alcyoneusgalaxy 's review for:

Glass Houses by Madeline Ashby

2.75

adventurous dark funny mysterious sad tense

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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This book did a great job maintaining suspense and keeping me interested and entertained throughout the first two thirds, but I didn't feel that the suspense was resolved in a satisfying way. I was especially intrigued by the technological commentary aspect of the plot (one tech policy writer I follow called Ashby's specialty "extremely pointed techno-criticism"), but was most disappointed by this aspect of the book. Again, the book started with a lot of interesting angles and setups for this, such as the characters' work on a satirical start-up that promises to use computers and AI to calculate what everyone's "really feeling", to the seemingly haunted high-tech house they find themselves trapped in after the plane crash. I really enjoyed seeing the parallels and implied commentary the author drew here between the assumption that technological surveillance can improve our lives and the many pitfalls of that assumption. However, I felt that the choice of the villain and their motivation really weakened this commentary (in addition to being not very interesting in general as a conclusion to the story), and drew the theme more towards "Isn't it bad that so many tech bros are misogynistic and racist?" Which is absolutely true and should be pointed out! But since it's so obvious I didn't think it made for a compelling story.

Definitely a page turner with many funny-in-a-sad-way moments for anyone who follows technology, but I didn't get the specific thing I was looking for out of it (a story that made me think more deeply about the strengths/pitfalls of Internet of Things-based tech), and I didn't really feel that the whodunnit aspect was that compelling either.