Gladstone shifts gears from an nearly scientific model of
fantasy (The Break of Angels, 2017, and many others.) to fantastical house opera.
Billionaire tech genius Vivian Liao has dangerously aggravated the
political powers that be by way of her aggressively public liberal activism. So
she breaks right into a safe facility with the intention of hacking into the
world computing community, which might enable her to counter her enemies and
would, by the way, give her world dominion. Not solely does Viv handle to journey
an alarm, although, however a glowing inexperienced determine brutally transports her a number of
millennia into the long run. That future is managed by the identical inexperienced
personage, the Empress, who displays every part by way of the Cloud (a much more developed
model of our personal digital environment), looting after which squashing any
civilization reaching a sure degree of technological sophistication to
forestall it from attracting the lethal consideration of a devouring species referred to as
the Bleed. Thrust instantly into hazard, Viv collects a motley group of
companions as she struggles to know what’s occurred to her (readers will
determine Viv’s hyperlink to the Empress earlier than she does), discover a manner dwelling, and
try to interrupt the Empress’ stranglehold on the galaxy. Journey
breathlessly follows on journey, disaster on disaster, so rapidly one is difficult put
to recall every step of the journey; the principle function is to bond a disparate
group of heroes. The facility of affection and/or friendship overcoming a single adversary
is in fact an overused trope, however Gladstone truly has a sound
motive for utilizing it right here: He is illustrating the hazard of permitting one
individual to determine that she is aware of finest and easily seize management of every part—even
if that individual is stratospherically clever and (a minimum of initially) has
good intentions. He additionally appears to be commenting on the risks of the present
Silicon Valley cult(ure), during which an organization is pushed by the quirks of 1
good entrepreneur.
An fascinating and intellectually fertile enterprise.
