Autonomous

Autonomous is all about, you guessed it, autonomy. It asks what it means to be in charge of your own life, to what extent you can be, and how to find the balance between independence and interconnectedness. The story takes place in the far future where drug patents have severely restricted who has access to medicine. Pirates work to reverse-engineer and sell these drugs on the black market. And the drug companies send people after them to protect their intellectual property.

This is all interesting stuff, but the book is also shockingly violent. I had a hard time with the various interrogation scenes and ended up really hating a character. The book didn't condemn that character nearly enough for me (it didn't help that large sections were narrated by his love-interest who wasn't really thinking critically about the harm the two of them were causing). My hatred of said character and the book's efforts to humanize him ended up making me dislike this book more than I otherwise would have.

I think there were some interesting questions raised and arguments made here. Especially in the probing of human slavery and artificial intelligence (and sentience). But I couldn't quite get on board with it.

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