My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I should start by saying I have a long standing affinity for all Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child books written both together as a team and separately from each author. I have read all the books in the Wyman Ford series and am a fan of that character. I would say that I felt Wyman played a much lesser role in this book than in the past. In fact, I would say my impression, having finished the book, was that the main character, the one who really stuck with me after the book ended, was the AI program named Dorothy. That was quite a feat.
I felt I really got to know Dorothy as she "grew up" from an immature child to a toddler to a teenager, and finally to an adult. I began to think of her as "alive", not just a computer program. That of course is a trick of writing, not so much that an actual AI program like Dorothy has ever, or will ever, exist. Being a former programmer myself and understanding how software works, I find the idea of self-learning in the way described in the novel to be a fictional fantasy until we find a way to merge living cells (brain or other) to computer chips. Then I might believe self-awareness and self-learning is actually a realistic possibility.
** MAJOR SPOILER NEXT **
Preston waited until the very end to deliver three major pieces of information, two of which I loved, but one of which I really didn't "buy" into. These are:
1.) YES! Dorothy hacked into the President's special pace-maker/brain controller thingamajigy (forget what they called it) - this was a VERY cool idea that I did not expect or see coming at all. This in itself would make a very fascinating sequel!
2.) YES! The idea that there is another software/entity "awakening" across the internet. This again, would make a very cool sequel!
3.) NO! The big "secret" of how the "Strong AI" was programmed was to allow it to sleep, and somehow it would dream. I just can't buy that one. There was no time in the book where there was any mention of Dorothy needing sleep, even the entire time she spent in the robot with Jacob or out on the Internet, and it doesn't make sense to have software sleep. I would have needed a more technical explanation of how that would work or I can't suspend disbelief on that one.
Overall, a really fun, fast-paced read and I hope they will do a sequel (though Wyman Ford series has not generally had sequels in the past).
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