Review The Freeze-Frame Revolution – Peter Watts

 

She believed in the mission with all her heart.
But that was sixty million years ago.

How do you stage a mutiny when you’re only awake one day in a million? How do you conspire when your tiny handful of potential allies changes with each shift? How do you engage an enemy that never sleeps, that sees through your eyes and hears through your ears and relentlessly, honestly, only wants what best for you?

Sunday Ahzmundin is about to find out. 

Note: I received a copy of this novel via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinions on this book.

I should start of by stating I don’t read a lot of hard-sf based around AI… because I just don’t get it. I am an absolute nightmare with anything related to computers, technology, physics… and these type of stories just go way over my head.

When I read the synopsis of this book though it immediatly struck me as a fascinating plot. And it was! It was a fascinating story filled with great ideas. How to successfully run a resistance against an AI while being asleep for thousands of years at the time? Well, via sheet music and D&D manuals of course! I loved this. And there are so many more great ideas inside this novella. Take for example Kaden, who is referred to as ‘se’ and ‘hir’.

But a problem I often have with novellas also occurred here… I wasn’t satisfied. I wanted to know more about who/what Kaden was for example. I wanted to know more about the mission. I wanted to know more… Now I have since reading this found out this is not really a standalone story, so I may find my answers in other works of the author.

This is told from a first-person perspective, and although she is intelligent and snarky, she didn’t really stand out for me. But even though I wasn’t able to really connect with the MC, the plot did enough to pull me in. There is just the right level of humour in the story to keep the reader entertained but still remain a serious hard-sf story. But what I was afraid of happened… I didn’t understand a thing of the amazing plan of the resistance (nor of any of the physics the mission was based on). But even though this all went way over my head, I was never bored or unable to follow the storyline.

Overall, this is a fascinating, short novel which I highly recommend for people who are into hard scifi, or people who like a bit of a challenge.