SOJALS rating:

Mediocre (2/5)

I first read this in March 1998.

In the future, maybe one hundred years, robot technology has advanced enough to give AIs their own bodies. So San Francisco is teaming with humans rubbing neck to neck with robots from the earliest tin-can generations to the new Ultra humanoids. But AIs still don't have the same rights as humans. They're the new immigrants, used and cast away.

And meanwhile, a tribe of violent primitives scrounge a living on the castoffs of society eschewing all technology. However, the tribe's young shaman Ouija is growing increasingly uncertain about the righteousness of their ways. He's also beginning to doubt the honesty and sincerity of his magical guru Louie Zoo.

Carly Nolan was once a young attorney at the start of brilliant corporate career. But that all went wrong, she was a pawn sacrificed by malevolent "mainframes", the immensely powerful AIs that run every facet of the modern world . Now she's on the run, almost living on the street, her only companions Pr. Spinner, an antique "fembot" and Saint Download, an even older mechanical, and neither of her companions trust humans.

Now she's about to meet Ouija who hates everything she stands for.

But Carly has one special secret - an "archetype" in her brain, and in the world of the future web, an archetype is a powerful tool and it may be just what she needs to swing the odds, if she can only learn to control it.

Ho ho, what a romp through cyberpunk world. Well done, Lisa. I guess I should read the prequel "Arachne" also. This was great fun. Mason has created an entertaining world where independent robots and less privileged humans are exploited mercilessly by the vastly more powerful mainframe AIs.