The Infinity Particle by Wendy Xu

 

Expected publication date: August 29th, 2023

Read: August 8th, 2023

Rating: 3/5 stars

Synopsis

The Infinity Particle is the story of a robotics engineer who falls in love with a very handsome, very humanoid robot, and then helps him escape his abusive creator. That is the story in a nutshell. There's...not a lot more to it outside of that.

This is a sweet, romantic story, but certain elements felt rushed or a little underdeveloped. The two leads, Clem and Kye, seemed to fall for each other incredibly quickly compared to the amount of time they had spent together. For the record, I did like their interactions! The way they connected based on the shared experience of having an emotionally abusive parent was nice! But I was surprised to see them declaring their love after what felt like maybe a week in story time.

I also found the ethical implications of AI to be kind of underdeveloped in this story, especially given that this book has received praise for its portrayal of said implications. There were questions about Kye's right to independence because of his burgeoning free will, but they were mostly answered in a pretty straightforward way. He's sentient like a human and he looks like a human, so he should be treated like a human and have human rights. Okay, that's fine, but what about all of the robots who aren't humanoid? Which is like...all of them except Kye? What are their moral and legal rights? What about robots who aren't fully sentient? Do they get any rights? This really isn't touched on.

As for the art, I mostly liked it. It's a pretty limited color palette, mostly pale purples and pastels. The occasional inclusion of other colors becomes more dramatic as a result, which is nice. But I do have to comment on the character designs. As you can see from the cover, Kye is a tall, pointy robot man with a long, pointy face. He has these areas below his cheekbones that are always shaded purple, which makes his cheekbones look really sharp and his face look really angular. I think the purple shading might be a robot indicator thing, and not just a simple shadow, but it looks like shadow shading, so it's really not easy for my brain to read it another way.

In contrast, Clem is short, with a rounder face and a cool, youthful bob. She's 19 in the story, but could easily be a younger teenager. The contrast between the two of them makes their romance a little weird at times. I think Kye is supposed to have a similar experience level to Clem, or even less, because he hasn't seen much of the world, but he does look like a pointy man in his 30s to me, whereas Clem very much looks like a teenager. I think a different visual indicator for Kye's robot-ness might have been better.

Overall, this is a charming story with a lot of cute robots, but not a huge amount of depth. I recommend it to graphic novel enjoyers or anyone looking for a simple, straightforward romance.

Star Splitter by Matthew J. Kirby

 

Publication Date: April 25th, 2023

Read: July 30th, 2023

Rating: 4/5 stars

Synopsis

Star Splitter is a YA sci-fi story about Jessica, a teenage girl who is traveling via teleportation to a planet light years from Earth in order to help her parents research. She resents her parents for leaving her when she was a kid, and doesn't really want to do any of this. That's one timeline. In the other, Jessica wakes up on the surface of the planet in a crashed lander, accompanied only by another version of herself who seems to be keeping some secrets.

I really enjoyed Star Splitter. It's tense, atmospheric, and pretty existential, all things considered. Teleportation is at the core of the philosophical questions posed by this book. In this world, the way that teleportation works is that your body and memories are scanned, you're put into stasis, and then you're "printed" at your destination from the atom up. This is what allows for two Jessicas to be present in one timeline of the book.

The way teleportation works in this world leads into some interesting issues, like the mind-body dualism required to be okay with letting your initial body be destroyed in favor of your new teleported one. We get intriguing hints into the controversy that exists on Earth, as well. One of the supporting characters is no longer in contact with his father because his father believes him to be dead now that he's teleported.

As for the two Jessicas, are both of them Jessica? Are neither of them Jessica? Over the course of the two timelines, both of them become different people from each other and from pre-teleportation Jessica. This question of identity is interrogated throughout the story, but ultimately, Star Splitter is less interested in easy answers than it is in hard questions. I enjoyed that about it.

While reading, I had a couple of interesting discussions about this version of teleportation with my friends, which was fun to discuss. Would you be willing to teleport if it meant waking up as an exact copy of yourself somewhere else? Et cetera. This book is fun simply for the thoughts it provokes, but it's also fun for the slowly ramping tension and thriller aspects. I definitely recommend it to those who like sci-fi and/or thrillers with a philosophical edge.