A fast-paced, intriguing new sci-fi novella

An A.I. wages war on a future it doesn’t understand.

Alice is the last human. Street-smart and bad-ass.

After discovering what appears to be an A.I. personality in an antique data core, Alice decides to locate its home somewhere in the stargate network. At the very least, she wants to lay him to rest because, as it turns out, she’s stumbled upon the sentient control unit of a deadly ancient weapon system.

Convincing the ghost of a raging warrior that the war is over is about as hard as it sounds, which is to say, it’s near-impossible. But, if Alice fails and the control unit falls into the wrong hands, the balance of power her side of the Milky Way could fall apart. As Alice ports throughout the known universe seeking answers and aid she will be faced with impossible choice after impossible choice and the growing might of an unstoppable foe.

A very quick/short review, for this one. This is a pretty fast-paced, galaxy-trotting science fiction novella. After a slightly shaky start, I quickly fell into the setting and became invested in the characters’ fates. It doesn’t quite stick the landing, but I nevertheless enjoyed it.

Gallagher’s novella starts with a busy bazaar scene, which had me initially a little worried — it felt overloaded with “who/what the hell is that?” moments, but thankfully it quickly moved on from that kind of scene-setting. As Alice embarks on her journey, the story became quite gripping, as Gallagher takes her character across the galaxy. Even though she’s fleeing for her life, protecting a strange piece of technology that appears to contain an ancient AI, readers are still treated to some more world-building. The author avoids info-dumping, and leaves plenty of scope to return to this setting in the future (which I certainly hope Gallagher does).

The story wrapped up a little suddenly, for my taste, and therefore felt like an anticlimax. Nevertheless, I very much enjoyed a lot of this, and certainly look forward to reading more by the author in the future.

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Elaine Gallagher’s Unexploded Remnants is due to be published by TorDotCom in North America and in the UK, on June 25th.

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Review copy received via NetGalley