Title: Titan's Tears
Author: Chad Lester
Publisher: Self-published
Published Date: June 30, 2024
Genre: Sci-fi, Dystopian
Rating: ★★★☆☆
REVIEW
Disclaimer: I received a copy of this from NetGalley in return for an honest review.
I liked the idea of this book more than I enjoyed the reading experience. It seemed to suffer from the same thing I find a lot of near-future sci-fi's do. Too many ideas with none of them executed to their full potential. This book had a super AI, currently extinct animals, a genius and reclusive scientist, a mysterious child, and more. Nothing was really explained science-wise and it did require a massive suspension of disbelief when it came to certain aspects of how things happened. It relied often on "The super AI did it", rather than coming up with actual explanations.
The characters also weren't the most compelling to read about. The main character, Belle, was a nanny with a past that wasn't given, so she didn't feel very well fleshed out. Yes, that was purposeful, but it meant that she became a background character in her own story. She felt like everything was happening to her, rather than her doing anything to further her own plot. The more compelling character was Seth. He at least had a backstory so I grew to somewhat care about him. But even then it felt like he had very little agency. He just did what he was told and never really seemed to control his own life. Reading about these character felt like reading about dolls, if that makes any sense.
The world itself was also confusing. The island this is set on was built somewhat like a theme park with no tourists. There was a whole escape scene where characters are running through the forest and the encounter every possible dangerous extinct animal. That scene felt like what this whole book felt like, very choppy, predictable, incomplete, and overwritten.
Now, I did dislike this book, as it may come across so far. There was some really cool ideas, I just wished they would have been explored more. There was an Amazon-like company that was overly controlling, ranked their workers, and performed massive layoffs so AI's could do things faster and cheaper. That scene was maybe five pages until we went back to a slow paced style. There were definitely sprinkles of really compelling stuff in this book. I think if Lester would have narrowed his focus, I would have enjoyed this much more. The length and sheer amount of ideas inside this book were overwhelming when paired with the pacing and characters that weren't enjoyable to read about.
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