Feb. 14th, 2026

lightreads: a partial image of a etymology tree for the Indo-European word 'leuk done in white neon on black'; in the lower left is (Default)
Of Monsters and Mainframes

3.5/5. The one about the ship AI and medical AI who are frenemies but stuck on the same ship together, and how they and a werewolf and a mummy and a vampire and a bunch of spider drones go on a revenge mission against Dracula.

If that sounds wacky zany and like a whole bunch of things got thrown in a blender, correct.

I enjoyed this, even including the sometimes odd mix of humor and horror. (This book doesn’t really have humans, except as occasional set dressing, generally as corpses). The AI POV here is particularly good. The ship AI has vastly more processing power than the medical AI but no “human interaction protocols,” so yeah, that’s how that goes. I actually laughed out loud, which is rare for me.

Marking down only for the structure, which is simultaneously messy and repetitive. Quite the trick. I was willing to roll along with it for a lot of this book, because I was enjoying myself, but at a certain point I could have used a tad less spaghetti on the wall, you know?

Content notes: Mass death by vampire, werewolf, etc. AI equivalent of mind control.

Profile

lightreads: a partial image of a etymology tree for the Indo-European word 'leuk done in white neon on black'; in the lower left is (Default)
lightreads

February 2026

S M T W T F S
1 2 3 4567
89 10111213 14
15161718192021
22232425262728

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Feb. 14th, 2026 10:28 pm
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios