"ReV" by Madeline Ashby is a thought-provoking finale to an innovative series. Ashby skillfully tackles themes of identity, technology, and the human condition, wrapping up complex storylines in a satisfying manner. The book's pace is relentless, its characters vividly drawn, and its ideas deeply engaging. A fitting conclusion to an exceptional trilogy.

Huh. So ... ReV. I found this to be a really interesting sci-fi look at artificial intelligence, taken to the next level - you know, sentient robots and all that scifi jazz. Really cool. But I sure as heck felt like I was missing something.

Oh wait! I am missing something. As in, the first two books in the trilogy, which were published in 2012 and 2013 respectively. That means that the second book in the trilogy came out when I started writing my book review blog ... eight years ago! I guess it should be no surprise then that this series, this author, was not on my radar.

The vN are a 'race' of self-replicating humanoid machines. There has been a prophecy that the vN would one day rule over humans and that day is soon approaching. One of the last hurdles - the 'law' which prevents machines from harming humans has finally been cracked and Portia, a vN who has been looking forward to the day when 'she' can bring humanity to its knees is ready to capitalize on this moment.

But first Portia must deal with Amy, her granddaughter with whom she's been fighting for years. They've reached a momentary peace, but Portia's plans, and her ability to infiltrate network systems now, without a body, have re-ignited their feud. Portia wants to destroy humankind, and now, while Amy needs to take advantage of some of humanity in order to get off-world safely, with her family. While Portia and Amy feud, will humanity find a way to destroy everything the vN have achieved?

I liked this book. Author Madeline Ashby's writing was crisp and the characters quite interesting. I think it must difficult to give an AI this personality while still maintaining the sense of artificial intelligence, but Ashby does this well.

The story was quite intriguing, though early on I rolled my eyes at the thought of 'another robot "coming of age"' story. But Ashby distinguishes her work with the very unique characters.

But as a stand-alone novel there was always a black cloud looming over my reading, suggesting that I was missing something. It wasn't until I went to Goodreads to grab the URL to the cover for my blog that I realized that this was the third book in a trilogy. Had I known that ahead of time, I likely wouldn't have requested this ARC, even though it comes from one of my favorite scifi publishers.

I liked the book, but not enough to seek out volumes one and two in the series, and after 8 or 9 years, if the publisher isn't going to re-issue the first two books to remind the reader of what's gone before, this seems like something only those who were first attracted to the series will really want to invest in reading.

Looking for a good book? ReV by Madeline Ashby is the wrap-up of a trilogy (the first book which came out nine years ago). It is well written, with some fascinating concepts, but it does feel as though you need to have read the first two books to really understand what's happening.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

Con la publicación de ReV Madeline Ashby culmina la trilogía sobre las máquinas de Von Neuman que comenzó con vN y prosiguió con ID. Hay que reconocer que la autora ha sido capaz de escribir tres novelas muy diferentes con más o menos los mismos protagonistas, aunque su interés sea variable.


El comienzo de ReV es francamente espectacular. Nos sitúa en una recreación, en un parque interactivo con decorado gótico donde los robots actúan como vampiros, mientras que los visitantes están protegidos por la salvaguarda que impide a los robots dañar a los seres humanos. Y como diría Homer, todo acaba con erótico resultado (uno de los pilares en los que se basa la trilogía). Pero ya sabemos que la salvaguarda no es perfecta por los hechos acaecidos en las entregas anteriores, así que este prólogo sirve para dimensionar la amenaza que se cierne sobre los seres humanos.

Por desgracia, el nivel del resto de la novela no es igual. La protagonista total y absoluta es Portia, que ha evolucionado desde que la conocimos y ahora es una inteligencia distribuida en toda la red. Sus tendencias psicópatas y asesinas no han hecho si no agudizarse, y Ashby no deja pasar la ocasión de ver cómo con solo una parte de su capacidad de procesamiento es capaz de generar desgracias. Quizá tendría más fuerza si este recurso no se explotara tanto, pero es que en casi todas sus interacciones alguien acaba muerto.

El incidente del parque de atracciones provoca que las reservas que los humanos ya tenían hacia los vN se acentúen, por lo que el gobierno recurre a su creador espiritual para buscar una solución de exterminio, si llega a ser necesaria. Por supuesto, Portia no está dispuesta a dejar que este plan llegue a buen puerto, pero por su propia naturaleza es incapaz de investigar documentos que no estén en formato digital, así que tendrá que desarrollar otros planes.

Ashby carga mucho las tintas en algo que ya sabemos de las entregas anteriores. La humanidad ha abusado desde siempre de los robots, sobre todo en el aspecto sexual, ya que ellos por definición aman a los humanos. Y no hay cortapisas en estos abusos, desde la pedofilia al maltrato pasando por todo el espectro que os podáis imaginar. Y claro, los robots son los acompañantes perfectos, siempre están dispuestos a todo con tal de complacer a los humanos. Es una definición horrible de las bajas pasiones humanas.

El plan de Amy, la nieta de Portia e iteración de sí misma para evitar esta situación es muy pero que muy ingenuo y se ignoran todas las dificultades técnicas asociadas de tal modo que bien podría parecer el resultado de un encantamiento. Y es una lástima, porque combinado con algunas de las revelaciones que se había guardado para el final podría dar lugar a un nuevo origen para otros libros, pero para mí la historia ha perdido el interés.

En resume ReV cierra de forma funcional pero algo decepcionante una trilogía que prometía más de lo que ha acabado por ofrecer.

ReV is the third and final book in Madeline Ashby's "Machine Dynasty" trilogy, which began with 2012's "vN". The trilogy features a world in which a genius con man created AI robots, VonNeumanns (aka vNs), which can self replicate with enough food and serve as servants, sexbots, companions and more for humanity, all of which have a "failsafe" which prevents them from tolerating any sort of harm to humans. Or well, they're supposed to, hence the series. The trilogy's first two novels came out in 2012 and 2013 and were among the first two books I read when I began reading SF/F again, with this trilogy ender being listed on Amazon as coming shortly thereafter. I really enjoyed the first novel in the trilogy, and though I didn't love the 2nd one, I was excited to see where it would all end up.

Only Rev didn't come, and after a year of occasionally checking for a release date (and the book's listing seemingly being dropped) I gave up on ever expecting it to (Ashby would release a different novel in the meantime). So I was surprised to see Rev pop up for a review copy on Netgalley, and requested it out of sheer curiosity. Of course, that meant that when I was accepted for it, I suddenly had an issue in how little I remembered from the original two books, which could've been a problem. I managed to skim the first few chapters of book 2 and the final 2 chapters to refresh my recollection, and hoped that would be fine.

I needn't have worried too much - ReV is a really enjoyable and interesting trilogy ender, and one that works if you only have the barest of refreshers of what happened in the first two novels (going in blind is not fully advisable, but you can probably pull it off based upon your years old recollection). The story switches its perspective to the trilogy's prior main antagonist, which really alters the tone to a far more humorous one, while still also keeping alive some of its themes. It also ends on a note that is full of far more righteous fury than I remember in the other two novels, but it also absolutely works. It has some content that I don't exactly love - but less than its predecessors mind you - but it's still a really interesting short novel.

Trigger Warning: Sexual/Physical Abuse: There is no explicit rape in this novel but a major theme of this series has always been an inability to give consent and while that's largely not an issue for the main characters in this book for once, some side characters suffer abuse in some small scenes at times. If you enjoyed the first two books enough to want to read this though, you've already been through worse.

Note; The Amazon summary for this book is......not good. So let's try a better one:

-----------------------------------------------Plot Summary--------------------------------------------------------

"This is the true story of how I destroyed humanity. And saved the world."

Amy Peterson and her family are safe - for now - in the vN city of Mecha, and Amy's plan to remove the failsafe from vN around the world has been put into motion. But when the some of the first freed vNs, working at a dracula-themed pleasure park, decide to take advantage of their newfound ability to harm humans by engaging in wholesale slaughter, it becomes clear that the status quo will not hold. Soon the humans turn to the creator of vNs to try to obtain his secret backup plan of dealing with the failure of the failsafe and Amy begins to work in secret on her plan to take all of the vNs off planet to a world of their own: Mars.

But watching this all happen is Portia, Amy's psychopathic grandmother, the first vN to manage to get around the failsafe and harm humans. Amy and Portia have reached a detente, with Portia free to roam the networked systems of the world but without a body, and able to freely interact with members of the family except for Amy herself. But while Portia may be biased in wanting nothing but destruction for humanity and in being frustrated at the altruistic actions of her granddaughter, she knows that Amy's plans for escape may not come to fruition fast enough....and that if nothing is done to stop them, the humans may find a new weapon to destroy all that the vNs have gained.

As Amy plans, and Amy's children - her daughter Esperanza and Javier's son Xavier - try to figure out their lives, it will fall to Portia - the being they always fought, the destroyer who wanted nothing more than to kill, the one who started it all - to do what is necessary for them to survive......

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Book 1 in in this trilogy, vN, was told from Amy's point of view, whereas Book 2 was told from Javier's. That sort of made sense - Amy was is our Big Good of this series by the end of book 1, and Javier is the hapless love interest trying to make sense of things after everything goes to hell at the start of book 2. Book 3, with some weird flash forward interludes aside (and even there), takes a hard right turn by switching the point of view to that of Portia, Amy's psychopathic grandmother. In a way this is a cheat - since Portia exists in every networked computer system and lacks a body, it's almost as if we have a third person omniscient narrator - but the book wholly justifies it, with what see happening always colored by Portia's own emotions and reactions.

This results in some ways in a very different tone - Portia is almost godlike in power at times, and is utterly unashamed of using it willy-nilly, and still is psychopathic, at least where humanity is concerned. So throughout the narrative, as she talks to other characters or feels emotions that annoy her, she'll as an aside kill some humans somewhere just because she can and it makes her feel better. This somehow makes the tone of this novel amazingly irreverent and downright funny at times, despite the seriousness of what is going on, and it works really well. And Portia as a character works quite well too, growing in ways I did not see coming (especially with the interludes suggesting something wholly different) from beginning to end.

The result is a plot that is highly enjoyable, as all the characters act and grow in interesting ways, and the book manages to inject tension somehow despite how omnipotent Amy and Portia seem to be at times. Characters such as Esperanza and Xavier grow in some interesting ways as well, and the world moves in a believable form as it reacts to the horrors caused by a massacre by vN (which takes place in the first chapter - the only one not told from Portia's perspective - and is something to behold). And the plot continues to focus on the same serious themes of what it means to have control and not to have control in terms of consent, as the now free vN find themselves hunted even more for their newfound control.

I wonder honestly how much the plot of this book changed in the years since the book was first announced and then went unpublished. It would explain not just the really off plot summary on marketing websites, but also the righteous fury involved in this book: because as the quote I started the plot summary with makes clear (and that quote is from chapter 2, it's not a spoiler), this is a fiery book in the end. What is the answer to persecution as a result of one's liberation? Is it simply to get away? This book answers no: there has to be more, or else it will recur over and over again. And it makes this work.

It's a short book, and honestly the thing I liked the least about it was its epilogue (in which a character comes back from nowhere for some reason), but I'm glad it finally came out to finish the trilogy. Look forward to seeing Ashby start something new next.

Madeline Ashby's "ReV" is a dramatic, innovative, exciting, and fitting ending to the "vN" trilogy. At the end of "iD," part two of the saga, Amy had mysteriously iterated, but "ReV" shows that the result is nothing like we might expect. Overall, the "vN" trilogy has been fantastic and intriguing, from the first "dynasty" to the final epilogue. We started with Portia and Amy and Javier in "vN." We followed the story of Javier and his serial Juniors in "iD," along with Javier's quest to resurrect the love of his life. In "ReV," we get to the culmination of their stories and see the resolution of numerous questions brought up along the way. The title "ReV" has that brilliant triple meaning (kudos to the author): "revelation," "revision," and "revolution." Portia and Amy consistently trade on all three of these throughout the story. Of course, there is conflict—Portia is there, after all. The futures of both the humans and the vN are in trouble. Of course, there is innovation—Amy is there, after all. There are explicit references to cultural conceptions of "robots," from serfs and slaves throughout history, to Asimov's "quaint" modernity (Portia's word, not mine), to the postmodernity of Westworld. There are even a few sly allusions to the future of "Ghost in the Shell." The author consistently challenges the reader's preconceptions of androids with empathy, creativity, love, and the question of choice in nearly every aspect of life. Most of these concepts are persistently revised in the world of vN that the author has developed here, eventually tipping over the edge into revolution. There is a base story of religion, provided by the backstory of the vN (make sure you read "iD" if you don't know that part). The vN origin story is challenged, even overturned, by the undercurrent of evolution in Amy's life, in her choices and actions. "Rev" is Amy's revelation of what is possible for her species, her revision of both the vN themselves and their role among humanity, and a revolution in the eventual fate of the vN that her enlightenment brings about.

If ever a book was going to engender distrust with AI then its this book! I’m now wondering if I can even trust my microwave 😉 this is a very cerebral book but that is a bonus, too often we read books that are light on content and eminently forgettable, I won’t be forgetting this book I can assure you, a superb read