Here, I mostly kept conjuring up a mental image of cheesy robots from a mediocre Doctor Who story. Compare it to the lively, interesting, unusual AI character of Ann Leckie's Ancillary Justice that would come out just a few months later- a distributed intelligence that operates simultaneously. This book's depiction of AI feels very retrograde. He's never deciding things, just doing things, mostly focusing on his captivity. Where did this all come from? I know this new Data is different, but there's a core of Data-ness that's lacking- where's Data's curiosity and wonder? Why would he want to settle down? I don't doubt that an author could get Data to this point, and I think that would be an interesting story, but Data starts the novel having made all his significant emotional decisions (except one, which I'll get to), and when we're in his point of view, it's all pretty blah. Suddenly he's hell-bent on bringing Lal back to life, and he wants to settle down on Earth and raise her alongside Rhea. I don't think Data has been handled well in this trilogy. There's a bit where the Enterprise crew all listen to transmissions of screams from a planet as it's added to the Abbadon black hole by the Machine, and I couldn't help but compare it unfavorably with the excerpts from transmissions of the Venette syndics in Brinkmanship, which made you sad over a bunch of people who weren't even characters in the book! I think a real sense of wonder could be conjured up.

The threat of black hole collision is too abstract, even if the characters occasionally look at the viewscreen aghast at the destruction of civilizations. That's possibly because you don't feel much of anything reading this book. Why tell a technological thriller? (When I finished book II I felt like it was a 'political sidestep away from the core idea of the trilogy' and hoped book III would save it, but nope.) Why tell a story about a massive machine entity destroying the galaxy? As I type this out, I can actually see the resonances- the Body Electric wants to leave its mark on the universe, and that's kind of what raising a child is- but if that's what was meant, you don't feel the resonances as you read.

But I never felt like these aspects came together in any coherent way, and in books II and III, the parenting theme doesn't resonate with the plot at all. This is a story of parents: Soong and Data, Data and Lal, Beverly and Wesley, Flint and Rhea, even T'Ryssa and her dad. I mean, the Event is 'the return of Data.' But what is this story about? There's inklings of a theme breaking through. I have to say, I don't really get what the point of the Cold Equations trilogy was.

The Body Electric by David Mack