What do you think?
Rate this book
Win a free print copy of this book!
19 days and 04:21:16
5 copies available
U.S. only
UnWorld
Not yet published
Expected 17 Jun 25Win a free print copy of this book!
19 days and 04:21:16
5 copies available
U.S. only
From the author of Once More We Saw Stars comes a gripping novel about four intertwined lives that collide in the wake of a mysterious tragedy. Set in a near-future world where the boundaries between human and AI blur, the story challenges our understanding of consciousness and humanity.
Anna is shattered by the violent death of her son, Alex, and tormented by the question of whether it was an accident or a suicide. Samantha is Alex’s best friend, and the only eyewitness to his death. She keeps returning to the cliff where she watched him either jump or fall, trying to sift through the shards. Aviva is an “upload,� a digital entity composed of the sense memories of a human tether. But she’s “emancipated,� having left her human behind. Set free from her source and harboring a troubling secret, she finds temporary solace in the body of Cathy, a self-destructive ex-addict turned AI professor and upload-rights activist.
With UnWorld, Jayson Greene envisions a grim but eerily familiar near-future where all lines have blurred—between visceral and digital, human and machine, real and unreal. As Anna, Cathy, Sam, and Aviva’s stories hurtle toward each other, the stakes of UnWorld reveal themselves with electrifying What happens to the soul when it is splintered by grief? Where does love reside except in memory? What does it mean to be conscious, to be human, to be alive?
Anna is shattered by the violent death of her son, Alex, and tormented by the question of whether it was an accident or a suicide. Samantha is Alex’s best friend, and the only eyewitness to his death. She keeps returning to the cliff where she watched him either jump or fall, trying to sift through the shards. Aviva is an “upload,� a digital entity composed of the sense memories of a human tether. But she’s “emancipated,� having left her human behind. Set free from her source and harboring a troubling secret, she finds temporary solace in the body of Cathy, a self-destructive ex-addict turned AI professor and upload-rights activist.
With UnWorld, Jayson Greene envisions a grim but eerily familiar near-future where all lines have blurred—between visceral and digital, human and machine, real and unreal. As Anna, Cathy, Sam, and Aviva’s stories hurtle toward each other, the stakes of UnWorld reveal themselves with electrifying What happens to the soul when it is splintered by grief? Where does love reside except in memory? What does it mean to be conscious, to be human, to be alive?
224 pages, Kindle Edition
Expected publication June 17, 2025
2 people are currently reading
7,443 people want to read
About the author
Jayson Greene
2books246followersJAYSON GREENE is a contributing writer and former senior editor at Pitchfork. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Vulture, and GQ, among other publications. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and son.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
March 25, 2025
UnWorld is a virtual reality game in a world in which everyone has an AI chip in their brains that records their memories, but the chips are achieving sentience as the world navigates their emerging civil rights issues.
The book uses Aviva, the chip, as the central character, while dancing between various points of view of chip-wearing characters, including Anna and Rick, who are grieving the loss of their teenage son, who took his own life.
This book had some interesting things to say about personhood, technology and grief, and it did a decent job at building dread, but it felt like it should have been a short story. It didn't have enough of a plot. And I found the characters so unlikable, for example Rick and Anna's unhappy marriage, that I found it hard to stay interested in the story.
We seem to be having a proliferation of AI stories now but they are almost too close to our current reality for me to get into a lot of them, rather than saying anything new and unexpected. This seems to have been inspired by Elon Musk's plan for brain chips.
Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the advance review copy. I am leaving this review voluntarily.
The book uses Aviva, the chip, as the central character, while dancing between various points of view of chip-wearing characters, including Anna and Rick, who are grieving the loss of their teenage son, who took his own life.
This book had some interesting things to say about personhood, technology and grief, and it did a decent job at building dread, but it felt like it should have been a short story. It didn't have enough of a plot. And I found the characters so unlikable, for example Rick and Anna's unhappy marriage, that I found it hard to stay interested in the story.
We seem to be having a proliferation of AI stories now but they are almost too close to our current reality for me to get into a lot of them, rather than saying anything new and unexpected. This seems to have been inspired by Elon Musk's plan for brain chips.
Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the advance review copy. I am leaving this review voluntarily.
February 22, 2025
I received an early copy from NetGalley
I will read anything this author writes. The story is ok, perhaps a little forgettable. It takes place in the near enough future where AI has taken over most things and people are able to have “uploads� of themselves that act as assistants, friends, and wider observers. There’s a debate within the book about if these uploads are in their own right individuals, as they are able to feel “pain� and loss and confusion. On the surface, this is the central theme of the book. Deeper, though, this book is more about motherhood/parenting and the person we are on the outside vs the person on the inside. In other words, it’s about AI but it’s not.
There’s isn’t much world building. The story is very much to the point. It’s definitely more speculative fiction than scifi, with a few mentions of self driving cars (which our main character has chosen to reject.) Other than the AI Upload voice coming from nowhere, this isn’t the world of the Jetsons, although there aren’t enough descriptions to picture anything other than regular suburbia. In fact, the author seems to like to leave things unsaid. The first good chunk of the book is purposely vague (which I’ve come to appreciate) and there’s little hand holding.
It’s an interesting story for anyone that has dealt with sudden loss, I suppose. But it’s definitely not a story that feels like a warning about where AI is headed or some sense we’ll all soon be losing our humanity. In many ways it could have almost worked without the scifi aspect to it. It’s a novel about a short period in the lives of a few people affected by a major event that leaves them all a little confused and very empty. It could have been longer, but it’s not.
Above all, though, the writing is the smoothest I’ve ever read. It’s not simple or flowery. I can’t even quite put my finger on it. I just immediately dove into it and the pages flew by. I’ve never quite been struck by writing that is so easy to digest before. It makes no sense but I kept saying “If this author wrote the phone book I could read it all afternoon.�
Jayson Greene needs to write more fiction and immediately let me know when they do. I can only imagine what’s next will be just as enjoyable to read and perhaps offer even deeper of a story.
I will read anything this author writes. The story is ok, perhaps a little forgettable. It takes place in the near enough future where AI has taken over most things and people are able to have “uploads� of themselves that act as assistants, friends, and wider observers. There’s a debate within the book about if these uploads are in their own right individuals, as they are able to feel “pain� and loss and confusion. On the surface, this is the central theme of the book. Deeper, though, this book is more about motherhood/parenting and the person we are on the outside vs the person on the inside. In other words, it’s about AI but it’s not.
There’s isn’t much world building. The story is very much to the point. It’s definitely more speculative fiction than scifi, with a few mentions of self driving cars (which our main character has chosen to reject.) Other than the AI Upload voice coming from nowhere, this isn’t the world of the Jetsons, although there aren’t enough descriptions to picture anything other than regular suburbia. In fact, the author seems to like to leave things unsaid. The first good chunk of the book is purposely vague (which I’ve come to appreciate) and there’s little hand holding.
It’s an interesting story for anyone that has dealt with sudden loss, I suppose. But it’s definitely not a story that feels like a warning about where AI is headed or some sense we’ll all soon be losing our humanity. In many ways it could have almost worked without the scifi aspect to it. It’s a novel about a short period in the lives of a few people affected by a major event that leaves them all a little confused and very empty. It could have been longer, but it’s not.
Above all, though, the writing is the smoothest I’ve ever read. It’s not simple or flowery. I can’t even quite put my finger on it. I just immediately dove into it and the pages flew by. I’ve never quite been struck by writing that is so easy to digest before. It makes no sense but I kept saying “If this author wrote the phone book I could read it all afternoon.�
Jayson Greene needs to write more fiction and immediately let me know when they do. I can only imagine what’s next will be just as enjoyable to read and perhaps offer even deeper of a story.
April 6, 2025
Jayson Greene has touched on something complex here, that I will be chewing on for quite a while. While this book centers around a virtual reality, both gaming and AI, it is clear that each of these characters is deeply and painfully human. I was an early fan of Jayson’s memoir, Once More We Saw Stars, and the thread of grief, growth, pain, and love, has once again woven its way through his gorgeous writing. There were sentences that stopped me in my tracks, little gems to roll over in my mind, that gave me a deeper understanding of each character. This is a unique little novel, at times hard to read, but ultimately redemptive. Thank you to Knopf and NetGalley for my gifted ARC.
March 10, 2025
Unfortunately, this one was not for me. The writing style leans heavily on internal monologue, with less emphasis on dialogue. The text feels more like an opportunity for the author to parse out theory than a way to explore character development and the human experience.
There were some interesting and prescient themes regarding AI, personhood, and memory, so if any of those are your passions you might enjoy this book.
Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC.
There were some interesting and prescient themes regarding AI, personhood, and memory, so if any of those are your passions you might enjoy this book.
Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC.
Want to read
January 13, 2025Tagging this as sci-fi but knowing it's closer to a lived reality than we think..
April 13, 2025
I received a free advance copy of this book from the Penguin Random House booth at Emerald City Comic Con. Once again, I appreciate PRH for being at ECCC and for providing advance copies of upcoming releases.
To start with, I want to clarify that I totally respect the author's personal lived experience with grief and everything he had to survive and process when his own young child died. He has previously written a memoir about it (which I have not read), and has much more personal experience coping with the loss of a child (or any close loved one) than I do.
However, that being said, this is a 2.5 for me at best (as usual I rounded up). I will preface the review by saying that it's possible I just didn't fully understand what the author was attempting to convey or explore with this book. I know what the description said, and what the preface included with the ARC said, but I didn't get any of that from this. At one point, it's described as haunting and beautiful, and I was mostly just sort of mildly confused as to what the ultimate point or message was.
Reading is a highly personal experience, so perhaps my inexperience with the kind of crushing grief that people go through when they lose someone very close to them, especially a child, might mean that I'm just not the person this book was written for (I will admit that I would probably not have picked it up if I were browsing at a bookstore, although I could say that about multiple different ARCs I've read in the past that I ended up loving or became favorites of mine).
First, the book was not, for me, paced terribly well. The entire first section, which is over 100 pages (half the length of the book) is from the point of view of Anna, the mother of a 16 year old boy who has recently died), as she just... goes about her day. And while there are glimpses of her coping with something, we're not even clued in to what her specific situation is until nearly 50 pages in. Even once we know, I wasn't really entirely sure what the author was attempting to achieve except to tell us that grief can really do a number on your life (your marriage, your friendships, your mental state), which is fine, and true, but in this case isn't leading towards anything.
I've read books before which are *just* about the sort of formless void your life becomes when someone you love deeply dies, but in those cases, the descriptions of that day to day life *were* the point of the book and it was made clear from the start. That's not the case with this book, so the first section just made me wonder when something was going to happen.
The next few parts get things moving, and there was a lot of potential here (the rating I gave is in fact, mostly because of this middle section). The book takes place in a future where people are relying more and more on AI, and where many people have an AI in their heads which is like a digital duplicate who makes you more efficient (helps with party planning, pays attention in boring meetings you don't want to pay attention to, etc). With enough time it takes on aspects of your personality and essentially becomes a version of you.
The middle portions of the book, from the point of view of a professor who lectures on the personhood of these AIs, the AI itself, and the boy's best friend who was with him the night he died, are the best parts of the book. They explore the whole concept of an AI taking on enough of the aspects of its "tether" (the person it's a part of) that it loves the things that human person loves just as fiercely as the human does, as well as what happens when the AI is suddenly separated from the person who it took its personality and identity from. This is something that is relevant in a world where AI is getting smarter, and where people are relying on it more and more. The book touches on whether these AI are separate beings, and what will happen if they separate from their original human and start becoming more of an independent entity.
The part from the POV of the girl who was with the kid who died on the night he died is more solidly an examination of grief, and of the sort of second guessing a person does when someone they were close to and loved commits suicide. In the end, everyone who knew him wonders whether there was something they could've said or done to change his actions that night, but especially the girl who was there with him.
If the whole book expanded on and really got into the meat of these three middle parts, it could've been really intriguing. The author's writing is good, and he conveys the grief and regrets and guilt of his characters well, but the story itself just focuses too much on the parts that I didn't fully understand the point of, and the parts that I was truly fascinated by didn't fully explore the ideas that they were putting forth. I give the author credit for putting ideas out there that made me really think about the nature of AI that becomes human enough to experience soul crushing grief, and whether that AI is truly experiencing or experiencing it because it's just a copy of a person.
This had potential, but ultimately, for me, it didn't fully realize that potential. I respected what the author was trying to accomplish (once I figured out what he was trying to accomplish). It's possible that his memoir explores more of these concepts in depth.
To start with, I want to clarify that I totally respect the author's personal lived experience with grief and everything he had to survive and process when his own young child died. He has previously written a memoir about it (which I have not read), and has much more personal experience coping with the loss of a child (or any close loved one) than I do.
However, that being said, this is a 2.5 for me at best (as usual I rounded up). I will preface the review by saying that it's possible I just didn't fully understand what the author was attempting to convey or explore with this book. I know what the description said, and what the preface included with the ARC said, but I didn't get any of that from this. At one point, it's described as haunting and beautiful, and I was mostly just sort of mildly confused as to what the ultimate point or message was.
Reading is a highly personal experience, so perhaps my inexperience with the kind of crushing grief that people go through when they lose someone very close to them, especially a child, might mean that I'm just not the person this book was written for (I will admit that I would probably not have picked it up if I were browsing at a bookstore, although I could say that about multiple different ARCs I've read in the past that I ended up loving or became favorites of mine).
First, the book was not, for me, paced terribly well. The entire first section, which is over 100 pages (half the length of the book) is from the point of view of Anna, the mother of a 16 year old boy who has recently died), as she just... goes about her day. And while there are glimpses of her coping with something, we're not even clued in to what her specific situation is until nearly 50 pages in. Even once we know, I wasn't really entirely sure what the author was attempting to achieve except to tell us that grief can really do a number on your life (your marriage, your friendships, your mental state), which is fine, and true, but in this case isn't leading towards anything.
I've read books before which are *just* about the sort of formless void your life becomes when someone you love deeply dies, but in those cases, the descriptions of that day to day life *were* the point of the book and it was made clear from the start. That's not the case with this book, so the first section just made me wonder when something was going to happen.
The next few parts get things moving, and there was a lot of potential here (the rating I gave is in fact, mostly because of this middle section). The book takes place in a future where people are relying more and more on AI, and where many people have an AI in their heads which is like a digital duplicate who makes you more efficient (helps with party planning, pays attention in boring meetings you don't want to pay attention to, etc). With enough time it takes on aspects of your personality and essentially becomes a version of you.
The middle portions of the book, from the point of view of a professor who lectures on the personhood of these AIs, the AI itself, and the boy's best friend who was with him the night he died, are the best parts of the book. They explore the whole concept of an AI taking on enough of the aspects of its "tether" (the person it's a part of) that it loves the things that human person loves just as fiercely as the human does, as well as what happens when the AI is suddenly separated from the person who it took its personality and identity from. This is something that is relevant in a world where AI is getting smarter, and where people are relying on it more and more. The book touches on whether these AI are separate beings, and what will happen if they separate from their original human and start becoming more of an independent entity.
The part from the POV of the girl who was with the kid who died on the night he died is more solidly an examination of grief, and of the sort of second guessing a person does when someone they were close to and loved commits suicide. In the end, everyone who knew him wonders whether there was something they could've said or done to change his actions that night, but especially the girl who was there with him.
If the whole book expanded on and really got into the meat of these three middle parts, it could've been really intriguing. The author's writing is good, and he conveys the grief and regrets and guilt of his characters well, but the story itself just focuses too much on the parts that I didn't fully understand the point of, and the parts that I was truly fascinated by didn't fully explore the ideas that they were putting forth. I give the author credit for putting ideas out there that made me really think about the nature of AI that becomes human enough to experience soul crushing grief, and whether that AI is truly experiencing or experiencing it because it's just a copy of a person.
This had potential, but ultimately, for me, it didn't fully realize that potential. I respected what the author was trying to accomplish (once I figured out what he was trying to accomplish). It's possible that his memoir explores more of these concepts in depth.
February 17, 2025
As one of the first few people to read and review UnWorld, I did not want to give a negative review. But unfortunately, I did not enjoy this book at all. Conceptually, I think there are a lot of interesting pieces--AI avatars that take on sentience, philosophical discussions about what it means to be human, a searing portrait of grief--but these pieces never coalesced into an interesting or coherent whole.
I read a lot of literary fiction, so I'm no stranger to stream of consciousness, unique narrative choices, or nonlinear plots. But the decision to tell this relatively short book from the point of view of 4 different narrators--something which has worked so well in other similar books--is its greatest downfall. The narrators are, in this order: Anna, a woman grieving the death by suicide of her teenage son, Alex; Cathy, an adjunct professor studying "uploads" (sentient AI copies of the humans they bond with); Aviva, Anna's emancipated upload who finds herself bonding to Cathy in a desperate bid to keep alive; and Sam, Alex's best friend. If it sounds like these narrators connect only tenuously, that is correct.
So much time is spent on various different intellectual tangents--from consciousness to addiction--that I felt the characters were more mouthpieces for philosophy than fully fledged people in their own rights. A book that wants to be character-driven must put its characters in the drivers' seat. And a book that's told in first person ought to have some distinction in character voices. In comp Candy House, for example, each character was developed so sharply that I understood both how they connected to the whole, and also felt for each in the brief time I spent with them. I did not engage with Anna's two parts of the book at all--and felt it really should go through an edit to get those awful two pages about her breasts out of there (women really do not think about our breasts nearly as much as male authors think we do). I felt abruptly thrust into Cathy's section of the book, but did enjoy my time with her for the most part. I thought Aviva's point of view was...fine, I guess? I felt Sam's point of view was strangely Euphoria-esque, but appreciated how it did paint a portrait of Alex, at least.
And that's the thing--I can see what this book is trying to do. I can see how Alex, and grief over him, is meant to tie everything together, how the internalized memory of Alex is meant to be a counterpoint to the externalized (and sentient) memory of Anna that is her upload, Aviva. I can see how AI, and ghosts, and grief, function together. How the dead and departed take on a life all their own, and how only memory keeps them alive. I can see the message about isolation that Greene's trying to put in there--how a lonely teenager can find solace in that which is not real, and crave that reality more than reality itself (the titular UnWorld).
But I think this book spends so much time being artsy and deliberately obtuse for any of this to come through coherently. The above analysis is a result of me, with notes upon notes, trying to make sense of things. There is very little sense of time or place. It could take place in a white room. The characters could be anybody, but not in a "it could be you" sense; more in a "not developed" sense. And so--I do not get the message that this book is going for, and I don't feel it in my bones like I want to.
All this being said--literary fiction is notoriously decisive. Half of my favorite literary novels sit at a cool 3.5 on ŷ. I love artsy-fartsy think pieces that are universally hated. I hate Pulitzer Prize winners that are universally loved. That's both the beauty and the curse of the genre. But my rule to combat that is this: I will only rate below 3 stars if the book is problematic, poorly crafted, or otherwise offensive to my standards of writing and/or humanity. And this book, for all its flaws, is none of those things. It just…not at all a flavor of LitFic that I connected with, and did not come together in a way that felt satisfying to this particular reader.
I was gifted this e-ARC by NetGalley, Knopf, and Jayson Greene in exchange for my honest review.
I read a lot of literary fiction, so I'm no stranger to stream of consciousness, unique narrative choices, or nonlinear plots. But the decision to tell this relatively short book from the point of view of 4 different narrators--something which has worked so well in other similar books--is its greatest downfall. The narrators are, in this order: Anna, a woman grieving the death by suicide of her teenage son, Alex; Cathy, an adjunct professor studying "uploads" (sentient AI copies of the humans they bond with); Aviva, Anna's emancipated upload who finds herself bonding to Cathy in a desperate bid to keep alive; and Sam, Alex's best friend. If it sounds like these narrators connect only tenuously, that is correct.
So much time is spent on various different intellectual tangents--from consciousness to addiction--that I felt the characters were more mouthpieces for philosophy than fully fledged people in their own rights. A book that wants to be character-driven must put its characters in the drivers' seat. And a book that's told in first person ought to have some distinction in character voices. In comp Candy House, for example, each character was developed so sharply that I understood both how they connected to the whole, and also felt for each in the brief time I spent with them. I did not engage with Anna's two parts of the book at all--and felt it really should go through an edit to get those awful two pages about her breasts out of there (women really do not think about our breasts nearly as much as male authors think we do). I felt abruptly thrust into Cathy's section of the book, but did enjoy my time with her for the most part. I thought Aviva's point of view was...fine, I guess? I felt Sam's point of view was strangely Euphoria-esque, but appreciated how it did paint a portrait of Alex, at least.
And that's the thing--I can see what this book is trying to do. I can see how Alex, and grief over him, is meant to tie everything together, how the internalized memory of Alex is meant to be a counterpoint to the externalized (and sentient) memory of Anna that is her upload, Aviva. I can see how AI, and ghosts, and grief, function together. How the dead and departed take on a life all their own, and how only memory keeps them alive. I can see the message about isolation that Greene's trying to put in there--how a lonely teenager can find solace in that which is not real, and crave that reality more than reality itself (the titular UnWorld).
But I think this book spends so much time being artsy and deliberately obtuse for any of this to come through coherently. The above analysis is a result of me, with notes upon notes, trying to make sense of things. There is very little sense of time or place. It could take place in a white room. The characters could be anybody, but not in a "it could be you" sense; more in a "not developed" sense. And so--I do not get the message that this book is going for, and I don't feel it in my bones like I want to.
All this being said--literary fiction is notoriously decisive. Half of my favorite literary novels sit at a cool 3.5 on ŷ. I love artsy-fartsy think pieces that are universally hated. I hate Pulitzer Prize winners that are universally loved. That's both the beauty and the curse of the genre. But my rule to combat that is this: I will only rate below 3 stars if the book is problematic, poorly crafted, or otherwise offensive to my standards of writing and/or humanity. And this book, for all its flaws, is none of those things. It just…not at all a flavor of LitFic that I connected with, and did not come together in a way that felt satisfying to this particular reader.
I was gifted this e-ARC by NetGalley, Knopf, and Jayson Greene in exchange for my honest review.
February 23, 2025
Thanks to Netgalleyfor the ARC! With AI such a right now topic, I was sucked in by the premise for this book. There are self-driving cars and “uploads,� which are like AI chip beings people can purchase and have help make their lives easier. I’m not completely sure I understand how they work, but I could see this being a real thing in the future. Anna has an upload named Aviva by her son that actually some how leaves her and finds another person, Cathy, who has been waiting for a free upload to discover her. This part of the story alone really interested me but also confused me as the way it was all happening wasn’t really clear. Then add to that Anna and Rick’s son Alex inexplicably falling to his death in front of his best friend Sam. No one seems to know if he fell or jumped, but Aviva has asked to remove herself from Anna shortly after. Everyone is grieving, and it all seems to venter around the rights and involvement of uploads. While the AI aspect and characters in here were interesting (i could truly picture Alex and grieve for him because i have known kids in my teaching career who were similar), I felt the story fell a little short as there were too many questions left unanswered and too many blurry areas of how all this AI and uploading stuff works. Overall, it was an interesting read, but I’d rather read it once it has been workshopped more to fill up the gray and empty areas FYI some profanity, talk of drug use and alcohol use/addiction in adults and teens, some sexual references (that seemed oddly timed and no necessarily needed)
March 5, 2025
This is a little slow moving, but a beautiful concept-a series of interconnected stories that examine the humanity of AI. While some of the tales were more compelling than others (and some questions are unanswered), there is a solid through-line that made for a lovely story.
This is the softest sci-fi ever. For the majority of the book we follow humans as they grapple with loss. But we also learn how loss might effect an AI. Since we humans must process our pain against the inundation of thousands of stimuli (necessitating that it be compartmentalized) an AI would have no such filters and might be more traumatized. As the book eloquently notes, "a mind was eternal, unforgiving; a brain was a soft, plump cushion. Loss needed a brain." Without one, loss to an AI is pure suffering.
Fundamentally, this was an intriguing premise for me personally to explore, I loved watching this careful study of how one act reverberates throughout different states of consciousness, different types of people. If you're looking for closer examination of how this AI came to be and the specifics of how it works--keep looking. This is a book about emotions, not about wiring. And I was A-Ok with that.
Trigger warning. This was written by an author who has lost a child and deals with the loss a child. It shows in the writing, which captures grief immaculately in all its many forms. It's gut wrenching to read as a parent. If you're a parent who has lost a child it might be too much.
Thank you to the author and NetGalley for granting me the opportunity to read this in exchange for an honest review.
This is the softest sci-fi ever. For the majority of the book we follow humans as they grapple with loss. But we also learn how loss might effect an AI. Since we humans must process our pain against the inundation of thousands of stimuli (necessitating that it be compartmentalized) an AI would have no such filters and might be more traumatized. As the book eloquently notes, "a mind was eternal, unforgiving; a brain was a soft, plump cushion. Loss needed a brain." Without one, loss to an AI is pure suffering.
Fundamentally, this was an intriguing premise for me personally to explore, I loved watching this careful study of how one act reverberates throughout different states of consciousness, different types of people. If you're looking for closer examination of how this AI came to be and the specifics of how it works--keep looking. This is a book about emotions, not about wiring. And I was A-Ok with that.
Trigger warning. This was written by an author who has lost a child and deals with the loss a child. It shows in the writing, which captures grief immaculately in all its many forms. It's gut wrenching to read as a parent. If you're a parent who has lost a child it might be too much.
Thank you to the author and NetGalley for granting me the opportunity to read this in exchange for an honest review.
January 14, 2025
As the first person to read and review this on GR, I would have liked to give this book more stars. I'm sure other readers might. For me, though, the ratings are meant first and foremost to reflect personal enjoyment of the book. And so ...
It stands to mention that there is a lot to like about this novel. It's clever, insightful, emotionally intelligent, and well written. The AI themed plot with tethering, untethering, and contemplating personhood of entities that aren't technically persons and are based largely on the persons they are tethered to, that's all very in. Very Severance, actually.
And yet, where Severance had me completely enthralled and excitedly glued to the TV screen, UnWorld didn't have the same effect. it's odd to not quite emotionally connect to such an emotionally expansive novel. But I think that's exactly where it lost me - UnWorld was just too deeply interior of a book. it read like a debut novel that got too hung up on being literary and too wrapped up in the microanalysis of its characters. A bit exhaustively so.
Perhaps it's the sort of thing you have to be in the mood for. This isn't the case of an underwhelming novel so much as one that didn't quite work for this particular reader. User mileage may vary. Thanks Netgalley.
It stands to mention that there is a lot to like about this novel. It's clever, insightful, emotionally intelligent, and well written. The AI themed plot with tethering, untethering, and contemplating personhood of entities that aren't technically persons and are based largely on the persons they are tethered to, that's all very in. Very Severance, actually.
And yet, where Severance had me completely enthralled and excitedly glued to the TV screen, UnWorld didn't have the same effect. it's odd to not quite emotionally connect to such an emotionally expansive novel. But I think that's exactly where it lost me - UnWorld was just too deeply interior of a book. it read like a debut novel that got too hung up on being literary and too wrapped up in the microanalysis of its characters. A bit exhaustively so.
Perhaps it's the sort of thing you have to be in the mood for. This isn't the case of an underwhelming novel so much as one that didn't quite work for this particular reader. User mileage may vary. Thanks Netgalley.
February 15, 2025
While reading this book I felt adrift in so many ways. Trying to understand the death of a teen from the perspective of several different people who care about him is bound to be an emotional experience Family and friends grapple with the question: Suicide or accident? and the book works its way to an answer, but the journey to reach a conclusion is unsettling to say the least. The narrative is divided into sections each told by someone close to Alex. The reader is plunged into the aftermath of Alex’s death with little preparation and must tread water as you figure out what is happening. Two factors add to the confusion � Alex’s emotional issues which he expresses ad infinitum and long past the point of interesting me. And the futuristic concept of the “upload,� a digital entity composed of the sense memories of a human tether.. That was key to the story but only made clear as the narrative reached its weird conclusion.
I can’t decide if I was not clever enough to follow all the twists, or the book needed tightening to make the plot easier to follow. What I do know for sure is that the characters did not engage me enough to give me a satisfying reading experience.
I can’t decide if I was not clever enough to follow all the twists, or the book needed tightening to make the plot easier to follow. What I do know for sure is that the characters did not engage me enough to give me a satisfying reading experience.
April 13, 2025
Thank you to NetGalley and the Publisher for the E-ARC. 3.5 ⭐️
This literary sci-fi/dystopia imagines a world where you can upload your consciousness, which can then experience moments you aren’t physically present for via sensors and chips. Only, the Uploads have gained sentience, and some have gained “emancipation,� where they are cut off from their tether body.
The story is around the death of a boy named Alex, and cycles through the various beings that surrounded him in life, and up to his death.
I found a lot of the characters to read sort of the same. Which makes sense for some, but not for others. The demeanors described for some characters didn’t really gel with the internal monologue(s) they delivered. That said, I enjoyed the book and its cast (except maybe Rick but we never get in his head anyway).
It’s a story about how we carry grief and try to find meaning in death. About anxiety being mistaken for quirkiness in youth.
This literary sci-fi/dystopia imagines a world where you can upload your consciousness, which can then experience moments you aren’t physically present for via sensors and chips. Only, the Uploads have gained sentience, and some have gained “emancipation,� where they are cut off from their tether body.
The story is around the death of a boy named Alex, and cycles through the various beings that surrounded him in life, and up to his death.
I found a lot of the characters to read sort of the same. Which makes sense for some, but not for others. The demeanors described for some characters didn’t really gel with the internal monologue(s) they delivered. That said, I enjoyed the book and its cast (except maybe Rick but we never get in his head anyway).
It’s a story about how we carry grief and try to find meaning in death. About anxiety being mistaken for quirkiness in youth.
March 6, 2025
There was so much going for this book. It's curious and intellectual about the topic of AI, asking us to think deeply about what makes humans human. Can AI ever become human? Is human affectation truly irreplicable? Can fact-checking "uploads" ever come close to unburdening us of the weight of memory? Though conceptually engaging, the book got lost in its own web of ruminations. I almost wish the plot focused on a single narrative voice, Sam or Aviva perhaps, to buttress us to the novel's most foundational ideas of death, anxiety, connection, and ennui. It would have been more rewarding if we had gotten a chance to see the fullness of Sam or Aviva's private worlds rather than try to balance the four unequal (and often repetitive) perspectives we got. The ending, as a result, seemed to deflate rather than bloom.
Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf for the ARC!
Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf for the ARC!
February 25, 2025
3/5 stars - This was a somewhat dreamy, somewhat ethereal, and mostly melancholic exploration of implanted AI (one in particular) and the effects on those around them. The structure of the book was that each chapter provides the perspective of a different person connected to the AI Implant, Aviva, but sometimes this led to the novel itself being more disjointed and difficult to pick up the thread of the plot line. Ultimately, while it was about this very real emerging technology (see Starlink, yikes), it was also about mental health and social connection, especially Alex's struggles with anxiety and his death by suicide. Apart from those specifics, the book gave me the overall feeling of "After Yang" the movie, which was melancholic but beautiful.
March 1, 2025
3.5 stars, rounded up to 4 stars.
I finished the book about 5 hours ago, and I still am not quite sure what I feel about it. While reading, I constantly felt like I was missing something, not totally grasping the concept of a sentient AI tethered to a host. As the story continued, things got a little clearer and more in focus for me. By the end of the book, I was sad, mostly sad that it was over.
This was interesting, made me think, and forced me to consider ideas that I'd never thought about before. I think some folks will eat this up, and others won't want to work that hard to keep up.
Would I read more from the author? Yes.
I received a complimentary copy of the novel from the publisher and NetGalley, and my review is being left freely.
I finished the book about 5 hours ago, and I still am not quite sure what I feel about it. While reading, I constantly felt like I was missing something, not totally grasping the concept of a sentient AI tethered to a host. As the story continued, things got a little clearer and more in focus for me. By the end of the book, I was sad, mostly sad that it was over.
This was interesting, made me think, and forced me to consider ideas that I'd never thought about before. I think some folks will eat this up, and others won't want to work that hard to keep up.
Would I read more from the author? Yes.
I received a complimentary copy of the novel from the publisher and NetGalley, and my review is being left freely.
March 5, 2025
I found this story was an ambitious attempt to explore both grief and technology, using AI uploads.
This is all told by four different narrators grappling with a teen’s tragic death.
The premise really hooked me at first, but as I kept reading, I found the story started to feel a bit scattered, and also the characters seemed more like abstract ideas rather than real, relatable people.
Instead of delivering a smooth, emotionally engaging narrative, the book came off as a bit showcasey with ideas that never quite came together.
While I was really excited by the clever idea behind it, I kinda wished it had been bit more cohesive and down-to-earth.
Thank you so much to NetGalley & Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor
This is all told by four different narrators grappling with a teen’s tragic death.
The premise really hooked me at first, but as I kept reading, I found the story started to feel a bit scattered, and also the characters seemed more like abstract ideas rather than real, relatable people.
Instead of delivering a smooth, emotionally engaging narrative, the book came off as a bit showcasey with ideas that never quite came together.
While I was really excited by the clever idea behind it, I kinda wished it had been bit more cohesive and down-to-earth.
Thank you so much to NetGalley & Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor
March 23, 2025
loved the premise of this book- an upload of yourself in your consciousness. This is not an idea I’ve come across yet in the sci-fi genre but that could just be me. How successful was the author in getting his idea across?
The story is split between 4 different groups: Sam’s family whom we don’t spend much time with, Anna and husband Rick, Alex’s parents, Catherine, Alex and Aviva- Anna’s “upload, with Sam.
The main point of the story is Alex’s death and the effects of his death on all of the remaining characters, including Aviva, Anna’s upload.
The upload idea is unique to me and was well defined! Thank you NetGalley for this ARC!
The story is split between 4 different groups: Sam’s family whom we don’t spend much time with, Anna and husband Rick, Alex’s parents, Catherine, Alex and Aviva- Anna’s “upload, with Sam.
The main point of the story is Alex’s death and the effects of his death on all of the remaining characters, including Aviva, Anna’s upload.
The upload idea is unique to me and was well defined! Thank you NetGalley for this ARC!
March 4, 2025
Conceptually, I think this book is interesting but the execution fell a little flat for me. While there are parts of this book that I found interesting and thought provoking, the writing style was not my favorite. I am very interested in AI and what our future with AI looks like so whenever I see a book like this come along, I am excited to give it a read. This one was just ok for me.
Thank you NetGalley and Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor | Knopf for access to the ARC in exchange for an honest review.
Thank you NetGalley and Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage, and Anchor | Knopf for access to the ARC in exchange for an honest review.
March 25, 2025
I received my ARC from Netgalley
UnWorld is a trippy mix of grief, memory, and AI, set in a near-future where the lines between human and machine get super blurry. The concept is wild and definitely makes you think, especially about identity and loss. But the abstract style made it a little hard to fully connect with the characters—it felt more distant than emotional at times. Still, it’s a unique, brain-bending read if you’re into reflective, futuristic fiction.
UnWorld is a trippy mix of grief, memory, and AI, set in a near-future where the lines between human and machine get super blurry. The concept is wild and definitely makes you think, especially about identity and loss. But the abstract style made it a little hard to fully connect with the characters—it felt more distant than emotional at times. Still, it’s a unique, brain-bending read if you’re into reflective, futuristic fiction.
March 30, 2025
I think "UnWorld" would have resonated more with me as a short story. The slow narrative and characters didn't develop enough to make a lasting impact. The intricate plot made it hard to follow any single thread, and ultimately, not much stood out to me from the story. That being said, there are some beautifully written chapters in this novel.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the arc.
2.75*
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the arc.
2.75*
Want to read
February 8, 2025A huge thank you to the author and publisher for providing an e-ARC via Netgalley. This does not affect my opinion regarding the book.
February 24, 2025
This just really hit for me. The way I was so engrossed and fully in the minds of these characters and stayed up late to finish this speaks for itself. Beautifully literary with imaginative speculative plot points. I need time to gather my thoughts but this one will definitely hold a special place in my heart.
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
Can't find what you're looking for?
Get help and learn more about the design.