care less about the whole deal, but things become personal when the Union annexes the place she calls home. And it might be her fault.

Reluctant to become weapons in the hands of power-hungry militants and desperate rebels, smuggler and queen join forces. But to save their homes, they must redefine themselves, work with the enemy, and face personal traumas they’d buried long ago-and only stars know which challenge might break them in the end.

Review

As the story starts to unfold, we have two seemingly unconnected and polar opposite storylines. One of a lanehunter, Jeane, and her crew, scraping to make ends meet by “aquiring” junk (looting) and selling it on, hopping about space in an attempt to steer clear of the Union and its dictator forces. She is also trying to outrun her grief and emotions.

The other is of Maura, a princess, soon to be Queen, of the solar system of Miyoza, which is currently in a long, drawn out war with the Gaerrians. Although giving the appearance of fighting for freedoms and liberty, the King, along with the AI system that jointly rules, is just as much a dictatorship as The Union.

As the two storylines come together, pushing Jeane and Maura into an uneasy alliance, we begin to see how they are completely different but also similar, both fighting inner gremlins, but determined to make a difference.

As the story progresses, themes of power, greed, control and manipulation emerge strongly, alongside those of grit, determination, sacrifice, friendship and grief.

In the background, but very much strong forces in their own right, are two AI systems that have been corrupted by human influence, but it is the masses who suffer. Who thought it would be a good idea to have a human royal and AI jointly run a kingdom? Both the king and the leaders of the Union strongly stamp their will on their respective systems and … there are consequences!

You will just have to read the book to find out what those consequences are.

About the Book

Length: 524 Pages

Genre: Science Fiction, Fantasy

Age Category: New Adult

Date Published: September 6, 2022

Amazon Link: https://a.co/d/5DXM2cC (Canada) https://a.co/d/jaFAuuQ (USA) https://amzn.eu/d/60gePiC (UK)

Goodreads Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/61262158-skylark-in-the-fog 

The Story Graph Link: https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/b47418a6-e276-4d6d-9da5-1f6c6534dcbf

About BBNYA

BBNYA is a yearly competition where book bloggers mfrom all over the world read and score books written by indie authors, ending with 15 finalists (16 in 2024) and one overall winner.

If you want some more information about BBNYA, check out the BBNYA Website https://www.bbnya.com/ or take a peek over on Twitter @BBNYA_Official. BBNYA is brought to you in association with the book blogger support group @The_WriteReads. 

Anticipation by Neil Taylor

On By @f33lthesunIn #YALeave a comment
Cover designed by Jet Purdie

Blurb

You are being played.

Your every move is being watched by businesses hoping to manipulate your behaviour. Every picture, every post, every like, every follow, every purchase, every search.

When 17-year-old Riya Sudame inherits her father’s secret AI algorithm, she and a handful of carefully selected Keyholders hold the power to predict people’s futures using their online data. But with great power comes great responsibility, and they must safeguard it from falling into the wrong hands.

Enter Jim Booker, a powerful social media tycoon, who will stop at nothing to steal the technology for himself. Soon Riya faces a critical choice. Fighting ruthless tech giants seems like an impossible task—wouldn’t it be easier to relinquish her father’s creation in exchange for a normal teenage life? 

But if she does, she will have to live with the knowledge that she is the reason that, like everyone, you are being played.

Review

Taylor has written a high paced, moral led thriller that could well be happening right now.

So many of the scenarios – data mining on social media, monetising of it, scientific developments intended to help all being bought up / stolen and produced for profit – happen already.

Anticipation takes these ideas to the next level. It puts two teenagers, with no knowledge of the power their fathers’ technology, in charge of protecting it and ensuring it ends up helping everyone.

However, this leads them into dangerous territory, their families put at risk and them trying to save themselves and the technology without using traceable technology for fear of being traced. At one point they even try to turn the tables by influencing the influencers to try to uncover the scams and show the world what is happening.

The theme of data manipulation in this story takes us deeper than it just being sold so companies can spam us with target audience specific ads. It takes us into the territory of our online footprint enabling those companies to accurately predict our behaviours and actions, to manipulate and lead us where we may not want to go, making them even more powerful than they already are.

Thank you to Neem Tree Press and @The_WriteReads for the ARC to allow me to review for this blog tour.