Audioook Review: Android Paradox by Michael La Ronn

Genre: Science Fiction

Series: Book 1 of Android X

Publisher: Ursabrand Media (March 25, 2015)

Author Information: Website | Twitter

Tiara’s Rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

Narrator: Erik Johnson | Length: 3 hrs and 47 mins | Audiobook Publisher: Ursabrand Media (May 29, 2015) | Whispersync Ready: Yes

In the year 2300, humans and androids are living alongside each other in relative peace. Hundreds of years earlier, when humans first started making more intelligent androids, a singularity war broke out that pitted humans and androids against one another. Humans won the war (though, I’m not really sure how), which created a universal government system and a world that lives mostly in peace. Instead of destroying the androids that betrayed them, a scientist named Dr. Crenshaw came up with part of a simple solution to make them more agreeable to humans. He made androids that had some semblance of emotion. Emotion, he reasoned, would make androids more likely to consider what they are doing when it came to humans, at least. Androids learned they benefited from humans, that humans made them smarter because they always learn at least one of three things from individual humans–history, human nature, and emotion. Though, there were other more technological safety protocols put in place as well, including a black box. Xandifer Crenshaw, an android simply called X, and his human partner, Shortcut, are sent to take down a rogue android hiding in Aruba. What seems to be a simple mission turns into something a bit more complicated as they try to decipher the actions of the rogue android as even more begin pop-up in the story, led by some mysterious human who has a fascination with X. On top of that, androids are being “murdered” and salvaged for their parts. How does this tie into the actions of the rogue androids? Does it tie into the actions of the rogue androids?

I’m not exactly sure how I ended up with this book. I think I got it free on Amazon and the audiobook accompanying it turned out to be cheap as well. I like to take chances on unknown authors, especially when they’re writing about things I love such as artificial intelligence. I was very pleased that this turned out to be a speculative book by an author of color, which one of my goals is to read more speculative fic that are written by authors of color and/or prominently feature characters of color.

I want to get the the things I didn’t like out the way first, which is unusual for me. I typically save that for last. I appreciate La Ronn, who is an author of color, asserting that there are not only people of color in the future but they are making significant contributions to this future as exhibited by Dr. Crenshaw, an African-American scientist credited with making a type of android that was–and still is–far superior to all other androids. However, I felt in the beginning of the book La Ronn’s declarations of people of color being part of the future came off too bold. No, not too bold. A better choice of phrasing is that he was slapping it in our faces obviously instead of allowing this information to be organically part of the story, especially since race isn’t a huge factor in this story. Scenes like having the black father of a black family congratulating X on being black because it’s nice to see “one of us” doing heroic things felt just a bit too much like someone screaming, “People of all races will STILL exist in the future doing things!” Not that I don’t agree with that statement or believe it shouldn’t be pointed out. It just felt a little too flagrant in the beginning. I do think as the story continued La Ronn found a better handle on balancing the idea of a future that includes all races and this story resting around the mystery of rogue androids and something called the “Android Winter.” (And yes I saw the Winter Soldier every single time I read that phrase, and yes, I do believe the phrase: “The Android Winter is coming,” was used in this book.)

There were some things in the book that just felt a little like they were obviously not connected. I’m not sure if he was really trying to make them seem connected or not, but hopefully, he wasn’t because as red herrings they weren’t that perplexing. Some situations felt a little too hokey for me and exceeded my limitations on suspension of belief. One plot device seemed fairly obviously, but I actually liked that he used it because I’m interested in seeing how these ideas that were meant to be about good intentions will be interpreted by a corrupted mind. Those things are probably the biggest of my complaints.

I enjoyed this story. It was fast-paced, action-packed. I like character building, and while there wasn’t much of that here, there were some great nuggets to be gained in some of the interactions between the humans and androids. I really liked the perspective that the androids gave the story and how they felt about their human counterparts and their own “independence.” It also played with the idea of some humans willing to go through whatever necessary to gain some imitation of what androids have without really understanding the full implications of such actions. There was one very small romantic subplot dealing with a human and android that I liked because La Ronn didn’t take it where most writers probably would, especially in a world where androids can process emotions to some extent. I won’t say it won’t go there in the future, but right now, I thought it was excellent how he handled that particular moment.

Not having fully fleshed out characters didn’t work against the story for me, though, considering that was a race through a sci-fi thriller type story. The focus was the action and the idea of this paradox. The phrase “android paradox” is very simple in terms. Despite two android knowing the courses of actions another android will take and vice versa, they will still engage, even if that means shooting at each other until one of them finally goes down. This paradox makes them both predictable and highly capable, which hurts and helps them when facing each other. This theory played out in intriguing ways throughout the story as we learned more and more about the androids in the year 2300.

I couldn’t stop listening to/turning the pages even though I kept reminding myself that I had other things that I should be doing. Erik Johnson was a great narrator. He did wonderfully on X’s stoic voice and Shortcut’s sarcastic, egotistical tone. I haven’t seen his name credited to any other work, so I’m assuming this series in his first. He did a wonderful job with it, even with the islander voices. Narrators usually are very terrible at islander voices. I don’t care how talented they are, but this Johnson did a fair job with the voices. I found the book to be so much fun, and it left me wanting to know what was going to happen to not just X, but many of the other characters introduced and how their parts will eventually play out in this story. I’ll definitely be buying the second book, Android Deception, to see the continuation of this story.

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