Kir is a young woman with an AI embedded in her head, and this was done by her mother, Margrethe Patel, who adopted her precisely for this purpose. Kir was born in one of the heavily irrradiated and ever-growing Dead Zones that cover the Earth while most people cram into overcrowded dictatorial Hives. Mum trained her as a scientist, while touring the world so that people could pay for the use of her onboard computer, and now they have gone deep underground on the Needle Voyager mission, in a massive cavern deep under the Giewont mountain in Poland. There are habitats on Mars and the Moon, but the future is not looking great for humanity, and so the hope is that Margrethe and her team can find a way out. Unfortunately part of the deal is that the scientists are joined in the base by the irritating future equivalent of YouTubers, and as events unfold Kir’s trust in her mother is put under increasing stress. Short novels are one of my favourite things, and at 140pp this hits the sweet spot. Yet even I was wondering, with sixteen minutes of reading to go, how it could possibly wrap up all the (personal, political and criminal) plotlines without at least a few hundred pages more. Somehow it does. There’s room for sequels, and people may be surprised by the suddenness of the ending, but no one could complain that they didn’t get enough story. And it’s an inventive story with strong characterisation. It’s impossible not to sympathise with the difficult situation in which Kir finds herself, to worry for her as she sneaks out of the base to chill out in the black abyss, or to keep one’s fingers crossed as she takes her first tentative steps towards a romantic relationship.
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