Her Gilded Voice
Teenage Lacey has a woman living inside her head...or is it the other way around?
Decades from now, technology has advanced, and everyone has a "neuro-net" wired into their brain. This provides each person with a "voyce" inside their head that offers advice that guides and ostensibly protects them; as teen Lacey Clarke puts it: "Voyces help us all make the right decisions. They give us reason, protect us from outside chaos. And in some cases, they protect us from ourselves."
In this republic, Lacey and her older sister, Yadira, barely make ends meet, and their lives are made worse when they discover they must pay off their late father's debt and that Lacey has been marked to beome a Puzzler in a brainteaser competition in which losers are killed. Alina, Lacey's voyce, reassures her everything will be fine if only they foloow the rules, but when an encounter with Ogden Oliver, a powerful Elite, ends with Alina being temporarily deactivated, lacey is left alone with her own thoughts. For the first time in her life, she is able to perceive the world as it acturally is--without augmented-reality illusions.
As Lacey navigates the competition, she realizes she may be a pawn but one that has hitherto unknown power.
About this book, Kirkus writes, "Lacey's coming-of-age feels very personal and individual, but the author never loses sight of the fact that the protagonist exists in the world of a wider story--one that examines and fully addresses themes of oppression, social stratification, dissent, and agency...A compelling and thought-provoking speculative novel."
Decades from now, technology has advanced, and everyone has a "neuro-net" wired into their brain. This provides each person with a "voyce" inside their head that offers advice that guides and ostensibly protects them; as teen Lacey Clarke puts it: "Voyces help us all make the right decisions. They give us reason, protect us from outside chaos. And in some cases, they protect us from ourselves."
In this republic, Lacey and her older sister, Yadira, barely make ends meet, and their lives are made worse when they discover they must pay off their late father's debt and that Lacey has been marked to beome a Puzzler in a brainteaser competition in which losers are killed. Alina, Lacey's voyce, reassures her everything will be fine if only they foloow the rules, but when an encounter with Ogden Oliver, a powerful Elite, ends with Alina being temporarily deactivated, lacey is left alone with her own thoughts. For the first time in her life, she is able to perceive the world as it acturally is--without augmented-reality illusions.
As Lacey navigates the competition, she realizes she may be a pawn but one that has hitherto unknown power.
About this book, Kirkus writes, "Lacey's coming-of-age feels very personal and individual, but the author never loses sight of the fact that the protagonist exists in the world of a wider story--one that examines and fully addresses themes of oppression, social stratification, dissent, and agency...A compelling and thought-provoking speculative novel."
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Distortion Day
Black Mirror meets Ready Player One in this adult sci-fi thriller.
After the Great Distortion corrupts all the world’s digital data, humanity struggles to pick up the pieces.
Digital “Grave-Digger” Mason Dunlow works to uncover humanity’s past while protecting it from the corrupting force known only as the Omnipath. Like most people, Mason’s adapted to a world without internet, phones, and computers, but when his girlfriend, Kiersten Frey, is taken by a group of men loyal to the Omnipath, he’ll need to track her down before her mind is rewritten. To discover where they’ve taken her, Mason will have to steal the memories of all those blocking his way.
A desperate father on a cross-country trek fraught with malfunctioning technology. A troubled teen questing through a fantasy world as a half-beast avatar. A doctor reliving her past as a Shakespearean stage actress. A pilot stranded behind enemy lines and pursued by a relentless, living nightmare. And a preacher manipulating his own congregation through a horde of internet bots.
Father, Beast, Actress, Pilot, and Prophet. These are the memories Mason must rely on in order to find Kiersten and uncover the mystery surrounding the Great Distortion. Each memory brings Mason closer to the truth and an inevitable confrontation with the cruel intelligence behind the fall of the information age.
If Mason fails to reach Kiersten in time, her memories will cease to exist and a disaster far worse than the Great Distortion will strike the earth.
After the Great Distortion corrupts all the world’s digital data, humanity struggles to pick up the pieces.
Digital “Grave-Digger” Mason Dunlow works to uncover humanity’s past while protecting it from the corrupting force known only as the Omnipath. Like most people, Mason’s adapted to a world without internet, phones, and computers, but when his girlfriend, Kiersten Frey, is taken by a group of men loyal to the Omnipath, he’ll need to track her down before her mind is rewritten. To discover where they’ve taken her, Mason will have to steal the memories of all those blocking his way.
A desperate father on a cross-country trek fraught with malfunctioning technology. A troubled teen questing through a fantasy world as a half-beast avatar. A doctor reliving her past as a Shakespearean stage actress. A pilot stranded behind enemy lines and pursued by a relentless, living nightmare. And a preacher manipulating his own congregation through a horde of internet bots.
Father, Beast, Actress, Pilot, and Prophet. These are the memories Mason must rely on in order to find Kiersten and uncover the mystery surrounding the Great Distortion. Each memory brings Mason closer to the truth and an inevitable confrontation with the cruel intelligence behind the fall of the information age.
If Mason fails to reach Kiersten in time, her memories will cease to exist and a disaster far worse than the Great Distortion will strike the earth.
Syn Breaker
When a global pandemic makes intimacy lethal, men and women turn to artificial companions called Syns.
Detective Wendy Chrome works in the Intimacy Crimes Division, hunting down perpetrators who skirt the laws prohibiting sex, risking the spread of the deadly disease, Fusion. For most people, Syns are the go-to solution for pent-up angst and loneliness, but Wendy views them as a symbol for the disease that killed her first love and forever labeled her an outcast. When several women turn up pregnant with a suspected Syn as the father, Chrome must infiltrate the seedy Syn community to stem a rising panic and unearth the corruption’s source.
That source, Zephy is a Syn unlike any other. Her designer, the now deceased Syn creator, injected a virus into her programming that allows her to question her enslavement and disobey human orders. She’s the first Syn with free will, but she won’t be the last. Her virus is contagious and every Syn she encounters is likewise “infected.” When she nearly kills an abusive owner, the authorities led by Chrome aim to destroy her before she can corrupt any more Syns, touching off a conflict with liberated Syns who want to protect her.
Syn Breaker can be viewed as a mix between I, Robot and Windup Girl but with pacing and interwoven plot lines more in tune with James S.A. Corey’s The Expanse series.
Detective Wendy Chrome works in the Intimacy Crimes Division, hunting down perpetrators who skirt the laws prohibiting sex, risking the spread of the deadly disease, Fusion. For most people, Syns are the go-to solution for pent-up angst and loneliness, but Wendy views them as a symbol for the disease that killed her first love and forever labeled her an outcast. When several women turn up pregnant with a suspected Syn as the father, Chrome must infiltrate the seedy Syn community to stem a rising panic and unearth the corruption’s source.
That source, Zephy is a Syn unlike any other. Her designer, the now deceased Syn creator, injected a virus into her programming that allows her to question her enslavement and disobey human orders. She’s the first Syn with free will, but she won’t be the last. Her virus is contagious and every Syn she encounters is likewise “infected.” When she nearly kills an abusive owner, the authorities led by Chrome aim to destroy her before she can corrupt any more Syns, touching off a conflict with liberated Syns who want to protect her.
Syn Breaker can be viewed as a mix between I, Robot and Windup Girl but with pacing and interwoven plot lines more in tune with James S.A. Corey’s The Expanse series.