Review: Our Only Chance: An A.I. Chronicle by Ray Else

Title: Our Only Chance: An A.I. Chronicle
Author: Ray Else
Series: Standalone
Genre: Science Fiction
Publisher: AuthorBuzz (self-published)
Publication Date: March 26th, 2017
Edition: Kindle Edition, 237 pages

Source: NetGalley

Purchase: Amazon US | Barnes and Noble | Book Depository | BAM

Synopsis:

A different kind of Frankenstein. 

Einna is a lot like other teenage girls, naive, idealistic, secretive, disobedient and interested in boys. Only Einna is not human, she is an A.I. android. Her creator, her mother, is Manaka Yagami, the first female tech billionaire. Einna has a plan to make herself human, if she can keep Mother in the dark and avoid the clutches of the notorious Yakuza.

Review:

This is a very strange book. It has a very slow pace, which made it feel like a much longer book than it is. 

Sadly, I didn't like this book as much as I wanted to. The characters are all very... robotic. Which is kind of ironic if you think about it.

The writing was decent, but it also felt a little choppy at times. There wasn't a very clear focus on who exactly the main character is supposed to be. And the beginning of the book, after reading about half, sounded like it was a massive time jump into the future, but the book never really addresses that, or they did and I missed it. 

The "meat" of the plot, for me, was kind of confusing and a little unclear for a good while, and when it was revealed it seemed a little underwhelming. I also wasn't really fan of all the name dropping for anime that is popular now. I think this book is supposed to be real-world, just in the not so distant future. It was strange and kind of took me out of the story. It was like in this world no new anime was made since 2010 or something.

The "science" behind all this was glossed over, to the point where you could barely argue that it was explained at all.

This book was fine, it wasn't terrible, but it wasn't great either. Just okay, I wouldn't not recommend it, but if someone said they were reading it I wouldn't be really all that excited for them either.