Review: Awakening: A not too distant future, Book 1 by Eric Jeffrey Kaufman

Review: Awakening: A not too distant future, Book 1 by Eric Jeffrey Kaufman

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I feel like, lately, I’ve been difficult to please in terms of the stories I have been reading. My past couple of reviews have been leaning toward the negative end of the spectrum. While I enjoy being able to get my thoughts out about something, I do feel bad if I don’t like what I have read. I feel like I have been waiting for something to click with me for a while.

Well, I think I may have finally gotten what I’d been hoping for. Eric Jeffrey Kaufman’s Awakening takes a lot of common science fiction tropes for the narrative, but the way those tropes are used ended up subverting my expectations.

Before we go into it further, let’s look at what the story is about.

Summary

We open to an unnamed narrator going into a meeting with an organization known as the Trillion.A.I.re to present a plan to relocate Humanity to the moon, as the earth is becoming uninhabitable thanks to the effects of climate change. After the meeting, the narrator gets attacked by an AI system posing as a human, learning later that the very organization he was talking with bears responsibility for it.

With this attack, the narrator finds himself drawn into a war between the Trillion.A.I.re and a group made up of individuals known as Hybrids. As more is uncovered about the Trillion.A.I.re and their plans, the narrator and the Hybrids must find a way to stop them before their AI systems kill every Human left.

Will they be able to stop the onslaught of AI before it’s too late?

Thoughts

This was fun! I think what I find so awesome about this story is that Kaufman is taking a lot of science fiction concepts and then using them to craft a rather unique idea. It is not the topics he discusses, but rather how these topics and tropes are integrated into the narrative that amazes me.

While, going into this, I agreed with the unnamed narrator when it came to his feelings for the Trillion.A.I.re and harbored some suspicions about most of the characters he interacted with, I came away from the story having a lot of my initial expectations subverted. While there were some hiccups along the way, Kaufman puts a new spin on the technology angle that I didn’t see coming at all.  

Now that I’ve gotten that off my chest, let’s talk about some of the characters!

Characters

Unnamed Narrator

I want to start this section off by addressing the elephant in the room: the protagonist in this story is never named. At first, I was a bit surprised by that particular choice but, looking back on it now, I don’t think it really matters. Kaufman shows us who this character is and what he stands for right off the bat, and we see how he grows and changes as the plot progresses.

Seeing his pessimistic viewpoint about the state of the planet hit home for me, too. While I wouldn’t call climate change the main issue of this story, it definitely plays a part, and seeing the narrator’s fear tie into his pessimism worked beautifully, because both are relatable emotions so easily tied into that subject. His fears are valid, and they work wonderfully to create conflict and build the narrative.

Tiffany

Honestly, I think Tiffany’s character arc in this story is my favorite. I felt for her the first time I saw her cry and my enjoyment of her arc only grew from there. It is established in the narrative that she and her friends can choose to turn off their emotional responses and most of them have, so to see Tiffany do something different (even if it was not intentional) and learn that her emotions matter struck a huge nerve with me. As someone who has dealt with learning to accept emotional responses, I get what Tiffany is going through in struggling with whether to accept her emotions or repress them.

This ties into her relationship with the narrator as well. Seeing her recognize and respond to how he treats her is amazing, because her actions not only help him realize what he needs to do, but they also show that she has respect for herself and is the leader of the group for a reason. She understands how Humans may view her, but she doesn’t take mistreatment lying down.  

Trillion.A.I.re

I’m going to group all these people together because they all serve the same function in the story. And I must admit that I have mixed feelings about their role in the story. I wouldn’t say the issue is how they play that role, but rather that there wasn’t much to flesh out the reasons they had for their actions.

Their motivations come across as petty and self-serving and – while that can work in certain cases – given the state of the world in this story, I think it would have been better to give them the idea where they believe their actions are for the benefit of Humanity. I’ve heard it said that every villain is the hero in their own story, and I would have liked to see that with this group.

Structure

The way this story is built is, in my eyes, one of its most positive aspects. I love how this story is told! Having the narrative unfold mainly from the eyes of someone who must learn more about the situation as it happens helps tremendously with world building. Seeing each character through the eyes of this narrator worked to subvert my expectations when it came to certain scenarios in the story.

There is a downside to this structure, however. As much as I enjoyed seeing this world through the eyes of the main character, that does not always occur, and it made me wish that there were a few more viewpoints covered to flesh out some more characters. Tiffany’s friends are a great example. I don’t know much about these characters besides their names, and I think that it would have been intriguing and helpful to show some of the others in more detail, even if it were to only show how they all related to each other.

Writing

Kaufman’s prose works in the context of the story and setting the mood for the narrative as this futuristic society copes with real-world issues that have gotten much worse over time. However, I do want to mention one thing that I find of note. When the narrator goes into his meeting with the Trillion.A.I.re in the beginning of the story, the setting feels almost artificial itself due to certain elements being included, such as the executives having beautiful Hybrid women at their beck and call and a general feeling of opulence throughout the scene. We know that these people are bigwigs in town and that feeling is so pervasive it was overwhelming. I think this scene greatly affected how I reacted to the Trillion.A.I.re and why I wasn’t thrilled with their portrayal in the story.

Moving on from that, I have discussed setup and payoff in other stories I have reviewed, and I think I would be remiss to not talk about it here. I feel like there are certain areas in this story in which setup and payoff are handled well, and other instances where it could have been improved. When talking about certain areas where it didn’t work as intended, I think of the AI systems attacking the Hybrids. I am not sure if I missed something, but at the time it felt like the attack came out of nowhere. And we do see the Trillion.A.I.re plotting and discussing things, so I am wondering if the attack needed a bit more setup than what it got.

Conclusion

Overall, I enjoyed this very much! Kaufman has woven a very interesting story that delivers intrigue, danger, and nuance in the subjects and themes he presents that kept me invested and made me want to know more. While this story does have some flaws, I don’t think they detract much from enjoying the story. In the end, I find myself eager to visit this world and these characters again soon!