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THE synopsis appealed very much and I had high hopes, but ... didactic is the word that comes to mind. There was action, but it was quite muted. None of the thought processes of the characters were different, i.e. the AI drew a connection between A and B, then the Humans made the exact same connection for the exact same reasons. The author drew them, in other words, and it felt like one person's hand putting the same words in multiple people's mouths.

The setup was protracted (so and so went to here, studied this, learned that), and much of that was then spat back out near the end during the aftermath, which doubled the misery.
Also, despite the mental health aspects which were very well done, the "hey ho, poor bastard" nature of a child's own parents grated a little, especially after the first time. Weyand's writing of any sort of emotive scene feels out-of-whack to me, I didn't connect, emotionally, with the parents because of their son's health troubles, with the AI for wanting to better Humanity, with those fighting against it to stop his actions or indeed with anyone at all. Even the activity at the end of the book which had the potential to be quite awe-inspiring felt written at a remove, and the idea that any of this could happen in our world with such chummy, ... simpaticoness, is hard to swallow.

Not a real fan, unfortunately.

A grim opener to a series, I confess that although I enjoyed it for itself, I'm not overly sunk on following up. I enjoy some bleak fiction, but there's a nebulous nature to the powers called that has yet to really be defined and, if I'm being brutal, I've just spent 22 chapters reading about an orphan girl hiding her powers because of another orphan while some sort of centuries old planner tries to bring things to fruition. We've not yet been told about any ancient or mysterious reason for this, the old-woman-as-mother trope was easy to spot from the beginning and almost everything present was muted: - the training for talented kids although set in a palace was only briefly covered. The creepy priesthood is very much underrepresented by the apparat. The political mess of the other lands only really comes into any sort of meaning in the final chapter, and the actual people are really only given form in the hierarchy of Corporalki versus Summoners, with serving girls who don't know their place, Orphans with mysterious scars, and trackers who never actually explain their tallents and seem overpowered to the story anyway.

A quite unsettling mix of things which, I would hope in future works, would fall onto a more even keel but for me here and now left me felt a touch disappointed.

We've had a similar idea of a space-based Human without their full memories in another one of Peter's books. In Cold Eyes, Dali was also a younger version of himself if I remember rightly, and that lead to all sorts of interesting consequences and is another one of my favourites from this fantastic author.

Here, though, Jazz's memories of her training are gone (hopefully not too big a spoiler - it's revealed very early on). That opening scene on the swing was one of the most intriguing mental pictures I've had for a long time in a book, the juxtaposition was just brilliant and it totally compelled me to keep reading. It's funny, having read the whole book and enjoyed it greatly, it's still that shattering, fun-house mirror impact of that opening scene that lingers in my mind. I just know that, when I run my virtual eye down the books on my virtual shelf for a real reread, it'll be that which leaps off the page into my head in a year or so.

SO many parallels to other great sci-fi here too, of course; 2001 and, surprisingly one of my favourite novels by another science fiction author, Golden Fleece by Robert J. Sawyer. I'm astonished that the whole of Peter's back-catalogue of First Contact books haven't been picked up and spread far and wide by a forward-thinking publisher yet, because they approach things so differently yet with such eloquence, forethought and insight.