Near future SF about mind control using light that goes wrong. Not too bad but a bit long. ( )

sort of a local more-sf version of a zombie apocalypse, with an added AI aspect, and way too much exposition required in the denouement, which is never a good sign. mostly, it just seemed more shallow than i'd expect of this writer. ( )

This novel should have ticked all my sci-fi boxes - dystopian technology, cynical narrative and snarky humour - but after the first chapter, my attention started to drift. The plot was intriguing enough to keep me reading, yet ploughing through the 400 and so pages took far longer than usual.

First of all, I must praise the concept of Lightborn, which is both creative and disturbing. Roksana Ansari is the teenage daughter of the technical wizard who developed, and is now hoping to conquer, lightborn, or shine, an AI-based technology which beams information and even emotions directly into the brain. 'Shinies' are the tech-addicts of the future, who can no longer think or act for themselves. When the lightborn AI evolves beyond its functional parameters, and out of the control of its creator, the city of Los Sombres enters 'the Fall' and all hell breaks loose.

I absolutely loved the very realistic world-building and detail of this alternate reality, and both Roksana and Xavier, the 'pure' teenage survivor come saviour of Los Sombres, are engaging characters. I should have been able to fly through the pages in a day or two, but just couldn't muster the right level of enthusiasm. Perhaps the switch from Roksana in the opening chapter to Xavier in the following pages was a bit of a comedown, or the technobabble and dystopian philosophy grew too overwhelming at times, but I could only manage a few chapters at a time. Good but not great. ( )

Dull, dull, dull. Cardboard characters, confused plotting, too many coincidences. Couldn't be bothered to finish it. ( )

In a US city called Los Sombres after an apocalypse known as the Fall, adults are subject to a control mechanism known as shine, which is mediated by beams of light and makes them want to take certain courses of action. Consequently they can act in strange ways and become fixated. One of the city’s inhabitants, a young woman named Roksana, is apparently immune to shine and runs a radio station called FallN which broadcasts a sort of defiance to an outside world which holds Los Sombres in a kind of quarantine. She is looking after a much younger girl named Elsa, who has lost her mother.

A boy called Xavier is living outside the city on a farm run by a native American woman. Having not attained puberty (which is being held back by means of a drug known as Kiss) he is not yet affected by shine. A stranger from the city comes to the farm and the Kiss runs out. In order to find more supplies of Kiss, Xavier steals a horse and makes his way to Los Sombres where he meets Roksana and their destinies intertwine. The section of the novel where Xavier is exploring Los Sombres for some reason brought to mind Kim Stanley Robinson’s The White Shore and The Gold Coast, except here the city is under threat from the armed forces of the “normal” USA.

The characters are convincing for the most part but since shine changes behaviour we have to take that behaviour on trust. Sullivan’s hands seem trustworthy however. In this regard Lightborn was a more satisfying read than Sullivan's earlier Someone To Watch Over Me .

Curiously given it was published in 2010, at the start of Lightborn the date it is set is given as 2004 which would make this an Altered History. It does not display any of the typical characteristics of that sub-genre however. ( )