A review by jadorelecafe
After World by Debbie Urbanski

challenging dark reflective medium-paced

5.0

I’m not sure where to begin with a book that seems to have no beginning and no ending and yet many beginnings and endings. 
This story makes you think more critically about the world and our place in it as humans and our role in how we’ve selfishly destroyed the earth in a systematic way. It’s also about how humanity, in any form is very much that same way. We supposedly love something so hard we break and destroy it in the process. 
What would happen to the world if humans decided they were destroying the earth and that the earth was worth more than the human species? They’d create a virus that would sterilize the human race and cause an auto extinction of humans. 
This was all decided for the benefit of the planet. Humans created an AI (or a series of AI?) that would record and upload the human experience and individual humans consciousness into a virtual world of its creation. So what happens when the AIs are creating the data by observing these humans after these humans are already gone from the earth? Well things get tricky when a non human artificial intelligence has to choose what stays and what goes and what’s important and what isn’t in a persons life. 
This story follows a particular AI (a story worker) and the human they are observing. They fall in love with this human… as much as an AI can fall in love. But what happens to that humans data of their love when the AI observing and recording it has a skewed view of that person? 
Fascinating and eerie read that makes the shadows out of the corner of your eye seem a little too suspect.