Humanity has been ruled by a machine for five hundred years.
Today it ordered their annihilation.
At the close of a devastating war, humanity’s interplanetary senate acquiesced themselves to be governed by a thinking machine, their first and greatest product of artificial intelligence. Unbound from the sensations of human fragility and uncorrupted by the human lust for power, their new thinking machine, the OSIRIS, ruled the galaxy through centuries of peace and untold prosperity.
Five hundred years later, the OSIRIS has done the unthinkable: order the annihilation of one of the most populous planets in the empire. With the fleet on approach and ready to do the bidding of their callous master, the task falls to the OSIRIS’s technicians to find the source of the command, warn the wayward planet of their impending doom, and stop the most dangerous force in the galaxy before they unquestioningly quench the lives of millions.
But is every step towards the truth just another move in the OSIRIS’s greater scheme?
Assessment:
Plot: White's space opera hurtles through galaxies and time at a breakneck pace, packed with action-heavy scenes and a general sense of foreboding as the fate of the universe is at stake.
Prose: White's prose flows smoothly and clearly, and is eloquent at times. The writing races along taking readers with it.
Originality: White's science fiction adventures and characters are reminiscent of genre classics, but the work's relevance to the current socio-political climate lends extra weight to this novel.
Character Development: The characters in The Deftly Paradox are well-introduced, but not fully fleshed-out. A little more attention to character development would result in characters in whom readers could become fully invested.
Date Submitted: August 16, 2017
