shanethe_readingrat's Book Journey

welcome to the Chekhov's gun show, where multiple elements introduced that feel like they will be tied back into the plot later simply aren't.

i think the fastest way to make this book better would be to axe the chapters that are excerpts of Rusted Robots. i understand the attempt to show what Zelu made, but when characters within the book are showering Rusted Robots with praise and my immediate reaction when seeing that a Rusted Robots excerpt will take me 25 minutes to read on my ereader is "oh, come ON"... it just doesn't work. and if those were axed, there would be so much more page time to get to everything introduced that then never becomes truly relevant.

considering how Death of the Author brings in elements of our world today (the three i'm thinking of are AI, self-driving vehicles, and an ultra-rich white man who owns a space exploration company), i really thought it would have more to say about these? but instead, these are there simply as set dressing for the plot. the AI "assistant" app Yebo seems like something that will become very relevant, but the biggest feature it has is (without spoiling the plot) doing something that Zelu could have easily done by tapping a few buttons on her phone. autonomous vehicles? an even worse case. these are introduced with so much time, and there is even a scene where the vehicle goes haywire when Zelu changes its destination, but is there ever any more thought on if autonomous vehicles are truly a good thing? the exploitation that can occur? big companies being able to take advantage of people in yet another way? no. once every chapter, Zelu uses her phone to summon an autonomous vehicle to take her somewhere, and that is it. does our aforementioned ultra-rich white man (who is 100% an Elon Musk stand-in) get any on-page analysis at all? no. none. he just sends people into space! hence, Chekhov's gun show.

despite all of this, i did generally really like the chapters that were set in the real world. while it was extremely difficult for me to suspend my disbelief that an author would become that famous (5 million people watching a Facebook livestream? seriously? i have another tab open while writing this review so i can see what the all-time records for livestream watch counts are, and they definitely go higher than 5 million, but seem to be all for sports, and none are on Facebook), i liked Zelu a lot and thought her journey was fascinating. also liked the sibling dynamics in this book! i don't have any siblings, so it's always interesting to see those sort of bonds in fiction.