M.R. Carey's "Infinity Gate", eh. Part one of a duology in which humanity discovers parallel universes, becomes part of an intrauniversal alliance, and fights against artificial intelligences.
It has great *ideas* for sure. Working together and sharing information across universes. Sentinent beings evolved from rabbits. A privately owned Nigerian research institute where the big discovery happens. Lagos across universes.
(1/n)
The technobabble is absolute bullshit. And the multiverse itself is seen firmly through colonizer's eyes.
It's neat that the machine intelligences turn out not to be the evil ones - but the way AI is discussed, from glowing about a program much like a modern LLM to the friendship a character developed with an AI infiltrator, feels like it will be rather dated soon.
I finished this one, but I won't read the second book.
(4/n, n=4)
Those are neat, but unfortunately, the author doesn't do a lot with them. Collapsing Lagos is vividly described but soon forgotten. Hadiz, Black woman inventor of the technology that enables crossing into parallel universes, is an interesting if exceptionally cold-hearted character who doesn't get to do much. The rabbit folk are just people. Hadiz gets to make fun of a LLM but ends up accepting it as a brilliant friend.
(2/n)
Free worldbuilding tip: you CAN indeed have your great discovery happen off-screen and never give any details.
It's preferable to this lazy level of nonsensical technobabble.
"Hadiz put scalar and vector values together in the same box and shook them until their labels fell off. [...] She was hoping that if the dark energy boson wandered by it would be confused enough to stick around while she took its picture."
What.
"Physicists divide the forces and effects that govern the universe into two separate categories, called scalar and vector."
Dude. If gravity were indeed a scalar or vector field, unifying all four forces would be A LOT easier!
Jules