Better than Real - Huw Lyan Thomas Book Review

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Review Summary

Lee is an up-and-coming designer of seductive love dolls, until the day his sexiest product yet goes lethally wrong. Lee arrives on the scene to find the owner of the beautiful android lying dead in his own bedroom. Lee discovers that the love doll has been hijacked by a groundbreaking artificial intelligence, one skilled in the assassin's arts and capable of objecting in the strongest possible terms to the owner's amorous intentions...

The ensuing scandal costs Lee his job and he is forced to flee, together with the doll, from the shadowy Elect--a group of post-humans intent on recovering their prized AI assassin. Together with a young girl called Sooz, Lee finds himself in an abandoned military base deep underground, where he is blackmailed into joining a rogue group of his former colleagues. This "stealth department" is working on a stupendous secret, hidden even from the corporation that's inadvertently funding it.

Then Stranger, the Elect killer who has been pursuing Lee and his friends, gains entrance to the base in the guise (cloned body) of Lee's ex-boss and joins the project. Stranger still wants his AI back and he's going to stop at nothing to get it.

Huw Lyan Thomas, Resident Scholar

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Detailed literary breakdown of Better than Real

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Ratings are on a 1-10 scale (Low to High)
Plot

Composition of Book
Descript. of chases or violence - 30%
planning/preparing, gather info, debate puzzles/motives - 10%
Feelings, relationships, character bio/development - 40%
Descript. of society, phenomena (tech), places - 20%

Tone of book - suspenseful (sophisticated fear)
FANTASY or SCIENCE FICTION? - science fiction story
Robots, Computers, VR Yes
Robot, PC, VR Plotlets: - good robot(s)

Main Character
Identity: - Male
Profession/status: - computer programmer
Age: - 20's-30's
Is this an ordinary person caught up in events? Yes
How sensitive is this character? - middling sensitive to others' feelings
Sense of humor - Mostly serious with occasional humor
Intelligence - Smarter than most other characters
Physique - average physique

Main Adversary
Identity: - Male
Age: - long-lived adults
Profession/status: - bounty hunter
Eccentric: Yes - eccentric - obsessed - wild
How much of work is main antagonist actually present in: - a moderate amount
How sensitive is this character? - hard edged
Sense of humor - Mostly serious with occasional humor
Intelligence - Genius (really!)
Physique - bulging muscles

Setting
Earth setting: - near future (later in 21st century)
Spaceship setting: - a space station
Takes place on Earth? Yes
Takes place in spaceship? Yes

Style
Person? - mostly 3rd
Accounts of torture and death? - moderately detailed references to deaths
scientific jargon? (SF only) - none/very little science jargon needed
Sex in book? Yes
What kind of sex: - vague references only
How much dialogue? - significantly more dialog than descript

Most similar books to Better than Real
The Isaac Project by Joe Vadalma
We Can Build You by Philip K. Dick
Robots of Dawn by Isaac Asimov
Adam Link - Robot by Eando Binder
Not Quite Human: A Bug in the System by Seth McEvoy

Note: the views expressed here are only those of the reviewer(s).

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