Sunward is William Alexander’s first adult novel, set in a far future solar system where private messages get carried between planets by couriers. Tova Lir is one of them, and she takes on the job of mentoring juvenile AI, essentially becoming a foster parent to adolescent androids.
It’s a light read, I enjoyed the premise and the playful tone of the book. There are some interesting thoughts on what consciousness is, and what a world with conscious robots could be like.
What doesn’t work is that the book falls short on details. It’s unnecessarily descriptive where it should leave something to the imagination, and it doesn’t go into enough detail for world building. No details on how things work, how society functions, what kind of economy and trade this imaginary solar system of the future has. There are guilds with weird rules, but it’s not clear why. Data can be seen by anyone, but why, what happened to encryption? Solid premise but it feels half baked.