Synopsis:
HOW FAR WOULD YOU GO TO BE FREE?
Inside the paradise of a Dyson Sphere, artificial intelligence has been outlawed and hunted. When a robot is dug up at the equator, it will have to flee if it wants to survive.
Told from the different perspectives of the humans and creatures who encounter the machine as it crosses the Sphere to seek refuge at the pole, can one robot’s struggle for freedom change the world?
Review:
Imaginative and absolutely brilliant, Cage of Stars is one of those real hidden gems of indie science fiction that should have far more hype than it does (I’m not sure if there even is any hype, but there should be.) It was easily one of the best books I’ve read all year.
The story is told through a collection of encounters as each person, creature, or thing encounters the robot at the heart of the tale. Some perspectives are human, others come from natural features like a river or a tree. As the robot journeys across the Sphere, it leaves an impression on everything it meets, all while doing its best to reach the place called “Freedom.”
Some of the settings in this book were incredibly imaginative. They range from a tech-driven undercity that never sees the light of the system’s star, to a floating forest with very little gravity, to a dust-choked and nearly uninhabitable pole. Some creatures are familiar, like the stegosaurus, while others are completely alien.
The glimpses of human societies in the book run the spectrum as well, but everything on the robot’s world is controlled by an entity called ScanTech. ScanTech isn’t the forgiving sort, and the robot’s existence goes against everything ScanTech has built. I don’t want to go into details of what ScanTech truly is; that’s best left for readers to discover on their own.
Cage of Stars was an all-around great read, so if you enjoy sci-fi, definitely go check it out.
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