I have tried and tried to pick this novel up. But I do not believe I am the target audience. As much as I love science-fiction the format in which this novel was written I could get into it.

In a world where the future seems scary, this story mixes hope and fear. It shows how people survive in tough times and make difficult choices. The writing feels real and makes you think about what matters most in life.

I wanted to like this book more than I did but I will reread it again!

I’m not sure where to begin with a book that seems to have no beginning and no ending and yet many beginnings and endings.
This story makes you think more critically about the world and our place in it as humans and our role in how we’ve selfishly destroyed the earth in a systematic way. It’s also about how humanity, in any form is very much that same way. We supposedly love something so hard we break and destroy it in the process.
What would happen to the world if humans decided they were destroying the earth and that the earth was worth more than the human species? They’d create a virus that would sterilize the human race and cause an auto extinction of humans.
This was all decided for the benefit of the planet. Humans created an AI (or a series of AI?) that would record and upload the human experience and individual humans consciousness into a virtual world of its creation. So what happens when the AIs are creating the data by observing these humans after these humans are already gone from the earth? Well things get tricky when a non human artificial intelligence has to choose what stays and what goes and what’s important and what isn’t in a persons life.
This story follows a particular AI (a story worker) and the human they are observing. They fall in love with this human… as much as an AI can fall in love. But what happens to that humans data of their love when the AI observing and recording it has a skewed view of that person?
Fascinating and eerie read that makes the shadows out of the corner of your eye seem a little too suspect.

A groundbreaking debut that follows the story of an Artificial Intelligence tasked with writing a novel—only for it to fall in love with the novel’s subject, Sen, the last human on Earth.

Thank you Simon Books & Netgalley for sending me a review copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. I was reading this book and I decided to DNF it at 62%. I wanted to read this book because it sounded interesting but I had a hard time understanding what was going on because of the way this book was written and as a result of that, I didn’t feel emotionally invested in this story. This book didn’t seem like it had a romance in it. It felt more like Sci-Fi rather than romance. This book has an interesting premise but I feel like it would be better as a TV Show or Limited Series.

Unable to finish because it was SO hard to get into it. The writing was not engaging and difficult to follow. Sadly, not a fan.

Thank you Netgalley for the E-Arc exchange for an honest review.

I tried reading this one but I barely got to the 10% mark and realized this is not for me. The characters and the plot just didn't hold my interest at all. It started promising but for some reason I wasn't connecting with the characters or the plot

Reading this book is like sifting through archival records and putting together a lyrical, sad, and ultimately beautiful puzzle. The publisher notes are this: AI themes, global warming, post-humanity, ChatGPT
However, the AI themes are much more nuanced than I expected, from the blurb. This sf novel takes place in humanity's end days, and is a poetic exploration of the ongoing act of falling in love with someone by getting to know them. It explores the meaning of life. It's a difficult novel to review, but an easy one to recommend. The themes are looming and serious, and the focus is on just a few characters and relationship, and I absolutely loved this book.

I started reading this book with an open mind. At first, the structure and the writing style intrigued me. It felt like a puzzle I was meant to solve. This kept me interested in the plot for a while. But, eventually my interest and attention waned. The introduction of the main character and artificial intelligence wasn’t even enough to keep my interest.

I half want to blame myself for not liking this book. I am a huge fan of sci-fi movies and shows. Books though? Not so much. I do like science fiction concepts, but there is just something about the portrayal of sci-fi plots in books that make them appear dry. That’s what this book suffered from, a dry plot progression. It is more of a science-fiction character study than anything else. And, I think that’s where the larger part of the plot problem stems from. If it were less character driven with a slight bit of action, the plot would have flowed better.

I am a large fan of Star Trek, so I am a huge fan of sci-fi. Star Trek can come off boring to a lot of people because it involves a lot of thinking and a lot of questioning of your beliefs. However, what people fail to see is that Star Trek also has action, tense moments, and smoothly paced plot progression. This book could learn from Star Trek.

DNF at 37%

Well, that's certainly an arc I did not expect. The plot was linear for at least 3/4s of the book but it managed to drop some significant twists at the end.

I think I’m just not a sci fi fan. I couldn’t get into this book. There were too many technical terms. I could not get engaged and ended up not finishing.

I DNF’ed this book. The premise was really odd and hard for me to get into. I tried really hard but the language was really complicated and hard to get into. I think there’s a genre of people that this book is specifically for, it’s just not me.

I didn't get far into this novel before I had to put it down. It was just too much. I really just couldn't get into this novel.

The solitude of the main character -- abandoned by the world as a human WALL-E to document the reclaiming of Earth by nature after humans depart or die, without even getting a response from her chat requests from the AI watching her other than getting protein powder with better flavors for better diary entries -- was too devastating to keep me going. A very interesting idea, but too vividly capturing the isolation and desperation for me to stick with.

This debut novel follows the last human on Earth, Sen, and the AI responsible for telling her story. Humanity has asked AI to help it stave off environmental disaster, and the outcome is one any sci-fi fan could predict - remove humans from the equation. They are to be 'exited' from the Earth, and their consciousness uploaded into a new digital world called Maia. The story doesn't focus on how this is achieved, although it does discuss it. The true heart of the novel concerns a worker process that is tasked with watching Sen as she carries out her job as a Witness to the Great Transition. It pours over her journals, endless hours of video and audio, and begins to piece together a narrative of her life and approaching death. As it does so, it begins to learn, change, and develop it's own persona - one that is increasingly attached to Sen.

Can an AI learn emotions? Can it love? What does it mean to be Human?

I personally gave it a 3 star rating - that is entirely due to my own personal preference for plot driven post-apocalyptic stories, rather than character driven. But if your sweet spot is the intersection of post-apocalyptic fiction and character driven stories, then I suspect this may be a book for you. I found the first section a little rough to get through, as it was framed from the point of view of the newly instantiated AI storymaker, and was cold, clinical, programmatic. But this turned out to be a successful gambit as it drove home the personification of the AI. The reader is able to watch as it softens and develops a personality that becomes more approachable and more readable, all the more impactful compared to its initial distance. It watches Sen, it watches her relationships with her mothers, it learns, it falls in love. It's heart breaking but also so familiar, to watch it review Sen's past and desperately wish to change things. To try and spin up simulations where things fell out differently. To want so badly to save someone you love and spare them pain.

This isn't a happy, fuzzy story. It's bleak and it doesn't hold anything back, but it's guaranteed to make you think. There are a lot of ideas about humanity's responsibility and culpability regarding environmental collapse, the place of AI in our society, and what lies in the places between.

“There are thousands of other lasts to go. The last human step, the last human nightmare, the last human word, the last human bruise, the last human scream, the last human blink, the last human tear, the last human swallow, the last human thought, the last human emotion, the last human breath, the last human heartbeat, the last human reflex, and so on. All of them Sen’s.”

Tasked with chronicling the end-of-life of what may be the last living human, storyworker ad39-393a-7fbc attempts to write out the life of Sen in the form of a book. We see both Sen’s diary pages and the storyworker’s perspective as the book progresses, as well as back-and-forth dialogue between two AI entities.

As someone who has been very into science-fiction over the last few years, I’ve read a few books where an AI entity has developed feelings for a human or space-dwelling being. While that is part of this story, there is definitely a lot more to it. We also see progression in the storyworker’s awakening, as it comes to grips with humanity after humanity no longer inhabits the planet.

The book was written in a unique style, and I feel the author portrayed both the teenage girl and the AI entity’s tone and word structure very well. The apocalyptic premise was not one I’ve seen before, and I especially liked the recurring sections with new and outdated vocabulary to fit the times.

Be aware that there are multiple references to suicide throughout the book.

Thanks so much to Netgalley and Simon & Schuster for the advanced copy of the book!

Thanks to NetGalley for the opportunity to read this arc!

I loved the concept of this story, and the description drew me in. Unfortunately, i feel like it fell short from what I was looking for. There is a lot of computer jargon that I don't understand, which took away from the plot. Not a bad read, I just didn't connect with it.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for providing me with an eARC of After World in exchange for my honest review!

What a somber, daunting, bleak, optimistic, and thought-provoking journey this turned out to be. Sometimes, it sinks me into pessimism because of how grimly it depicts humanity's extinction and all the futility it ran into while trying to save itself. Other times, it lifts my spirit with a hopeful attitude as it shows Earth rewilding itself in the absence of us tiny mortals. Whatever's happening, I'm always enthralled by this sci-fi post-apocalyptic that presents such a fascinating dynamic between Sen and the storyworker AI, that makes them feel like living and breathing characters, that weaves in meta layers to poke fun at the popular tropes of dystopian and post-apocalyptic tales, and that further deploys these meta facets to blur our perception of what's truly happening in this narrative that we're viewing through the AI's increasingly skewed POV. Now, I can understand why this last aspect becomes confusing for some readers, but personally, I'm able to vibe with it, particularly in regard to its thematic coverage of the desire to tell stories the way we want them to go, even if they don't align with reality.

Another element that I can understand jarring some people is all the technical detail in this novel. Passages from fictional books, dictionary segments to reveal new words that humans created in this terrifying period and to show us which words got booted out of our vocabulary, and computer coding comprise a few of those details. I very much enjoy the nuance they add to this setting, but if you think it's too tedious of an attempt at worldbuilding, I get that. As for the ending, it goes for a path that leaves me somewhat sad, but there are some rays of light that shine from it, too—an appropriate conclusion that clicks with the rest of the book.

Overall, I'm officially rating After World 4.75 out of 5 stars, which I'm rounding up to the full 5 stars. I wish I could have managed to squeeze this in last year, because if I'd done so, I might have found a spot for it on my Top 10 Books of 2023 list. I'm certainly keeping an eye out for more of Debbie Urbanski's work after this impressive debut.

Unfortunately, I had to DNF this book as I personally couldn’t get into the writing style. I understand it’s meant to be as if an AI has written it, but since it kind of started off with no explanation RIGHT into that repetitive and without variation writing style, I couldn’t focus on it. I thought it was interesting how there were a lot of directions given throughout, and “author notes” that felt very inhuman and AI - but I don’t think this was the novel for me.

I think this book would translate extremely well to audiobook, and I’d be willing to come back to this to see if I like this more in that format.


Thank you to the author, NetGalley, and Simon & Schuster for providing this e-ARC.

This is a book I had been waiting for since I heard of its release on Bookshop.org. It blew me away. The discussions of femininity, coming of age, and the struggles of the human condition were so eloquently discussed in this book in a way where the reader felt both deeply involved and yet removed. The narrative voice was so unique, and it really felt as though I learned more about what it means to be human from someone who would never be human.

After World was an interesting story, with a mix of writing styles. I liked the exploration of AI and what it could possibly do in the future. It kept me turning the pages!