And Shall Machines Surrender cover art

And Shall Machines Surrender

Machine Mandate, Book 1

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And Shall Machines Surrender

By: Benjanun Sriduangkaew
Narrated by: Mavi Graves
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About this listen

On the dyson sphere Shenzhen, artificial intelligences rule and humans live in luxury, vying to be chosen as host bodies - called haruspices - for the next generation of AI, and thus be worshiped as gods. Doctor Orfea Leung has come here to escape her past of mercenary violence. Krissana Khongtip has come here to reinvent herself from haunted spy to holy cyborg. But the utopian peace of Shenzhen is shattered when the haruspices begin committing suicide, and the pair are called upon to solve the mystery - and survive the silent war between machines....

©2019 Benjanun Sriduangkaew (P)2021 Benjanun Sriduangkaew Cyberpunk Military Science Fiction Space Opera Fiction China

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I just finished up a long audiobook so decided to take a punt on something small, and really struck gold with this little cyberpunk space opera about a recovering lightly-augmented bookish ex-mercenary cybernetics expert, Dr Orfea Leung, and ex-special agent turned advanced AI potential host, the easy-going Krossana Khongtip. In the book they are employed by one of the AI overlords of the Machine Mandate, which governs the society in place on the Dyson Sphere, to investigate why humans who incubate and bond with advanced AIs - called Haruspices - have suddenly started killing themselves, and the journey leads them down a path of introspection in their own pasts, why they made the decisions they have, what divisions can break things apart and why, and how the characters can come together again, both as individuals, and as parts of a larger society. The book is extremely sexy (and juicy) and has a lot of reality-warping virtual and physical action, with many of the descriptions done in colourful, evocative language, whilst the dialogue remains grounded and easy to follow. You could describe some of the prose as purple, but it's very selectively applied, and in my experience, purple prose is only purple when the writer doesn't know they're doing it, or cannot control it. I think Sriduangkaew made some good decisions and I'd really like to read the rest in the series.

Mavi Graves' delivery could be described as a little flat, but this is her only book on Audible, so perhaps she is newer to the medium, and the book is from Dr Orfea's perspective for the majority, who speaks and thinks from a detached point of view herself, and you can hear that Graves' baseline delivery was a choice when you hear other characters speaking, such as Krossana (who's made to sound like Jessica Rabbit!) and Shonguo (sorry I didn't see the text so don't know how to write the names) who actually sounds like System Shock's SHODAN.

Really nice for 4 hours long, and for fans of Kenji Kamayama/Ghost in the Shell, Banks, Aliette de Bodard, and I guess Ken Levine lol and Neuromancer maybe? I read much more space opera than cyberpunk, and this book is much more cyberpunk than space opera. Recommended! Hope the other books are recorded soon.

Delightful little cyberpunk

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