Kim Miller
A giant monster is discovered sleeping at the bottom of the ocean, surrounded by a sunken city. It can only be the result of an alien race. Radiation kills the first explorers and only a submarine camera can get close enough to examine it. Once the videos are screened around the world society goes crazy in what becomes known as 'the collapse'. It takes two years for the volatile social and political disruptions to start settling out. By that time a single international government is forming and a research station that floats above the monster is envisioned and designed.
Into that world several people's lives start to interact. The book is largely taken up with the origin stories of these characters. There is a scientist working on artificial intelligence. There is his strangely talented assistant, a young woman who grew up in a Mexican orphanage and supported by an equally strange nun. There is a teenager who is deposited by a violent chauffeur in the care of an old Nazi in South America as his parents die in the collapse, but works his way into the orbit of these others. And along with the Nazi there is a really weird man with some kind of prescience when dealing with others, but who never speaks.
The book splits into parts that deal with the backstory of each character as well as a continuing narrative of the computer scientist and his development of forms of what he calls artificial life. In reality they are characters simulated by an AI who spontaneously start to evolve, giving themselves faces and personalities. The hope is that they will evolve to the point of offering insight in how to deal with the monster.
And underneath all this is the powerful media magnate with the money and power to pay for it all but also to claim control over it when it suits him. This man's assistant turns out to be the estranged daughter of the computer scientist. Yep, connections all over the place.
This story/backstory shaping of the book continues right up to the final action. There will be a conference on establishing the floating research station and for different reasons most of these people are present. But watching over it all are the weird non-vocal man and the violent chauffeur. They meet in a lecture hall at the university and watch the conference proceedings on the video screens along the wall. But they don't just watch as suddenly we are thrust into a scene of cosmic horror. These two are aliens, or more likely alien gods, one trying to keep the monster asleep to protect the Earth, the other to throw everything into chaos for his own delight. They don't just watch, the chaos god acts through the screens to attack the people who the other one has carefully placed into each other's orbit to keep the Earth protected.
This is book #1 of a series. It ends with a bang and with the unspoken sub-note, 'That's the end of the setup. More to follow.'
The writing is fast paced in many places and a bit draggy in others where the backstories seem to have little bearing on the plot. The changes of POV and writing form (omnipotent narrator here and personal diary notes there) take some adjustment. And the number of characters who are introduced into the backstory elements sometimes don't appear in the main plot until much later and it's almost as if this new character is unrelated to the earlier origin story. It's a book that almost needs a notepad beside it to keep track of the people for when they reappear late in the story.
It the first novel from this father, mother, son team and is an ambitious undertaking that holds itself well in the genre.
A giant monster is discovered sleeping at the bottom of the ocean, surrounded by a sunken city. It can only be the result of an alien race. Radiation kills the first explorers and only a submarine camera can get close enough to examine it. Once the videos are screened around the world society goes crazy in what becomes known as 'the collapse'. It takes two years for the volatile social and political disruptions to start settling out. By that time a single international government is forming and a research station that floats above the monster is envisioned and designed.
Into that world several people's lives start to interact. The book is largely taken up with the origin stories of these characters. There is a scientist working on artificial intelligence. There is his strangely talented assistant, a young woman who grew up in a Mexican orphanage and supported by an equally strange nun. There is a teenager who is deposited by a violent chauffeur in the care of an old Nazi in South America as his parents die in the collapse, but works his way into the orbit of these others. And along with the Nazi there is a really weird man with some kind of prescience when dealing with others, but who never speaks.
The book splits into parts that deal with the backstory of each character as well as a continuing narrative of the computer scientist and his development of forms of what he calls artificial life. In reality they are characters simulated by an AI who spontaneously start to evolve, giving themselves faces and personalities. The hope is that they will evolve to the point of offering insight in how to deal with the monster.
And underneath all this is the powerful media magnate with the money and power to pay for it all but also to claim control over it when it suits him. This man's assistant turns out to be the estranged daughter of the computer scientist. Yep, connections all over the place.
This story/backstory shaping of the book continues right up to the final action. There will be a conference on establishing the floating research station and for different reasons most of these people are present. But watching over it all are the weird non-vocal man and the violent chauffeur. They meet in a lecture hall at the university and watch the conference proceedings on the video screens along the wall. But they don't just watch as suddenly we are thrust into a scene of cosmic horror. These two are aliens, or more likely alien gods, one trying to keep the monster asleep to protect the Earth, the other to throw everything into chaos for his own delight. They don't just watch, the chaos god acts through the screens to attack the people who the other one has carefully placed into each other's orbit to keep the Earth protected.
This is book #1 of a series. It ends with a bang and with the unspoken sub-note, 'That's the end of the setup. More to follow.'
The writing is fast paced in many places and a bit draggy in others where the backstories seem to have little bearing on the plot. The changes of POV and writing form (omnipotent narrator here and personal diary notes there) take some adjustment. And the number of characters who are introduced into the backstory elements sometimes don't appear in the main plot until much later and it's almost as if this new character is unrelated to the earlier origin story. It's a book that almost needs a notepad beside it to keep track of the people for when they reappear late in the story.
It the first novel from this father, mother, son team and is an ambitious undertaking that holds itself well in the genre.