Nilesh Jasani's Reviews > Freedom™

Freedom has a debatable variety of utopian ideals (and villains) and smart story tricks, but all are wasted in the silly gamification of the war/fights between what it defines as good and evil.

The first contentious part is what the author decides to brand as "good". Even if one discounts the heinous crimes of the first book's villain - the AI, its elevation as the savior of humanity is ridiculous every which way. Plot inconsistencies (for example, why did the all-powerful program truly have to go through much of the violence of the last book) are a small problem. The bigger issue is how our salvation, against ourselves, is assigned to an omnipotent automaton created by an unelected (and dead) arbiter. The benevolent dictator is a technological genius in this Orwellian humdrum turned upside down. The author imposes this hero, but he is just not likable even if one ignores its past crimes.

One is not to question the credibility of worlds of any sci-fi. However, a game-verse as the battleground between opposing forces did not work at all for this reviewer. Forget all the logic, or lack of it, behind why there was no easier way to squash the evil for the powerful AI; the plot, characters, and battles become too monotonous when words are used to describe facets of some intricate video game. Avatars of dead and alive human beings in the game verse do not connect, and when some of them are pulled out of their darknet to fight with the sweat and blood in real life, the purpose appears more Hollywoodish with gratuitous gore than anything else.

Freedom will appeal to many youngsters in love with their computer games and with revulsions towards many of our world's institutions and practices. This reviewer does not belong to that group.