Full Disclosure: I received an advanced copy of Phantom Memories from the author in order to produce an unbiased review.
Overclocking the Story
In a future of where humanity has colonized parts of the solar system and megacorporations control whole, habitable space stations, Acco Eleven is an advanced, prototype combat android. Her employers/owners rent her out for bodyguard, infiltration, and other mercenary work because she can pass as an augmented human but has all the combat prowess of a sophisticated war machine. Her latest job, however, takes difficult turns. She becomes emotionally attached to her charge, Drew, and her infant son, Thomas, who are trying to escape from one megacorporation to another with a cache of sensitive, incriminating data. However, this secret, corporate war means Acco Eleven gets orders that conflict with her personal concerns, and protecting Drew and Thomas becomes a murky and deadly scenario where it is difficult to know who in the solar system can be trusted.
Futuristic Techno-Thriller
Phantom Memories is action-oriented, hard science-fiction. The focus of the narrative is on the immediate situation, and everything is filtered through Acco Eleven’s first-person point of view, sometimes highlighting her conflict between digital programing and organic, less-rational impulses and thoughts. The novel also touches on several near-future, science-fiction ideas: what does it mean to be human in light of extensive, artificial augmentation, to what degree is everyone socially engineered, what should be the limits corporate authority, can self-aware entities be owned, and what is the nature of consciousness. In this book, though, the needs of the plot come first, so while these concepts are brought up, most of them are not explored with an investigatory or contemplative approach found other, meditative science-fiction novels like The Sirens of Titan, Roadside Picnic, or The Left Hand of Darkness. Instead, Phantom Memories works those ideas into a futuristic techno-thriller.
War Games
The basics of the plot are all serviceable and should entice readers who also enjoy cyberpunk in general and James Corey’s The Expanse. However, around the midpoint, the book takes a dramatic turn and then slows to a crawl. While it is interesting on a character level to see Acco Eleven struggling to come to terms with her new, unstructured situation, a significant portion of the back half of the story revolves around participating in a virtual reality competitive shooter, which is not nearly as interesting as anything else in the book. It creates a narrative deadweight akin to quidditch in the Harry Potter series. Readers who enjoyed or at least tolerated that might appreciate this similar situation in Phantom Memories, but for everyone else, it drags down the plot.
Robot Ghost Predecessors
Phantom Memories will be a welcome addition to the library of readers who also enjoy The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells, Ghost in the Shell by Masamune Shirow, or even Adam Christopher’s Made to Kill. It is not as inventive or polished as any of those other works, but it is not trying to be. This book does, however, inhabit the same space on the science-fiction spectrum as those other works.
Source
Martin, S. R. Phantom Memories. Amazon, 2024.
© 2024 Seth Tomko