Can’t-Wait Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted over at Wishful Endings to spotlight and discuss the books we’re excited about but haven’t yet read. Most of the time they’re books that have yet to be released, but not always. It’s based on the Waiting on Wednesday meme, which was originally hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine.
This week my Can’t-Wait-For Book is Exadelic by Jon Evans!
Genres: Fantasy, Contemporary or Urban Fantasy
Published on: 5th September 2023
Goodreads
When an unconventional offshoot of the US military trains an artificial intelligence in the dark arts that humanity calls "black magic," it learns how to hack the fabric of reality itself. It can teleport matter. It can confer immunity to bullets. And it decides that obscure Silicon Valley middle manager Adrian Ross is the primary threat to its existence.
Soon Adrian is on the run, wanted by every authority, with no idea how or why he could be a threat. His predicament seems hopeless; his future, nonexistent. But when he investigates the AI and its creators, he discovers his problems are even stranger than they seem...and unearths revelations that will propel him on a journey -- and a love story -- across worlds, eras, and everything, everywhere, all at once.
I have so many questions, and my first one is: who the FUCK thought it was a good idea to teach an AI black magic?! I feel like the hardest part of selling me on this story is going to be convincing me of the reasoning of whoever thought that was a good idea. I mean, I think it’s fair to say they were wrong about it being a good idea, but why did they think it was one???
That aside? I really love this premise! I want to know what Evans’ take on black magic looks like, and I want to know how an AI can use it, how technology/technological sapience interacts with magic. That’s just such a cool idea! And it seems like the blurb is hinting at the involvement of other worlds/dimensions? Perhaps a multiverse? I don’t know, but I REALLY want to find out!
Do I think this is going to blow me away? Not if it’s as thriller-y as it sounds, although I’m hopeful given that Jo Walton has said of it “This is what Neal Stephenson is supposed to be like.” (No shade to Stephenson, but I’ve bounced off all the stuff of his I’ve tried so far.)
It can’t be that thriller-y if a love story is a big part of it, right? Thrillers don’t go for romance, they go for sex, so I’m crossing my fingers. But honestly, even if it is a thriller, with a premise like that I’m still definitely going to read it.
AN AI WIELDING BLACK MAGIC: HI YES THAT IS ALL I NEED TO KNOW!
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