REVIEW: Mal Goes to War (book) by Edward Ashton

Mal Goes to War is science fiction. I bought my copy new.

Review:

In the future depicted in this book, humans are at war - it's the Federals (modded and augmented humans) vs. the Humanists (those against modding and augmentation). Mal (short for Malware) couldn't care less about their battles. He's a free AI who's only interested in the tech that he might be able to salvage from whatever the humans leave behind. He's also kind of interested in the novelty of having a body. Which is why he transfers himself into the body of a recently deceased cyborg mercenary. Unfortunately, he didn't count on the Humanists cutting off access to infospace, so now he's stuck inside a rotting body with only a modded girl named Kayleigh (a teen altered to age slowly, so she appears to be a toddler) for company.

Mal and Kayleigh travel together, trying to stay safe from the Humanists. Mal intends to leave the instant he can find a way back into infospace, but that turns out to take longer than he expects. As their journey continues, there are signs that the Humanists might have teamed up with an unexpected ally.

I enjoyed spending time with this book's characters (Mal and Kayleigh pick up a few more traveling companions as the story progresses), and I really enjoyed the snarky humor. There wasn't much to the story itself  - most of it was just Mal and the others traveling from one place to the next, looking for a way back to whatever "safety" meant for each of the individual characters.

This book felt a bit like a combination of Adrian Tchaikovsky's Service Model (bots, the journey aspect, occasionally ridiculous/horrible situations) and Martha Wells' Murderbot Diaries stories (bots, AI, and snarky humor). I enjoyed this more than Service Model, but less than Murderbot Diaries. I wasn't really fond of the visuals used for Mal's code battles - he pictured himself as various residents of a castle under attack, which got weirdly sexual near the end. I was also bummed that we never got more of Clippy and !Helpdesk than the little bit at the beginning. Mal's interactions with humans were all well and good, but I would've liked more interactions between him and his AI friends/comrades.

The ending felt pointless, but overall I still enjoyed this.