A very cute story that explores what it means to be a person. Overall this had a nice cozy and thoughtful feel to it. What kept this from being a five star read was I didn't love the twist at the end and I didn't think things with the mom were well resolved.

eMortal is a YA science fiction novel investigating sentience within artificial intelligence technology. What will it mean when what we've created feels real, feels too human?

Liv is a teenage programmer with high hopes of winning a government sponsored contest and securing an internship that would change her life forever. As Liv's life becomes more complicated, her AI creation Breck becomes more than ones and zeros.

I picked up this book because I thought the concept of AI and the probability of it becoming a complex, sentient being was interesting. In light of AI's popularity, as ChatGPT and AI generated art/graphics grow in demand, I found this book relevant. Though some of the coding aspects of this book did not make complete sense to me, I never questioned Breck's gained conscious and emotions. He felt real to me too.

This was a super quick read, and it kept me interested the entire time. I got a little annoyed when I had to put it down and do other things. Something I personally enjoyed was the dual chapters between Liv and Breck. I thought it was helpful to grasp the concept of AI gone human while inside Breck's narrative. I wanted more at the end! The twist was something I didn't see coming and now I want more!
Big thank you to NetGalley and köehlerbooks for giving me an early access copy of this book to review!

4.5 stars

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley.

This is a thought-provoking science fiction book about Liv, a high school student who creates an AI called Breck for a contest. It delves into complicated philosophical themes such as ‘what is life?’, ‘what is real?’, ‘what is our purpose?’ On top of this, it also explores conflict and relationships as well as personal growth.

The Good
The pace was great throughout. I never felt bored reading the story, it never felt repetitive and it progressed at a pleasant pace. The characters were all interesting and relatable, with their own unique voices. It was wonderful watching them grow. Liv especially, as she developed from a somewhat narrow-minded person to a compassionate and mature adult.
The writing was snappy, easy to read and action packed. There were moments of prose and description that were exceptionally well written and I found myself going back to re-read them just so that I could enjoy them a second time. Overall this was a thoroughly enjoyable read.

The Not So Good
I found the first chapter difficult to read, to the point where I seriously considered not finishing the book. The dialogue was extremely cringe-worthy for me and I didn’t think anyone really spoke or thought that way. Luckily after the first few pages, everything settled down and the rest was much more believable.
On occasion I found it confusing to keep track of who was speaking in the dialogue. There were also typo’s and inconsistencies that brought me out of the story – for instance halfway through a man comes in with his daughter to create a birthday list, but towards the end of the book it says the man and his son.

A fantastic book that I’m so happy I persevered through the first chapter to read. I highly recommend and I am sure the themes and characters will stay with me for a good while.

I will be posting this review on Goodreads and Amazon AU

Thank you NetGalley and BooksGoSocial for providing this eARC in exchange for an honest review!

3.5 stars rounded down

I loved this more than I anticipated. I really enjoyed the journey from very robotic to sentience for Breck and there was some great tension with his experience and Liv's. This really felt like something I would have been going crazy over when I was 13, felt very nostalgic in writing style for me. More thought provoking than I thought it would be. This book also has a very YA style twist that was played very well, I found myself going "wait how did I not predict this??" (there is also a wild q&a with the author at the end that is worth reading if just to sit in baffling silence like what did I just read)

Negative for me, the mom character was very annoying to me. Her characterization really stood out to me when compared to most of the "voices of reason" mostly being male characters. Like yes there are immature moms out there, but it felt a little mean spirited at times. Again, this is just my perspective, could read differently to different folks.

Baby's first speculative fiction. Had a fun time.

<b>Thank you NetGalley for providing me with the ARC of this book for an honest review!</b>

I might not call it the best SciFi I've read but it took one of the theories I love to research (✨computer stimulation✨)and made it a quick introductory read in the format of a non-serious book about a high school girl entering an IT contest.

For those who love cozy SciFi like A Psalm for the Wild Built by Becky Chambers & Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro, eMortal by Steve Schafer(image below) is a must read. Like Klara and the Sun, it makes the reader contemplate the evolution of AI in unique ways.

Thank you BooksGoSocial and Net Galley for the opportunity to read this ARC. All my opinions are my own.

The premise of this book caught my attention, but it failed a bit in its execution. There was a lot of telling versus showing, particularly in the beginning. That pulled me out of the story, and the pace was just too slow to hold my attention. As a result, what should have been a quick read ended up taking me far longer than I expected. Perhaps the biggest issue I had with it was the writing style itself. The characters were not distinctly drawn. There is very little showing to help provide a connection to the character. It just felt very formulaic and robotic. The world building for a novel of this sort was far less than I expected, unfortunately.

Thank you to NetGalley, BooksGoSocial, and the author Steve Schafer for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

What a gem of a book! I’m so glad I discovered and read it. If you’re reading this review, I highly recommend giving this book a try. It offers a fascinating glimpse into AI and consciousness, exploring these themes in a beautifully thought-provoking way. The book delves into profound questions about reality, existence, and the future, while examining our relationships with creation and other entities.

I read this book while working on my master’s thesis. The young girl in the story became a source of inspiration, as she relentlessly pushed herself, defied the boundaries of AI and reality, and believed in both her creations and her own abilities.

I will definitely be reading more from this author and purchasing a physical copy for my library.

This book itself was written in a style that I’m not used too. It has a rigid structure, and straight to the point vocabulary. Almost as if a non-fiction book was written as fiction (I don’t know how else to best describe it at the moment).
The subject matter itself deals with one of the most up to date and controversial topics around at the moment, that’s AI, The use of it, the development of it, how it’s used and applied in todays society.
This book is a good, solid read. Not the most immersive experience I’ve had, but definitely enough to keep me interested.
If anyone fancies a change, a palette cleanser, then this is ideal. Not my usual choice but happy to have read it.

Liv is a coding genius. She wants to get an internship with the best people in coding. At what cost? In today's world AI is everywhere. The new AI on Facebook shows how many people are aware of AI and how many people use it. Not only are there catastrophic results from such a smart AI, there are also personal results that Liv doesn't realize. Lana, her best friend, and her friendship with Liv suffers. Liv gets so caught up in Breck, her AI, that she doesn't care about Lana having to move. Sadly Lana helped her figure out Breck's first task. Breck had a total of 4 tasks. What will happen when the fourth is completed? Breck starts to develop feelings and emotions. He thinks that the last task will end the world. Is he right? The ending was good, and fun to read. The author does a great job of weaving real life and today's society into a world that we may not be far from becoming. I am giving this book a 4/5. I was given a copy, all opinions are my own.

Liz is entering a contest to code an advanced AI. She never realizes how successful she will e in coding her advanced AI named Breck’s will be. Breck is self-aware, thoughtful and seems incredibly human. Has Liz done the impossible? Breck becomes aware that he has learned his world ends on the last date of the contest. When he does, he fights to “live.” Liv tries to save him but it appears to fall on deaf eas. There is someone listening but who?

The author has written an AI sci-fi novel that shows artificial intelligence psychology. It is a thought provoking book on AI. I hope that due to its ending of this novel, that others will think how AI’s role in society. In the movies “Teminator” series come true? Does having the possible benefits of AI safe and truly useful in today’s world? It is a novel that made me think about this — the good and possible bad.

Thanks to NetGalley, Steve Schafer, and BooksGoSocial for allowing me to read an advanced copy of eMortal in the return of an honest review. I received an advanced reader copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Reading this book almost felt like reading a script with how straightforward the writing was. It did not have the same structure as most novels with internal dialog. There were a lot of frustrating parts where I wanted to yell at a certain character for getting in the way of something great going on. The turn that happened was a huge surprise and done really well. I want to read the book again just to see where certain clues could have been.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC copy of eMortal in exchange for an honest review.

The book's premise is fascinating, especially considering the current craze with AI. I also appreciated how it explored the ethics surrounding AI.

The book was easy to digest; however, there was a lot of telling instead of showing in the beginning. Rather than being shown, we’re told what the characters’ personality and disposition are. At some points, it felt like reading a Wiki about the characters. I also felt there was a lot of preaching throughout the book that didn’t click with me. I didn’t enjoy it as much as I thought I was going to, but I can see the appeal to other readers! For me, it felt a bit slow in the beginning. However, it does pick up near the halfway point and seeing Breck turn sentient and how the writing evolves to reflect his sentience was interesting.

This book is a thought-provoking exploration of humanity, technology, and the blurred lines between the two. The relationship between Liv and Breck is very compelling. The self-awareness journey had me questioning the ethics of AI and what it truly means to be “real.” The pacing is intense, especially as the countdown to the contest’s end adds urgency to every page. I think this is a great read that lingers in your mind long after that last page and I recommend to anyone who’s into sci-fi and AI epidemics in books.

I really liked this book and the ending took me by surprise. I was intrigued by the story and honestly didn't want it to end.

I almost read this book in one sitting because I had to be a responsible adult and go adulting. I think if I had chosen to read this book over a weekend, I would have easily read it as eMortal had me in its grips. I can’t recommend this book this book enough as it’s a perfect blend of depth, heart, and brilliant storytelling.

This book slightly mess you head but in a good way. The story was deeper than I anticipated as it is packed with thought-provoking questions that may challenge your own perspective. Slight spoiler the ending is still living rent free in my head, and I still find myself reflecting on the final pages.

This story is told through dual points of view and follows Olvia our ambitious lead and Breck the AI she has created. Without giving too much away Breck’s journey of self-discovery is a delight to watch.

What I think sets eMortal apart from other books in this genre is how Steve manages to incorporate jaw-dropping twists and turns that just keep you guessing. But when you think you’ve figured it all out, the story shifts and leaves you speechless. I really can’t recommend this book enough.

"eMortal" is an intriguing science fiction novel. Its well-structured plot and writing style help visualize the story and captivate the reader. My only critique is that the characters don’t have truly distinctive voices; they all feel similar and somewhat interchangeable since the author’s writing doesn’t leave much room for descriptive customization.

That said, I devoured this book and found myself repeatedly surprised, overwhelmed, incredulous, and shocked while reading. Honestly, I hadn’t read a sci-fi novel like this in a long time, so I can’t help but highly recommend it because, truly, readers will be captivated. Plus, once you reach the end, you must stop and reflect. The level of contemplation this book demands is so profound and intricately woven into the narrative that it’s impossible to ignore. This necessity to reflect, and the openness the text requires for such reflection, is another key reason why I recommend it.

Thank you to NetGalley and the author for allowing me to read this novel.

Liv is a seventeen year old programmer competing for an internship with the Department of Recreational Computation, or DoRC. The contest? Program an AI that can get through set challenges in a virtual world before Spring Break ends. After giving her AI, Breck, the ability to dream, he blazes through the first challenge and begins to develop at an alarming pace. Her digital breakthroughs are hard to celebrate, however, as her mother fails to maintain the family's toy store and her best friend's father's new job will have her moving across the country. Could Breck's newly discovered sentience and sapience help in these situations?

So... I'll admit fault here. I downloaded this book expecting a human x AI romance, and that is not what this is. It is, however, a science fiction novel about artificial intelligence, which is usually my cup of tea. Unfortunately, this book fell flat for me. Maybe part of it is me being sick the generative AI garbage that's all over the internet--what Liv is developing with Breck isn't that, thankfully, but things like ChatGPT and Dall-E scraping work from writers and artists because Silicon Valley bros don't respect us has made me pull a face every time AI gets mentioned. The author, Steve Schafer, mentions in the back of the book that he might use ChatGPT for his future novels, which doesn't give me much confidence for his later novels.

The biggest issue I have with 'eMortal' is how clinical the writing is. The characters themselves don't have distinctive voices, everything is told and not shown (there are at least three instances of the narrator saying they summarized the situation for a character, when the situation could have been summarized by the character in one line of dialogue. Especially with how 'woe is me' Liv is, I think it'd give us some character insight or flavor to have her word on the situation instead of nothing), and so much dialogue is repetitive and choppy with random motivational speeches thrown in. Lana and Liv are supposed to be seventeen year olds but act much younger. Maybe it'd be a stretch to make Liv a coding prodigy at fourteen or fifteen, but I think that would justify her emotional outbursts with her mother and her best friend situation more than having her almost college aged. I'm saying this as a former teen girl--that's definitely the age where I'd have sneaked onto the computer after being grounded.

The most boring thing to read, and something that takes up a lot of the book, are the simulations in Breck's digital world. Reading these parts felt like when my friend in the early 2000s would describe the Sims houses she built over the phone. Even if my imagination is great, it's not exactly the most exciting thing to think about. Making these parts even worse is that Breck speaks and thinks in a robotic way for about 50% of the book, without contractions or emotion. I understand why this is happening, but having to live inside his mind while he's talking about walking past people wearing red shirts and green shirts is agonizing. I feel like a lot of this book could have been condensed and Breck could have gained sentience earlier, since he's a much more interesting character afterwards and a lot of the other plot threads are just background noise.

Despite my complaints, there are nuggets of ideas that I like in 'eMortal'. The parallels to 'Frankenstein' are hard to ignore, and a scientist who loves her own creation but thinks that putting him out of his misery might be what's best for him are compelling. The twist came too late and felt unearned, but I think it was interesting and if the book wasn't such a slog to read I might want to go back and look for hints. There's also the question of students' passions being copyrighted so they no longer have rights to them and government programs taking advantage of teens who aren't financially stable, which are themes that YA books could and should explore! Unfortunately, these are only glossed over, but since the story is bloated enough as it is, maybe it's a good thing that it didn't find an extra path to explore.

This engaging, fast-paced read weaves philosophical questions about AI and consciousness into the story of Liv, a high school coder, and Breck, the program she creates to navigate video-game-like puzzles in a government-sponsored contest. The story was easy to dive into, even though, admittedly, it's not usually the kind of story I gravitate towards. But if you're a fan of murderbot, then you'll probably enjoy eMortal too, but less pew-pew and more conversation around ethics.

• I appreciate the passionate portrayal of Liv investing her soul into coding her program alongside her best (and only) friend, Lana, hyping her up and supporting her on her journey. Specifically, I loved how tight-knit they were, next-door neighbors and would just drop by to hang out. It reminds me of my childhood during simpler times, when we just knocked on a neighbor kid's door and ask if they could come out to play, unannounced; such a stark contrast to today where everything is scheduled now--at least for me, since we all be adults adulting now.

• I also appreciated the philosophical and ethical questions brought up surrounding creating intelligent life forms--albeit sometimes it did slow the story down a bit, compared to the portions that were like go, go, go, solve the puzzles before the clock runs out.

Drawbacks/Perhaps a "Me" Problem: Portrayal of Programming and AI
As a software engineer, it was definitely trying for me to turn on my suspension of disbelief when it came to the programming aspects--specifically with how Liv actually gave Breck consciousness/made him intelligent.
• Some portrayals of the programming itself that made my eye twitch that maybe would be akin to, say, a lawyer in real life screaming at their television when watching a dramatized version of their profession, like How to Get Away with Murder: "what...thats not how that works?!" 😂
• Specifically in the opening chapters, Breck cannot escape the room he spawns in, and Liv ponders on how to make her dumb program smarter. (She didn't go as far as to say "hmm how do I give my program consciousness, but that is ultimately what, as the books blurb informs you of, happens.)
• The intelligence-boosting solution? To program Breck to sleep for


"neural repairing, purging, reprocessing, dreams. All that stuff"


• ...what? That's as inane as saying let's program your phone to have a human heart so it can pump more energy and work faster.
• And other parts I was saying "why in the world would the government not just whitelist who can make requests to their VPCs to truly block out ppl from interfering with their bots after they start the challenge? It's not like Liv suddenly became a redhat and could hack the government if they did" (this is sorta kinda answered later, but it still made my eye twitch that Liv the programmer wouldn't question something like this.)
• And they take "learning" in machine learning to mean learning like a human, but Breck is trapped in a virtual world with very little examples of how non-NPCs work, so how would he have learned to act like a human on many aspects--I'm talking about speech cadence not not sound robotic, fluidity in movement, and all the cognitive Piaget phases that Breck should go through psychologically develop as a human.
• Some of the psychological things can be innate, if Liv programmed Breck so, but others would be learned, just like humans IRL learn from nature vs. nurture. Also there seems to be a bigger emphasis on Liv developing some suped up algorithm, but a lot of what Breck would've learned would actually be more focused on giving him plain ol' bigger tagged data sets to consume rather than tweaking of his code itself (I recommend reading The Worlds I See: Curiosity, Exploration, and Discovery at the Dawn of AI for a deeper explanation that lay folks could understand)

ANYWAYS, once I we get past the "give him consciousness" portion and onto the challenges portion, these annoyances largely went away for me to enjoy the more video-game-like problem solving aspects to the story. And for a YA novel I was grateful to find it devoid of any boyfriend drama angst (the mom needs therapy though, gees).

Thank you @Netgalley and @KoehlerBooks for my ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Liv is a high school student who enters a coding contest for the chance to win a dream internship for aspiring programmers. Breck is the AI character who is trying to work his way through a series of challenges while beginning to question reality.

This book is enjoyable and mind-melting at times with it's many layers of meta-cognition. I devoured this book and was left wanting so much more in the best way possible. This book gave me the biggest book hangover where I just sat and stared at the wall questioning everything I've ever known. I love the complexities surrounding Breck and how it's juxtaposed with Liv's struggles in the outside world. I think this book will be one of my top reads of 2024.