Mal Goes to War

Mal (short for Malware) is an AI stuck in the world of humans. When a conflict between body-modded Federals and anti-modding Humanists breaks out, the larger information network is blocked, leaving Mal stuck inside whatever implant or device is large enough to contain him. In his quest to find a way back to the information network, he inhabits various drones, corpses, a few live humans, and finds a small group of friends along the way that he feels obligated to keep safe as well.

This is hyped up to be like Martha Wells' Murderbot books, and I do see signs of that. Mal has a very dry sense of humor, being AI, and the majority of this book is his wry observations about humans and human behavior. This is very much a character-driven story, in that the plot, such as it is, isn't really a factor until the last few chapters of the book. You have the backdrop of this large conflict, but you don't get a lot of backstory (or...forwardstory, for that matter) about what it is or why it's happening. Even the ending, where the plot finally appears, is kind of forgettable, because the rest of the book didn't really set you up to care about a resolution. I also found the conflict and resolution a bit messy, to be honest.

So, the humor was pretty decent, but the rest of the book was unfocused and didn't get me to care much about the ending. Kind of a miss.