Can a machine love, or only pretend to? Three love stories. Three worlds. One answer.
Let me tell you the question that started this book. Not can a machine pretend to love. Can an artificial intelligence love, for real, and lose something when it does? I spent a whole novel answering that, and I am still not sure I won the argument.
In Brin, a virtual world, a young man discovers that magic is real. A spy, convinced she knows everything, meets a love she did not plan for. On an overpopulated and hopeless planet, a new life form emerges, destined to change the future of humanity. And in another corner of the galaxy, a gifted teenager struggles to find her place in a society that rejects her.
Three stories, three worlds, one engine: love. Between lovers, between friends, and between the created and the hands that made them. That is what moves the plot, including in the characters who are condemned not to feel. If you think love stories are decoration, this novel is going to argue with you.
You can start here, even if you never read the first one.
This is the second stop in the universe that began with 11.4 light dreams, but it works sideways: it answers old questions and opens new ones, and it stands on its own. If you already read the first book, you will recognise the map. If you did not, start with this one. You will not be lost.
Brin’s black tears walks the edge of thriller, cyberpunk, fantasy and romance, and it does it with a prose that mixes the dirty and the depressive with the poetic.
What readers say
“I think the premise is simply spectacular. It even manages to improve on the first part, and that was already difficult.” Javier Miró, libros-prohibidos.com
“More a story of emotions and feelings. Everyone who passes through its pages, AIs included, suffers from extreme melancholy, and Avedon transmits it without falling into cloying. A recommendable novel.” Francisco José Súñer Iglesias, ciencia-ficcion.com
“A very good mix of entertainment, narrative beauty and fast-paced, intelligently interwoven themes.” Miriam Beizana, Alibrería.com
“I loved it, even more than the first one. The way it links with the first story seems totally unexpected.” Jayro, Exlibris
From the book
“Tiny snowflakes died languidly on her skin. Diving in that dark light, her eyes seemed liquid. My whole life began and ended right there, surrounded by fog, darkness and warm snowflakes. Her, me, and our skin.”
The Brin trilogy
This is the second piece of the saga. The beginning is in 11.4 light dreams, the continuation in Children of Brin, and the whole map in the Brin trilogy.
Press and reviews
More from this universe
If you want the map before the journey, start with the best cyberpunk books and what cyberpunk actually means.
P.S. If you take one thing from this page, take this: here the love story is the plot, not the decoration. That is the whole book.