2.0 KiB
The Last Angel: Ascension Ch 5
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Author: u/narfanator *
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URL: https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/the-last-angel-ascension.346640/page-26#post-19081223
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Score: 14
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Created: 2015-09-29T04:57:42
Post:
Comments:
u/None [+3] (10 hours later)
[deleted]
u/Vebeltast [+5] You should have expected the bayesian inquisition! (12 hours later)
From the perspective of SF hardness and setting interestingness, The Last Angel is spectacular. It presents one of the best portrayals I've seen of a medium-strength friendly strong AI. In particular, it solidly avoids all the usual AI tropes, where AIs, rather than actually intelligent or different, are basically just angry rubber forehead aliens, are author self-inserts, have read the second half of the book already, or are
magically mysteriousand always right. Red One is superhuman because she thinks faster, has a vastly larger working memory, interfaces better with mathematical models, and is extra-creative because she's missing some biases, and is otherwise a very reasonable character. The setting is cool and has impressively deep worldbuilding, and the things people do are cool. Compare Sanderson for quality and twistiness of worldbuilding and Honor Harrington for coherence of technobabble.From the perspective of literary quality or quality of writing, very good, but don't take my word for it because I don't trust my judgement for evaluating stories. I do feel safe saying it has my recommendation here as well. The plot is satisfying and there are a few good, solid characters.
u/Sparkwitch [+2] (a day later)
To answer your first question: Yes. It contains lots of spoilers about the fates of various characters from the first story and should be read afterwards.
u/None [+1] (5 days later)
Huh. I'd never heard of this, and I just saw two references to this today. The frequency illusion is a strange beast.