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)
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)
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)
Jules