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4.07 AVERAGE
4.07 AVERAGE
I really enjoyed this book. I thought the concept was very original and interesting. It reminded me of the game SIMS if anyone has played that (you have characters, and you build their lives, essentially. You give them jobs, you can enter relationships and have kids. You are supposed to maintain a social life, have goals, etc.) So it made me think of that - SIMS being the equivalent of their Meta world.
So basically, we follow several couples/individuals, aka 'contestants,' who are going to be given a 'digital' child of sorts. They're from the UK, which is currently facing an overage of humans. Raising a family is now impossible for many people within the country. So for those that still want a family, an alternate option is introduced. But it becomes more of a game show.
Time is sped up, so that the child ages several years within one month's time. The couple/individual has to treat this child as though it were human - dressing it, feeding it, taking it to school, etc., and deal with all of the milestones that come with children. At the same time, they have to maintain their actual real world lives. They enter these Meta lives through a virtual headset and haptic suits. These suits allow the contestants to 'feel' everything with their virtual child - i.e. when they hug it, carry it, hold it, etc. The children have been designed by AI to be as real like as possible.
Also, each person/couple gets 10 minutes per day where they can mute themselves from all viewers. But outside of those 10 minutes, viewers can see and hear everything.
While these people are raising these Meta children, everything is being livestreamed to the entire world. The world can react to everything they see - giving red hearts when they approve of the contestants' choices, and black hearts when they disapprove. Every month, the viewers will vote so that one person/family will be eliminated. When they are, the humans can no longer enter the Meta world, and the Meta child will be deleted forever.
Every month, each family is given a challenge (essentially to keep things interesting it seems for the viewers). The contestants have to establish their homes in this Meta universe, buy groceries, help their kids with homework, they can take family vacations - it's all modeled to replicate the real world.
At the end of 9 months, the Meta children will be 18 year olds, and this experience will be considered over. At the end, whichever couple/individual is voted as the favorite by the world will win a large sum of money that they can start their real world family with and the Meta child will be 'deleted forever,' or they can chose to keep their Meta child and won't be granted the money.
This seems like an easy choice at first, but we see that the families soon do feel bonded to these Meta children. So will the winner be able to delete their Meta child forever if they win?
Throughout the book, we get to see the chat groups from viewers and their thoughts on the live stream. I liked this part quite a bit.
I liked that the couples/individuals were dealing with actual real world problems that many of the readers can relate to. We see how they handle parenting, balance work, find time for themselves, etc.
Immediately after the experiment begins, one couple, Rufus and Kitty, is eliminated because the husband shakes the baby to death. That was a shocking start to the book. And, the viewers saw it happen live.
We have Woody and Tina who are keeping a human child locked in their basement while raising a Meta baby. We find out that their real child killed a boy school mate when she was younger, and instead of her being sent to a child-like prison, they arranged to be able to keep her at home. But the viewer gets the feeling that she has a very dark side to her still. We learn this boy had made fun of the girl, so the girl followed him after school one day and hit him in the head with a brick. She thought he was dead, so she ran away and washed her hands/clothes in a school fountain before returning home. But school cameras caught most of this, and that's how she was convicted. We later learn Woody had been trailing his daughter, and after his daughter fled the scene, he went to the boy, and the boy was still alive. The boy threatened to tell on the girl and show the world what she was, and the dad then killed the boy once and for all thinking he was protecting his daughter. However, during the daughter's trial, he never came clean and let her take the fall for the boy's murder. Later, during the experiment, the daughter learns what her parents are doing and becomes very upset feeling like they've replaced her with their perfect Meta baby. Some stranger comes to the basement where she is locked one day, lets her out and leaves the key for her, so she begins exploring her surroundings. She eventually kills her Meta 'sister' by choking her to death, and she then fleas and is never found. It turns out she tries to leave the country in a shipping container, which falls off a ship and sinks into the ocean.
Cadman and Gabriel are a couple that deal with power struggles within the relationship, as well as some financial issues. Cadman is a celebrity of sorts, and he almost seems to extort their Meta child for sponsorships within the game. There are also drug use problems. Their Meta son ends up taking the same drug that Gabriel had many issues with and gets in trouble for distributing it to others and as well as injuring another kid. We find out that Cadman and Gabriel are hiding secrets between themselves and framing each other to get in trouble.
Dimitri and Zoe Georgiou, we find out, had a son before who died during a fog storm. He wandered off and was believed to have drowned. While they're on this show, they begin receiving threats from someone saying they know what really happened. Turns out, they were in massive amounts of debt, and they decided to sell their son to a human trafficker essentially, who would then erase their debts in return. We get bits and pieces of what happened to their son after - he was gathered with a group of other kids who were loaded onto a boat and driven to an unknown location. The boys were then forced off the boat and had to swim to shore, however not all of the kids could swim. Many of them drowned. The Georgiou's boy could swim, but another boy kept grabbing onto him, and so he almost drowned, but he made it to the shore. Once there, there was a truck filled with hay and sheep the kids had to board to their next location. The Georgiou's boy is presumed to have died during this trip because of all the water that got into his lungs, but the boy that clung to him, Hudson, survives.
Hudson then becomes a contestant on this tv show. He enters as a solo guy okay with being a single dad. His purpose is not to win, however, but to expose everything he went through, as well as Zoe and Dimitri for lying about their son's death in order to pay off debts. He talks about where he was shipped to after he was a victim of human trafficking, how he survived, etc. At the end of the book, we find out the Georgiou's boy survived after all and ended up living with a couple who raise him lovingly. He ends up working for with his family's vineyard, who prints pictures of missing children on the wine bottles.
This book was very interesting. Pretty crazy. I enjoyed all of the twists. I don't think it was predictable at all. I would definitely recommend this book.
So basically, we follow several couples/individuals, aka 'contestants,' who are going to be given a 'digital' child of sorts. They're from the UK, which is currently facing an overage of humans. Raising a family is now impossible for many people within the country. So for those that still want a family, an alternate option is introduced. But it becomes more of a game show.
Time is sped up, so that the child ages several years within one month's time. The couple/individual has to treat this child as though it were human - dressing it, feeding it, taking it to school, etc., and deal with all of the milestones that come with children. At the same time, they have to maintain their actual real world lives. They enter these Meta lives through a virtual headset and haptic suits. These suits allow the contestants to 'feel' everything with their virtual child - i.e. when they hug it, carry it, hold it, etc. The children have been designed by AI to be as real like as possible.
Also, each person/couple gets 10 minutes per day where they can mute themselves from all viewers. But outside of those 10 minutes, viewers can see and hear everything.
While these people are raising these Meta children, everything is being livestreamed to the entire world. The world can react to everything they see - giving red hearts when they approve of the contestants' choices, and black hearts when they disapprove. Every month, the viewers will vote so that one person/family will be eliminated. When they are, the humans can no longer enter the Meta world, and the Meta child will be deleted forever.
Every month, each family is given a challenge (essentially to keep things interesting it seems for the viewers). The contestants have to establish their homes in this Meta universe, buy groceries, help their kids with homework, they can take family vacations - it's all modeled to replicate the real world.
At the end of 9 months, the Meta children will be 18 year olds, and this experience will be considered over. At the end, whichever couple/individual is voted as the favorite by the world will win a large sum of money that they can start their real world family with and the Meta child will be 'deleted forever,' or they can chose to keep their Meta child and won't be granted the money.
This seems like an easy choice at first, but we see that the families soon do feel bonded to these Meta children. So will the winner be able to delete their Meta child forever if they win?
Throughout the book, we get to see the chat groups from viewers and their thoughts on the live stream. I liked this part quite a bit.
I liked that the couples/individuals were dealing with actual real world problems that many of the readers can relate to. We see how they handle parenting, balance work, find time for themselves, etc.
Immediately after the experiment begins, one couple, Rufus and Kitty, is eliminated because the husband shakes the baby to death. That was a shocking start to the book. And, the viewers saw it happen live.
We have Woody and Tina who are keeping a human child locked in their basement while raising a Meta baby. We find out that their real child killed a boy school mate when she was younger, and instead of her being sent to a child-like prison, they arranged to be able to keep her at home. But the viewer gets the feeling that she has a very dark side to her still. We learn this boy had made fun of the girl, so the girl followed him after school one day and hit him in the head with a brick. She thought he was dead, so she ran away and washed her hands/clothes in a school fountain before returning home. But school cameras caught most of this, and that's how she was convicted. We later learn Woody had been trailing his daughter, and after his daughter fled the scene, he went to the boy, and the boy was still alive. The boy threatened to tell on the girl and show the world what she was, and the dad then killed the boy once and for all thinking he was protecting his daughter. However, during the daughter's trial, he never came clean and let her take the fall for the boy's murder. Later, during the experiment, the daughter learns what her parents are doing and becomes very upset feeling like they've replaced her with their perfect Meta baby. Some stranger comes to the basement where she is locked one day, lets her out and leaves the key for her, so she begins exploring her surroundings. She eventually kills her Meta 'sister' by choking her to death, and she then fleas and is never found. It turns out she tries to leave the country in a shipping container, which falls off a ship and sinks into the ocean.
Cadman and Gabriel are a couple that deal with power struggles within the relationship, as well as some financial issues. Cadman is a celebrity of sorts, and he almost seems to extort their Meta child for sponsorships within the game. There are also drug use problems. Their Meta son ends up taking the same drug that Gabriel had many issues with and gets in trouble for distributing it to others and as well as injuring another kid. We find out that Cadman and Gabriel are hiding secrets between themselves and framing each other to get in trouble.
Dimitri and Zoe Georgiou, we find out, had a son before who died during a fog storm. He wandered off and was believed to have drowned. While they're on this show, they begin receiving threats from someone saying they know what really happened. Turns out, they were in massive amounts of debt, and they decided to sell their son to a human trafficker essentially, who would then erase their debts in return. We get bits and pieces of what happened to their son after - he was gathered with a group of other kids who were loaded onto a boat and driven to an unknown location. The boys were then forced off the boat and had to swim to shore, however not all of the kids could swim. Many of them drowned. The Georgiou's boy could swim, but another boy kept grabbing onto him, and so he almost drowned, but he made it to the shore. Once there, there was a truck filled with hay and sheep the kids had to board to their next location. The Georgiou's boy is presumed to have died during this trip because of all the water that got into his lungs, but the boy that clung to him, Hudson, survives.
Hudson then becomes a contestant on this tv show. He enters as a solo guy okay with being a single dad. His purpose is not to win, however, but to expose everything he went through, as well as Zoe and Dimitri for lying about their son's death in order to pay off debts. He talks about where he was shipped to after he was a victim of human trafficking, how he survived, etc. At the end of the book, we find out the Georgiou's boy survived after all and ended up living with a couple who raise him lovingly. He ends up working for with his family's vineyard, who prints pictures of missing children on the wine bottles.
This book was very interesting. Pretty crazy. I enjoyed all of the twists. I don't think it was predictable at all. I would definitely recommend this book.
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
challenging
emotional
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
This books succeeds in being a dramatic and twisted tale with a lot of surprises and that’s about it. It attempts to make poignant commentary about AI but ultimately I think that is put at the wayside for shock-value and twists so that the reader is constantly having the rug pulled from under them. This isn’t to say it was bad, I enjoyed reading it, but this is definitely an author that prioritizes shock over everything else. And can we talk about how lowkey weird it is that the author spent the entire book making AI the villain and then used AI for his author photo???
challenging
dark
mysterious
sad
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I loved this! I was invested immediately and the ending was strong. Easily my favorite John Marrs book so far. I read them out of order and was still able to follow them easily. This was the perfect amount of dark and realistic
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child abuse, Child death, Suicide, Trafficking, Murder, Abandonment
adventurous
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Loved the Black Mirror-esque start to the book, but I ended up getting bogged down in the complexity of each story and the characters. I felt a little detached at times and other times, really invested. I liked this but didn’t love it.
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
This book was such a fun ride. I was initially worried about how many pov’s there were but in true John Marrs style, it all connected together at the end for a true mind fuck. If you like Black Mirror, the metaverse, and dark twists you will eat this up.
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes