Book Review: Silico-American

Mal Goes to War by Edward Ashton

Published: April 2024

Summary from Goodreads:

The humans are fighting again. Go figure.

As a free A.I., Mal finds the war between the modded and augmented Federals and the puritanical Humanists about as interesting as a battle between rival anthills. He’s not above scouting the battlefield for salvage, though, and when the Humanists abruptly cut off access to infospace he finds himself trapped in the body of a cyborg mercenary, and responsible for the safety of the modded girl she died protecting.

A dark comedy wrapped in a techno thriller’s skin, Mal Goes to War provides a satirical take on war, artificial intelligence, and what it really means to be human.

Confession:

Edward Ashton has yet to disappoint me when it comes to his books. I really enjoyed this one and found the story to be fascinating, exciting, and very funny at times. I loved the characters and the themes about the war were very intriguing.

Mal, short for Malware, was such an interesting character to spend time with. The story is told only from his point of view which made the story a little bit one sided, but there was a lot going on from Mal’s perspective. Mal is a very complex character with some interesting ideas about how the world works. He doesn’t really like humans, referring to us as monkeys, but he does become a bit attached to the group that he gets trapped with. Mal inhabits various augmented humans and technology throughout the story, and each leap gives him a different perspective of what is going on.

Mal picks up quite the rag tag bunch of characters along his journey, as he tries to make it back to infospace. I liked all of them, although we don’t get to know them particularly well. I especially liked Asher, who was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, but ends up being a really good guy. Pullman was also a great character, he is the one that Mal mostly inhabits throughout the book. Their relationship was an interesting one. Kayleigh, the girl Mal finds himself protecting, was my least favorite, but I can’t really say why. She just didn’t quite work for me.

Although this is very much a character driven story, with Mal and his group of humans, going from one disaster to another, I thought there was something a bit deeper going on. I found the war between the Humanists and the Federals to be the more interesting part of the story. Mal and his group mostly run into Humanists who are hell bent on destroying any altered humans, no matter how small the alteration is. This is mostly due to their belief that the Government has developed a virus that will infect humans with technology. But the Humanists are also using altered humans to help them win the war. There is a lot of morally gray people on both sides of this war. But there is also something more sinister going on that isn’t revealed until the end of the story.

If you are a fan of the author and haven’t picked this one up yet, then you certainly need to add it to your list. If you like AI stories than this is one you need to consider. There is a lot of depth to this story, as well as great characters and lots of action.