Alpha

tl;dr version: Fast paced action-filled dystopian cyberpunk, well written, particularly the technological aspects.
I totally admit I grabbed this while it was a freebie because of the spectacular cover. (I was very much reminded of an equally spectacular, if spectacularly bad '80s Australian movie called Circuitry Man - you get a cookie if you've ever even heard of that one.) The rest of this series has equally striking covers. They'd make fabulous posters actually.
No prizes for guessing the genre from the cover either, this is pure dystopian cyberpunk. A largely unexplained cataclysm has made the earth more or less unliveable, with "City Earth" the remaining safely domed city run by "The Family" via a figurehead government. At least show more that's what everyone thinks. Our hero Gerry discovers he's somehow been hacked, and declared winner of the "Death Lottery" and has a week to live, something he should have been exempt from as the creator of the lottery selection algorithm. Dead men have no rights, and lying beaten on the street after trying to get into his own workplace, he's picked up by a strange man who declares his code is possessed, and he needs exorcising. And it only gets weirder for Gerry after that. He discovers everything he thought he knew about his life, about his home city, and about the entire world and even humanity in general, may not be true.
There's a lot going on here, and it's mostly fun. What place religion in an almost purely on-line world and is white hat hacking the techno equivalent of exorcising demons? At least one character thinks it is. There's also some interesting discussion on the nature of evil. Is there truly "evil" and "good" and if there is, could you program them, create them out of code and algorithms? It even delves, albeit briefly, into the nature of humanity itself. Could a programmed created entire and then "inserted" into a human body, self-aware yet unaware of its genesis, be considered a human being? Would knowing how it was created change that? However unlike some recent reads, it doesn't dwell too much on the existentialism, but rather favours the action, and there's plenty of that. I found the balance just right, but YMMV of course, and I was in the mood for an action filled kind of book.

Yet I initially gave this a 4 star rating but I am considering knocking it down to 3.5 for two reasons, those being a somewhat hard to empathise with lead character, and a crazy tacked-on feeling cliffhanger at the end.

Yes there's a lot going on here, but Gerry sails through it all peculiarly unaffected. As a plot point, it kind of makes sense, eventually, as a reader though, I found he's difficult to engage with. Every time I get a handle on him emotionally and start caring about what is happening to him, he does this "I don't have time to think about any of that emotion stuff" and gets on with the task at hand. The problem for me is the pacing is off - the first 80% or so of the book takes place over 2? maybe 3 days, in which Gerry has rather a traumatic time of it.


Like a total recall kind of trauma (except, not just a wife, but a wife and two beloved daughters). Also that he might not actually be a real person, just an AI. Or not. He's not sure.

He loses his entire life, gains a new one, becomes a techxorcist - a white hat hacker of "evil" AI's and viruses, apparently falls in love, makes a new best friend, is betrayed, is shot multiple times, is tortured, saves an entire civilization, possibly two, and then meets a whole lot of family he didn't know he had. I guess he's right, who has time to think about things when they're happening at that pace.

That said I did enjoy it. It was a fast and easy read, and as a programmer, I wasn't eye rolling at the hacker tricks, and there's even a couple of in-jokes made about the overused trope (see the movie Hackers, or Swordfish or... well any movie ever) that hacking involves manipulating objects in a poorly rendered VR simulation. When faced with having to do exactly that, Gerry asks "Can't I just send some code" and his accomplice answers something to the effect "sure, but this is more fun to look at". Which isn't to say any of the tech in this book is current world, it's not, but the tech is handled in a way that is not only internally consistent, but doesn't read like a chef trying to write a programming manual. Or you know, me trying to write a cookbook.
The sidekicks, Gaz and Petal are also fun, but a little flat. Gaz has almost no development, he's practically exposition man for half the book - and since there's not overly much exposition going on, he's not got much to say for a lot of pages.
But the ending takes a bit of a left turn into crazy land, and just when it's about to come to a point that would have made sense to end the book (Gerry on his way back to rescue a friend, and set his world back in order), out of nowhere, it takes another even weirder turn and out of nowhere the biggest most wtf cliffhanger ever. Aliens. Out of nowhere. Not a mention or hint of them anywhere in the book up until now, and then whoa Nelly.
To be clear, I understand this is the first of a trilogy, but there was already a natural break here. This story was wrapped up, and the next step was clear, but hadn't begun yet. The sudden spin out into real cliffhanger land really felt like a tacked on "Stay tuned for what happens next week!" sales tactic, not a natural progression of the story, and it really soured it for me. Even if it was a natural progression, it would have made a kick-ass beginning for book two - I even wouldn't have objected if it had been chapter one of book two and tacked on at the end as a teaser. True, the distinction is quite slender, but for me, quite real. It's the difference between "I know there's more parts to this" and the hard sell.

Anyway, for anyone who stuck with me this long, here's the trailer to the hilariously abysmal Circuitry Man, in all it's psychedelic 80's low budget glory: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcw4LtLa4s4 show less

After the super lively prequel i was wondering if this could keep up, and i have to say that it more than matched my hopes.   This is all rather full on stuff, it just doesn't stop steaming along full tilt.   I can't remember the last time i read a book so fast, just didn't want to put it down.

Back are our two wonderful protagonists from the prequel and this time they're joined by Jerry.   Jerry's lead a rather sheltered life in a nice big, clean, domed city, that is, until it all goes wrong one day and he has to leave and run off into the wasteland outside.

There's also lots of other great characters added to the mix with lots of cyberpunky, post-apocalyptic, dystopian shenanigans to go along with them.   Yes, folks, we loves any show more kind of shenanigans at Kindle Worm HQ and this ones got several different kinds.

Full steam ahead into Beta: don't go away, i'll be back soon. show less

Code Breakers: Alpha (Amazon) or Artificial Evil (Goodreads) is an exciting Matrix / Neuromancer-esque romp. Artificial Intelligence programmer Gerry Cardle is unceremoniously pulled off of the Earth network by Morpheus and Trinity… I mean Petal and Gabe to become a Techxorcist, a rogue programmer who serves humanity by hacking, battling and containing evil AI. The book is familiar, fast-paced and a very quick read. I am looking forward to the next book in the series to see how Gerry pulls through the cliff hanger ending.

This review is written with a GPL 3.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at Bookstooge.booklikes.blogspot.wordpress.leafmarks.com & Bookstooge's Reviews on the Road Facebook Group by Bookstooge's Exalted Permission. Title: Artificial Evil Series: Techxorcist Author: Colin Barnes Rating: 3 of 5 Stars Genre: SFF Pages: 207 Synopsis: Mr Genius wakes up one day to find that he, supposedly exempt from the Death Lottery since he's a bigshot in The Dome, has been chosen to die. Escaping the Dome, Mr Genius finds out that everything he's been told is a lie and the Dome isn't quite the Utopia show more it is supposed to be. Fighting an evil A.I while trying to survive in a brand new world, Mr.Genius leads us on fast paced adventure. My Thoughts: Barnes really did copy the outlines of this story from Shirow Masamune. The Dome/Utopia is straight from Appleseed, the A.I.'s from Ghost in the Shell. Frenetic is the best word I can think of to describe this. I was as lost and confused as the main character for most of the book. The techno-babble wasn't necessary and added nothing to the story except to let us know that the author "was an expert". The supposed "revelation" about the nature of Mr Genius was not much of a revelation if you've watched/read the anime/manga I mentioned above. It was a real non-starter for me. Finally, the ending. The ever-hating cliffhanger. Mr Genius is returning to the earth on a spaceship and it has been messed with, so we end the story with him jetting off into space. No more Colin Barnes for me. " show less

I really enjoyed this book, it was so well written. I especially like the authors unique style of writing like the certain phrases he uses. For instance there was a part I was reading where the main character fell to the ground but instead of saying that he said "the ground moved closer to his face".
The characters were strong and well put together.
When the story seems to become a bit monotonous the author just captures your attention with an interesting twist that just kept you wanting more.
But the ending , Oh My , What a cliff hanger !
Im definitely going to buy part 2 , I need to know what happened to Gerry and Petal.

A techo sci-fi thriller would be the category I put this book in. Not the best written plot, but it did have a plot and launched you nicely into this near-future world and bit-by-bit provided understanding. Did enjoy Gerry's super-human ability to program and the AI.

This is a second book to earn my "neither recommend nor discourage" slot. As the stars indicate, it was ok. I would have given it 3 stars, liked it, but between the time I purchased it, and went to read it, it had gone through changes I really didn't want to try to figure out.

When an indie author changes book names and series names, you can bet they are not giving much of a damn about their readers. So, as a reader, I don't feel obliged to waste much time with a review.

I did pick it because I liked the sales pitch and all the basics are there. I didn't notice any of the normal indie author issues. It starts in media res and keeps things interesting.

It isn't so much a book as a ??. Tough to say. It had a beginning, middle, and end.... show more but then there were around 5 more chapters that made it a book without an ending. Or is a book and the beginning of the next book... Probably why there's all that name and series changing going on. Who knows?

I'll likely finish the series while doing mindless chores and want something to listen to. I'll not be doing chores when I read Iron Gold.

Read in two sessions, 11-10-19 & 11-17-19. show less