We Lived on the Horizon: A Novel

In the walled city of Bulwark, the AI Parallax makes sure its citizens are safe and cared for through the use of smart houses and meritocratic reward. Over time, this life credit system has separated and stiffened into a distinct and unfair class divide. Saint Enita and Saint Helen both try to live up to their ancestors’ wealth—Helen as a historian and Enita as a prosthetic surgeon—rather than simply coast on their privilege. And then, one of the wealthiest Saints of the city is murdered and Enita does the impossible…she gives her house AI a human body, separating them from Parallax and kicking off a revolution.

There’s a lot going on in this book, and the execution is mixed in my opinion. Underneath the info dumps, stilted show more relationships, and vague world-building, there is an interesting story with flashes of gorgeous prose and insight. I found Enita and Helen flat and unlikeable, which was especially disappointing because we get so few books with older women protagonists. The body martyr’s attempts at autonomy and Nix’s pain of becoming themselves both kept me turning the pages despite this, though. I think this is a book that will find its audience over time.

Thank you to Netgalley and Atria Books for an e-arc in exchange for an honest review. show less

This book was really promising at the beginning, but kind of fizzled out in the second half.

It's set in a far future dystopia, in an isolated society that is run by a massive artificial intelligence which supposedly maintains peace, runs the city's infrastructure, and maintains stability. Society is split into two classes: the sainted, whose ancestors have made major contributions to society and thus they live in luxury, and everyone else, who must labor to work off their life-debt.

The world building is good, but then there's not really much of a story. The book focuses on two saints, one of whom has moved the AI that runs her house into a synthetic body. The book gets really hung up on the fact that the two saints are older women who show more have had an on-again-off-again relationship their whole lives and dwell a lot on what could have been if they had gotten along better. The book's other obsession is the tension between the AI learning how to navigate the world in a body, and a non-sainted woman who wants to martyr herself and donate all of her body parts to other people. Readers get beat over the head repeatedly with these characters inner monologues, to the point of almost neglecting the actual action of the book, which is the downfall of civilization. I respect the desire to dwell on a few characters' inner experiences of world-changing events, but not when it happens at the expense of actually describing the world-changing events. show less

I enjoyed the strange world here, with AI and nanobot surgeons, life debts and life balances, and the systemic inequality that is so familiar. This is slow to build tension amongst the classes, and I'd have liked more conflict leading up to the end. Still a thought provoking world.

2025 Book #25. 2025. The AI that runs what may be the last human city in the world is starting to breakdown. It covertly helps the city's greatest surgeon to create an AI android in an attempt to survive the coming chaos. Well written with a believable setting.

I only got 7% through on this book, about an hour into it, and I did get the overall concept, but it is not an easy read. There were lots of words that just didn't make sense to me. I decided to give up on this one. I was actually listening to the audiobook and had the physical book from the library as well and even with both, the words just didn't flow for me. I think the author also had multiple names for people? There was a "Li" randomly, which I think was a nickname. I'm just trying to get all the names of people, so don't throw in nicknames. Seems like a great concept, the execution just wasn't doing it for me.

You have an AI-controlled city and houses. With an elite class system and non-elites the term used is Saints. The story is framed around a murder. The idea is not a new one and unfortunately, I feel this book fell a little flat lacking much to hold your attention to the story.