World Running Down

In a world where many wealthy elites have fled, life goes on, with scavengers in the desert and cities in which people live well. Valentine, a trans man, would love to get a visa for a city where he could get T and top surgery, but his undiagnosed ADHD and the general expenses of living as a scavenger hold him back. With his partner, he’s offered an incredible opportunity—retrieve some androids for a citizen and they’ll both get visas. But the opportunity comes by way of an android who is actually a sentient AI city manager displaced into an android body, whose own dysphoria and experience of abuse lead Valentine to make riskier choices. It’s mostly a romance; despite the sometimes-dangerous circumstances and a lot of show more misgendering by non-heroes, the people at the heart of the story are largely trying to be kind. show less

Al Hess' World Running Down is the Mad Max-inspired-cozy-queer-trans-gay-AI-dystopian-romance of your dreams, and if you read that and don't think all of those descriptors should work together, you're wrong.

Valentine and his partner, Ace, are scavengers in the wastelands outside Salt Lake City. Their collective dream is to someday save enough money to be able to purchase visas to gain access to Salt Lake, where Valentine can finally receive the gender-affirming care he wants and deserves. When they are given a job that might be too good to be true, they jump at the chance because the payment is exactly what they want: money and visas to finally live in Salt Lake. Of course, nothing is as it seems, especially Osric, who recruits Val and show more Ace for the job. An AI Steward of the city, Osric was forced into an android body against his will, and wants nothing more than to return to the safety of his network. While both men are figuring their way out in the world and navigating bodies that they don't belong in, they are also tracking a collection of androids, dodging pirates, and possibly even falling in love.

There are so many subtle nuances to Hess' story: the struggles faced by anyone in the queer community, body dysmorphia, what constitutes free will and sentience, balancing what is right against what is the easiest thing to do, sociological prejudices, abusive employers, manipulative friends, all wrapped up it a perfectly realized world that is, in fact, running down. It is never made explicitly clear what went wrong, but it is made clear that the rich escaped and left behind those that couldn't afford to leave the planet to fend for themselves. While the people left behind do clearly try to better to each other, the class and wealth distinctions are still there. In fact, the most caring and humane of the characters, aside from Valentine and a handful of other humans, are the AI Stewards; their level of care, respect, and understanding of each other and their individual needs is thought provoking. And that's the crux of Hess' novel: to make you aware that caring, respecting, and understanding those around you can take you far and make you a better person, even when it seems like the world is crashing down around you.

Valentine is an endearing character who seems to have a heart too large for his own good, and Osric and his "big, sexy brain", are remarkable characters and getting to watch their love story unfold as they discover just as much about themselves as they do each other is a true treat. I can't recommend this book enough and I'm anxious to see what stories Hess has to tell us next.

A huge thanks to Angry Robot Books and NetGalley for the advanced reader copies in exchange for an honest review.

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Tl;dr: Odyssey x Blade Runner, but all the queer joy. Delicious prose, gritty, engaging post-apocalyptic world, and characters you’ll fall for. Hard.

I don’t read as much as I used to. Disabilities, lifestyle (solo parent), and general energy all get in the way. So when I do pick up a book, it had better be DARN good or I’m not going to waste my on it. And friends, I am here to tell you that WORLD RUNNING DOWN does not disappoint.

It’s full of wonderful things:
• Lyrical, elegant moments when the prose is radiant with texture and flavor and your heart sings with the sheer joy of life;
• Characters you’ll love to hate, and characters you’ll fall for so hard that you’ll be rushing through your chores so you can get back to show more them;
• A salty, rough-edged post-apocalyptic world that’s massively different from our own, yet chillingly similar;
• A fascinating exploration of identity, bodies, and the way social constructs make it hard to see ourselves and be seen;
• Authentic trans pain without any trans trauma porn or exploitation;
• Lots of cute laugh-out-loud moments;
• Action scenes that will have you leaving fingernail-marks on your sweaty palms;
• The most gorgeous slow-burn romance you could hope for;
• A deeply fun and engaging first act, a steady build to the midpoint, plenty of “oh sh*t” moments, and a third act that will have your heart racing;
• An ending that was more artfully crafted than any of us had any right to hope for;
• And so much more!

Al Hess is a masterful writer. It’s clear from the very beginning that he has the heart of a poet and the imagination of a storyteller. His comfort with structure has him providing us a story with the perfect flow of tension and hope to keep us in our feels as we breathlessly turn each page. He has unique and important things to say about living in a body that doesn’t match who you are, and Valentine’s journey as a trans man is refracted elegantly in Osric’s own fraught relationship with his corporeality.

But also, Valentine and Osric’s journey offers insight into how all of the layers of connection, from the most micro to the most macro, are warped by underlying social structures that have grown stale and toxic. Reading WORLD RUNNING DOWN will give anyone the opportunity to see themselves from the outside, and as Al’s prose does its masterful work, to feel the invisible web of the world’s expectations plucked, so that it shudders and becomes visible. In riding along with Valentine and Osric as they find their way, we, too, are given the opportunity to discover ourselves.

Do yourself a favor and pick up a copy of WORLD RUNNING DOWN today. Then grab a snack and settle in for the ride of your life. show less

2023. Valentine and Ace are broke salvagers outside Salt Lake City. They live in a van and scrape by doing dangerous missions and fighting pirates. Valentine wants to save up enough money to buy a visa to live in the city where he would have access to gender-affirming health care. He meets Osric, a powerful and sexy AI, who has been unlawfully downloaded into an android body. Osric, wants nothing more than to get back into the network where he belongs. But having a body has its benefits. After falling in love with Valentine, will he really go back to the network? Meanwhile they have to save eight android sex-workers who have gained sentience. Hijinks ensue.

Any enjoyable read with some interesting world-building! I loved the comparisons between AI, mechanical bodies, and the experience of being transgender. Seeing Osric learn and come to terms with life in a human(ish) body was delightful, as well as seeing the other androids come into their sentience in various ways. I loved Valentine's big heart, too. I feel like there is recently a trend away from stories where trans people have transition as a goal, so it was nice to see this as a major aspect of his character as it's an experience I can relate to. The way that different ways of life were expanded upon, and neither the city or the people living outside it were presented as wholly good or bad, was nice to see. I really found it show more fascinating the gap of even basic world history between the people of Salt Lake and those living outside of it. Also, in the beginning I worried that Ace would be presented as a one-dimensional antagonist who clashes with Valentine (especially when compared with Osric who is more or less entirely on Valentine's side), and I'm glad that in the end her character had nuance too.
The romance didn't really do it for me, although maybe I was just too asexual to enjoy it. I found myself thinking "You're going to have this conversation NOW?" and "You're going to do that HERE?". I found the flirtations a little unrealistic in situations with more important things going on. For me, one of the selling points of an AI/human romance is the lack of a sexual aspect, so in this case it just wasn't to my tastes (the reasoning for bumping down my rating). Overall I would say that the romance and plot are somewhat balanced, with the romance maybe taking a little more precedence.   show less

I picked up and put down this book several times before getting hooked at 50%. I don't know which was more jagged, the plot or my mind (why not both?). But two things came through clearly: Valentine's body dysmorphia, and the growing bond between him and Osric. I'm still not entirely clear how and why a formless sentient AI was dumped into an android body, but his thoughtful intelligence was a perfect match for Valentine's chaotic goodness.

Hess' more recent release [b:Key Lime Sky|203159077|Key Lime Sky|Al Hess|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1701655090l/203159077._SY75_.jpg|205621099] was a more polished effort, but World Running Down definitely showed his promise.

N.B. I'm a little late for the show more 2025 Trans Rights Readathon, but Valentine's experience of genuine horror about his breasts and uterus should be required reading for J.K. Rowling and her ilk who are currently celebrating a UK high court ruling that biological sex is the sole determinant of gender. show less

Lacklustre YA tale of a trans-man who, while scraping a living as a scavenger in the sparsely populated desertlands of a future USA, dreams of moving to the big city so he can get treatment to make his body align more with his self-image. He alternately mopes over some imagined slight or moons about his crush on an AI who has been downloaded into an android body. Both plot and characters are unconvincing.