Published: November 2025
Pages: 352
Series: Standalone
Summary
The Arcology is a pan galactic utopia whose people live entirely online. Tired of paradise, Praveenthi ‘Prab’ Saal had herself printed into the physical world of Sirajah’s Reach, working as an Interlocutor – a go between for the Arcology and the cultures it meets in flesh and blood.
One evening after a call with her family – who are pressuring her to abandon her body and rejoin the Arcology, the city stops. Stops completely – nothing electronic works anymore. Terrified that the Arcology has just up and disappeared, she receives a call for help from a ship in dock whose pilot, Kercher, is a prisoner printed into a body to serve out his sentence in the physical world. Between them they discover it’s not just her planet, but the entire Arcology that’s gone missing. If they don’t find out what’s going on it could be the end of everyone and everything that calls the Arcology home.
Their only resource is their living ship, into which all the knowledge and culture of the Arcology has been downloaded. Asked to be a life raft for the Arcology, the ship, a frigate without a name, is dying – slowly being swallowed whole by the literal universe of information it’s been asked to carry.
Featuring worlds made entirely from gold, an enemy who has no consciousness, allies made of lichen and the grand Ring World of Akhanda – the physical heart of the Arcology. Prab and Kercher will need to put aside their dislike of each other and the Arcology if they’re to help their ship and save anything at all. Can they restore the possibility of hope to their lives?
My thoughts
If you read the summary and felt confused then you were not alone. I was confused going into this and I got even more lost along the way. Which is a bit of a shame as I think this story had so much potential and I hadn’t read anything similar before.
The ship needed to hear voices, to know he was not alone. The pilot thought they were going to fight an enemy, to find someone responsible and mete out justice. The Interlocutor thought they were going to help. The ship only wanted to hear the chaos of life and know he wasn’t alone among the stars.
This book is positioned as a space opera meets Indian mythology which totally grabbed me. Add in the other dimension of living in a part of space which is almost a viral computer. They live digital lives where some decide to be printed into the real world to live physical lives. You can probably see why I requested a copy of this from the publisher. I just needed to read it as soon as possible!
The stakes are really high in this one and our main character Prab is a very torn, confused and conflicted being with her own inner turmoil that she pushes through. Her core self was relatable and she was a firm favourite for me.
I would say this book would better suit readers who are familiar with science fiction. This one dumps you right into the story and there’s not too much of an explanation. Some pieces get a bit more fleshed out later on in the book but you’ve got to get there and I admit, I was struggling getting there. Both in the sense much of this book made no sense to me and the writing style didn’t suit me much. So being familiar with science fiction terms would be helpful.
Saying that there were pieces that were enjoyable. It is very much a character driven story with a big focus on their own growth and development with a high stakes mystery as the back drop. There were longer moments in between the action where the book got slow and I did contemplate putting it down, but ultimately kept going. The writing was okay for me, I felt it leaned a bit much into telling instead of showing for me and still there was stuff going on where we just hand to take it as is with not everything quite adding up.
I really loved the concept of this world. Living in a digital space and people that reject that life to be printed out in the physical world and therefore “Excluded”. It reminded me a lot of The Blighted Stars which is a fantastic science fiction book that revolves around a world where humans keep their digital mind map backed up so that they can print themselves into bodies. It’s the only other book I can think of that does something similar and as I read this I couldn’t help but make connections. Top points for creativity but I still have so many questions and this book specifically goes down many tangents that I’m struggling to get my head around ie. the captain of Hanuman is part digital, part ship, he’s a prisoner that is serving his time but he also merges and becomes one with the ship… it just got confusing and I think it comes down to the writing style that I could just not follow this story. I saw a review that says this book was playing virtual hop scotch in their mind and I can’t agree more. The storytelling was just all over the place that it was really difficult to follow whilst enjoying the book and feeling absorbed in the pages.
Would I recommend?
If you are a seasoned science fiction reader and like character-driven high stakes then I would suggest checking it out and seeing for yourself. Maybe I just haven’t read enough sci fi to really understand this book.. maybe this book faults itself because it doesn’t spend enough time on the pieces of the story that truly matter. I’m not sure but I don’t think it’s one I could recommend otherwise.