cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/73113357

Set in a future in which there are basically two types of governments: the Eastern countries have formed into a brutal autocracy called “The Federation,” which is ruled by a president who gets copied into a new body when the old one fails, and the Western countries have each turned to AI Prime Ministers, programmed to make the most beneficial decisions without human influence, with less than utopian results. We follow the stories of dissidents of the former, and cabinet members of the latter, as the world is fundamentally changed. I enjoyed the book for its exploration of how technology might be used by different sorts of governments (especially to keep the powerful in power), and for the way it captures the way people keep finding hope, even when they feel they've lost it all. It's definitely a cautionary tale for our times.