Review: Supernova

Supernova by C.A. Higgins
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

My review...
Well, first thing is that this book is buried among numerous books with the same title. Frankly, I think that should be changed, but I'm just the reader not the editor.

Secondly, unless you have just read (as in finished Lightless last night), you might find yourself in a bit of a quandary because this book starts up right where the last ends. Thirdly, because of this, there is little care taken to make the reader have any empathy for the revolutionaries cause nor for the revolutionaries. There is little character development because it's all been done in book 1. The first book moved a bit slower building up an intense dislike for The System. This one does none of that, so you can't just pick up this book and expect to know what's going on.

Because of the lack of care taken to create empathy for the characters, this book doesn't click well with me. I loved the first one, but this one left me cold as space itself. I may try to read the last few chapters of Lightless again and then come back to this one. I did not care for the Constance character in the first one, so her character leaves me cold in this one. She seems very cardboardish to me.

However, Ananke and Althea's story line provoked an intriguing thought line for me. Super intelligence from a super computer that has planet-destroying capabilities is not only daunting, but highly threatening to secure living. Perhaps humans will attain that kind of creation, but I doubt it. If we did... This part of the story delves into all kinds of practical problems and stretches the imagination into the scary reaches of human/machine relationships.

About the book ...
C. A. Higgins's acclaimed novel Lightless fused suspenseful storytelling, high-caliber scientific speculation, and richly developed characters into a stunning science fiction epic. Now the dazzling Supernova heightens the thrills and deepens the haunting exploration of technology and humanity—and the consequences that await when the two intersect.

Once Ananke was an experimental military spacecraft. But a rogue computer virus transformed it—her—into something much more: a fully sentient artificial intelligence, with all the power of a god—and all the unstable emotions of a teenager.

Althea, the ship's engineer and the last living human aboard, nearly gave her life to save Ananke from dangerous saboteurs, forging a bond as powerful as that between mother and daughter. Now she devotes herself completely to Ananke's care. But teaching a thinking, feeling machine—perhaps the most dangerous force in the galaxy—to be human proves a monumental challenge. When Ananke decides to seek out Matthew Gale, the terrorist she regards as her father, Althea learns that some bonds are stronger than mortal minds can understand—or control.

Drawn back toward Earth by the quest, Althea and Ananke will find themselves in the thick of a violent revolution led by Matthew's sister, the charismatic leader Constance, who will stop at nothing to bring down a tyrannical surveillance state. As the currents of past decisions and present desires come into stark collision, a new and fiery future is about to be born.

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