All that Glitters is not Gold: Reviews by jonbrain

Against the Tide: A New Elysium Story, by A.C. Evans

In a world where human augmentation is the ultimate crime, one woman (or is it two?) will defy the world that created them and wants nothing better than to destroy them.

Okay, that was a bit deceptive. There's only one woman; the other entity is technically genderless, but is always portrayed as male, so it wouldn't be completely right to ask if it's two women.

Let me explain.

Amy Larsson is an odd hybrid. She's an augment, for one thing, which in the world of New Elysium is essentially a cyborg. She has several mechanical implants that regulate several body functions, as well as some more...specialized enhancements. Augments like her used to be fairly common in her universe; not since the purge, though, a dangerous time in which the Neo-Tokyo (government? Megacorporation? Never got that completely clear) sponsored the destruction of all augmented individuals across the galaxy. They were just too dangerous, Neo-Tokyo decided, those ordinary humans using cybernetic implants to make their hearts and livers work. And of course, the ones with weapon implants, machinery that grants them superhuman strength, direct neural interface with computers, stuff like that that makes some of them a legitimate threat.

Amy Larsson is one of the survivors of the Purge. Even though she's been extensively augmented, she also lives under the protection of Riga, a man with absurd power and influence. But she didn't survive intact. Her injuries during the purge required extensive augmentation. And Riga is...a scumbag, an obsessive "boyfriend" who abuses her in captivity for five years straight.

Until something awakens inside her. Specifically, a military grade AI named Lars who was unintentionally placed into her brain while saving her life. When she was on the brink of suicide, he rescued her from despair. And then, together, they escape. With her newfound freedom, the newly christened Amy Larsson embarks on a noble quest; bring the fight to Neo-Tokyo, and restore Lars to his home.

First, a caveat: Against the Tide is a New Elysium story. It's set in the extended universe of New Elysium, which is a story published on Wattpad written by Red_Leasia, which I have not read. There isn't necessarily a problem with that, but I bring it up because Against the Tide uses its heritage to avoid a certain amount of exposition dump, so a lot of the world never gets explained because it's already explained in another story. I don't have a problem with this; I rather like that the author didn't explain the politics and technology of the world in absurd detail, and I enjoyed figuring out the world that it was written in. But if you want to read the original first, go check it out: New Elysium, by Red_Leasia.

Okay. Here we go.

Against the Tide is a charismatically written, heartfelt novel about a human who hates herself and an artificial intelligence who slowly grows to understand love and hatred through his unique bond with her. It's a dialogue between a computer voice who wishes he could be human and a human who's not sure she wants to even exist. And as such, I really appreciated it. Against the Tide is one of the nicest things I've read on Wattpad; Lars and Null, the name that the human host takes on for herself, form a really touching relationship as the story goes on, wherein they become a constant check and support for one another. When one of them decides to do something insane, the other is always there to help recover and move on, sometimes quite literally taking over their mutual body to power through the pain, emotional and physical.

And boy, do they experience pain.

Did I mention that Amy Larsson is a badass space pirate? Oh yes. She is. And a terrorist. A dangerous one. And this book is action packed. Whether they're infiltrating a Neo-Tokyo space station to steal information (and blow up the place) or fleeing from an information deal gone wrong, Amy Larsson walks away with an absurd amount of blood on her hands. It's all rather well executed action too, if I may use the phrase. It does occasionally ask the reader to be patient while it starts In Media Res, but I have always been willing to oblige when patience is asked for the sake of literary devices.

I think I most enjoyed the many subconscious dream sequences in this story. I realized somewhere around Espresso Love that I'm something of a surrealist; Against the Tide satisfies some of that. Most often, when Amy Larsson isn't murdering people, she's in a dream sequence with Lars. Or without him, as the case may be. The characters were also really good; Lars in particular was very endearing. He was a nice spin on the "sentient AI" character, and he kind of came across as a riff on JARVIS (or at least Vision), but not in a way that was overly distracting. JARVIS never let himself be uncomfortable the way Lars does, especially when Amy experiences physical desire, something he's not at all comfortable with processing, especially since he seems to be a male entity (if that means anything for an AI with no body). (I should note that Against the Tide does have some steamy material, but it never seems to go all the way into porn-land, and the author graciously warns you when it happens, which is a tasteful way to deal with any difficult material, and one that I think I'll imitate in my own works).

I have two real complaints about Against the Tide. First, I think that it borrows too much from its parent work, New Elysium. A number of characters were used without any real explanation for their presence or who they were; it's like they were all cameos from the larger story, stepping in on their lunch break like so many Marvel heroes in movies that don't belong to them. It's not super distracting for me, since none of them stay for long, but it is confusing when someone comes on and I'm not sure if they're supposed to be important to this story or to another story. Fundamentally, this is one of my problems with most fanfics; when something is written in a universe that the author and the audience are already familiar with, any explanation is often perfunctory or mansplain-y, or simply omitted. I don't think that this weakens Amy Larsson, or the world that Null and Lars share, and that's the fundamental relationship and driving force behind this story. But I think it does weaken the story as a whole.

Second, I didn't get the idea that there was a clear plot. As I said before, this story is about Lars and Null together, so it's really more a collection of their many adventures together. I'm fine with that. In fact, I'm fine with stories that have no overall plot; take The Voyage of the Dawn Treader for example, a story about the many adventures of Lucy, Edmund, Eustace, King Caspian and Reepeecheep (spelling?) on the high seas of Narnia. It has no real plot at all. I mean, overall Caspian is looking for seven lords of Narnia who were banished by his usurping uncle Miraz, but in any given chapter, the story doesn't actually care about any of that, it cares about which fantastical island they visit, whether it's one in which invisible armies hold them captive to make them visible, or one in which Eustace gets turned into a dragon on accident, or one in which they have to overthrow a slaving governor. The seven lords and clues about them are scattered throughout, but that's not why we read the book. Against the Tide is like that; ultimately, Amy Larsson plans to steal a massive warship, the one Lars came from, right from under Neo-Tokyo's noses. And every adventure seems to be a piece in getting that warship. At least, I think it is. For me, those details kind of got lost in the blitz of action. Usually I'm good at keeping track of Macguffins, but it's more difficult when they seem to be information and the action doesn't really revolve around the information itself. In short, I often couldn't tell at all what the big picture was with a lot of the action. I frequently lost track of why she was infiltrating...whichever space station she was at, or how this fit in to anything. Not to say the action wasn't still fun, but I did forget. I honestly would have felt happier if the action was even less related. She's a space pirate, for heaven's sake. Show us her pirate-y things, not her quest-y things.

Overall, though, both of these are minor complaints. As I said before, the real draw of this story is Lars and Null; that's what I liked to see in this story, and I'm glad to have seen it despite not knowing entirely what they were up to or what kind of world they lived in. And I'll tell you what; I'm definitely going to read New Elysium. I think that makes this the first Wattpad story that actually piques my curiosity about an extended universe. And criticism aside, I really enjoyed Against the Tide. I have to be a bit critical, though, that's kind of why I'm writing this.

Final score for Against the Tide: a New Elysium Story is 4 out of 5 sentient AI's. I laughed, I cried, I enjoyed thoroughly. I came out on the other side refreshed and hopeful for a new thing to read. And for me, that's enough. I would recommend this even as a standalone work as one of Wattpad's better members.

Thanks for reading another review! I do hope you enjoyed it; I do my best to keep these things engaging. Let me know what you think in the comments below. Did you agree? Disagree? You have a book you want reviewed? Let me know! Thanks a bunch, the real jonbrain!