The world runs on ARCs. Altered Reality Chips. Small implants behind the left ear that allow people to experience anything they could ever imagine. The network controls everything, from traffic, to food production, to law enforcement. Some proclaim it a Golden Age of humanity. Others have begun to see the cracks. Few realize that behind it all, living within every brain and able to control all aspects of society, there exists a being with an agenda all his own: the singularity called Adam, who believes he is God.
Jimmy Mahoney’s brain can’t accept an ARC. Not since his football injury from the days when the league was still offline. “ARC-incompatible” is what the doctors told him. Worse than being blind and deaf, he is a man struggling to cling to what’s left of a society that he is no longer a part of. His wife spends twenty-three hours a day online, only coming off when her chip forcibly disconnects her so she can eat. Others are worse. Many have died, unwilling or unable to log off to take care of even their most basic needs.
After being unwittingly recruited by a rogue singularity to play a role in a war that he doesn’t understand, Jimmy learns the truth about Adam and is thrown into a life-and-death struggle against the most powerful mathematical mind the world has ever known. But what can one man do against a being that exists everywhere and holds limitless power? How can one man, unable to even get online, find a way to save his wife, and the entire human race, from destruction?
Killing Adam is a surprisingly visceral read. You feel for Jimmy as he's being left behind. Then the plot thickens and Jimmy is thrown into a whirlwind of conspiracy and danger. As he faces each situation, you feel your own anxiety rise. All of the characters are so very well done here and you experience with them as a reader. Even with Adam, you endure his perspective. While the story does start rather slowly, it gives you an opportunity to fully settle in before the action. Once it commences, it doesn't falter until it comes screeching to a halt.
As a reader who cut her teeth on Aesop's Fables, I find that books with philosophical dilemmas linger longer than those without. There is certainly an abundance of lessons to be discovered here. Killing Adam might very well be read as a cautionary tale of things to come.
4.5 stars
4.5 stars!
KILLING ADAM by Earik Beann is gripping, intricately plotted and philosophically potent science fiction novel in which the most powerfully developed intellect might still be subject to destructive delusions that may very well wind up destroying all humans hold dear.
If you enjoy speculative fiction, plenty of action, and are open to a story that will make you look around and think, you’ll love this novel.
4 stars
