Equations of Life by Simon Morden
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

There's a lot of good things I can say about this novel. It has good plot, good pacing, and it does the whole subgenre of techno-thriller justice.

I enjoyed the main character, Petrovich, for his almost unbelievable mash up of personality traits. I mean, who else except in a techno-triller will be a hardened survivor of an apocalypse, a computer geek, an untrained but very well read and brilliant mathematician, and a self-serving asshole with combat skills? Oh. Wait... something like this does happen fairly often, or at least close variations on the theme.

I'm not complaining. It's entertaining for what it is.

It's a very easy read compared to a lot of the books I've read recently, and it passed very smoothly down my gullet, like vodka and sake. (But not at the same time!)

It is kinda funny, though, that I'd be reading no less than a half-dozen novels this year with AIs. Hell, earlier this month, I just read The Hive Construct, which was almost the very twin to this novel, at least in broad plot and action. It's almost as if a one page synopsis was shared between publishers or the underlying zeitgeist of throwing yourself at crazy AI's is so firmly embedded in our collective psyche (Thank you, 2001 Space Odyssey) that we've just got to rehash the same theme a million times, and preferably in cities where we can have the most collateral damage.

Though, to be fair, I much preferred the writing and the characters in this novel over the other one I just mentioned. It's also worth mentioning this one came out years before, as well. I'll soon get into this one's sequels. I liked it. It's a popcorn SF adventure, done all modern-like.

And who knows, maybe I'll get a taste of how the world will be after the GUT starts getting some applications. :) I'd love to see some speculation up here! ;)

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