I have a dilemma. I gave the first book in this series five stars but I like this one better. Nice dilemma to have, and I’m certainly not retroactively withdrawing stars from The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet. I’m glad I didn’t read these back to back though. They are same universe stories and this one carries on from the first book but goes off in a different direction with different characters. Because the ending of the first book is directly linked to the beginning of this book I don’t want to give anything away about the story here.

This one has a lot of meandering about what artificial intelligence is all about and the nature of life itself, but mostly it comes down to being about identity and how we forge them for ourselves whatever our origins are. Highly recommended by itself, but if you’ll enjoy this then you’ll like the first one as well, so start there.