All That We See or Seem

, #1

by

Hardcover, 407 pages

English language

Published October 2025 by Simon & Schuster.

ISBN:
978-1-6680-8317-8
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(2 reviews)

Julia Z, a young woman who gained notoriety at fourteen as the "orphan hacker", is trying to live a life of digital obscurity in a Boston suburb. But when a lawyer named Piers -- whose famous artist wife, Elli, has been kidnapped by dangerous criminals -- barges into her life, Julia decides to put the solitary existence she has painstakingly created at risk as she can't walk away from helping them, nor step away from the challenge of this digital puzzle. Elli is an oneirofex, a dream artist, who can weave the dreams of an audience together throughn a shared virtual landscape, live, in a concert-like setting by tapping into each attendee's memories and providing an emotionally resonant narrative experience. While the collective dreams are anonymous, Julia discovers that Elli was also dreaming one-on-one with the head of an international criminal enterprise, and he's demanding the return of his dreams …

2 editions

reviewed All That We See or Seem by Ken Liu (Julia Z, #1)

I just don't know...

I've loved what Ken Liu has done in the past. For me, "The Paper Menagerie" showed me what scifi could be. This novel is so disappointing.

The first half is just bad. Superfluous dialog, exposition dumps, no voice change with POV change, cliches - it just pulled me out of whatever story there was.

I just don't know how this was published in this form. I hate writing bad reviews, but I can't recommend.

reviewed All That We See or Seem by Ken Liu

Not all I hoped

So, I have loved everything I've read from Ken Lui but this... Didn't do it for me.

I would hesitate to call it sci-fi - it was a thriller which is a genre I'm not entirely au fait with and that was why I was less than impressed...

The sci-fi elements felt oddly split - the idea that AI would only work in domain-specific areas rings true (for the near future setting it's building), but other aspects felt fantastical and abilities pulled out the backside when needed (her multi-form drone thing)

Add to that a main character who seems able to do anything technical -hardware engineering, adapting tech, software) with a high degree of competence and who has built their general purpose AI assistant who can cope with multiple domains seemingly better than any other AI out there... Just... Meh

But don't let this put you …