This was either too small for the fun big idea, or just lacking something that would have kept me caring more. It had potential and I can see a market for it, but it's be hard for me to pitch it as a hardcover

This debut novella from Scottish author Elaine Gallagher introduces Alice, a lone human, wandering the world through wormhole gates capitalizing on her inherent curiosity and trading on information. The book opens with her purchasing an ancient data core that is something more than the vendor understands. What she discovers is a sentient being embedded as the AI command center of a civilization ending weapon. What follows is a chase novel, a story of war and a commentary on “toxic idea complexes” that lead to war. And in the end it’s something I’m still thinking about and I would love to see a longer story featuring Alice and her experiences.

A big thanks to NetGalley and Tor for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Wow this was much shorter than I was anticipating.

Unexplored Remnants is a science fiction novel about an A.I. waging war on a future it doesn't understand. Alice is the last human. Street-smart and bad-ass. After discovering what appears to be an A.I. personality in an antique data core, Alice decides to locate its home somewhere in the stargate network. At the very least, she wants to lay him to rest because, as it turns out, she’s stumbled upon the sentient control unit of a deadly ancient weapon system. Convincing the ghost of a raging warrior that the war is over is about as hard as it sounds, which is to say, it’s near-impossible. But, if Alice fails and the control unit falls into the wrong hands, the balance of power her side of the Milky Way could fall apart. As Alice ports throughout the known universe seeking answers and aid she will be faced with impossible choice after impossible choice and the growing might of an unstoppable foe.

Overall, this book was a decent. It was just a little too short for my taste. I wish it was longer.

Unexploded Remnants is a novella exploring a number of themes around AI, sentience and personhood as well as war. I thought that Elaine Gallagher made a valiant effort to create a science fiction story exploring these themes that didn't feel like a rehashing of many other science fiction books that have attempted to do similar things. I liked the 'chase' element of the story and I thought that the ultimate conclusion was both interesting and poignant. I think the fact that this is a singular novella means that the ideas and character development are, by necessity, distilled down into something very concise which has it's pros and cons. I would perhaps have liked a bit more character development from the protagonist but I likewise felt like the book was impeccably paced. I will keep this on my list of books to recommend that explore AI for certain.
I received a free digital review copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, all opinions are my own.

Amazing adventure with a fantastic main character and supporting cast! It's hard to build a world this complicated and compelling without it being confusing, especially in such a short book, but Gallagher does a spectacular job of creating tons of different unique worlds and cultures.

This novella was a fun, fast read. Fun enough that I was sucked in despite distractions around me for most of the story and feel very fondly toward Alice, our protagonist; fast enough that I wish it was a whole novel!

There are so many elements here that I'm really into: peeks into the complexities of alien societies, artificial intelligences with personalities, a clever archaeologist/thief dodging pursuers and trying to do what's right and calling in her queer situationship partner to help. And Alice is trans! She fell through the looking glass of space and remade herself across multiple lifetimes, she's the last remaining denizen of a self-destructed Earth. I love her! But I wanted to love her more. I wanted to love Bugs, her relatively low-tech AI, and Gunn, an the AI weapon who used to be a soldier, and Tegral, the charming alien catgirl pirate who wants Alice to someday settle down. This book read to me like a (very well-told) recounting of a TTRPG session, and I found myself wishing I'd just been at the table experiencing it myself.

Maybe that's just my taste! I like to feel false security for a while before it's betrayed, I like to spend enough time with characters that they become friends whose lives and hearts I fear for. That didn't fully happen for me with this book, but the glimmer of it was there, and it was a good time.

This novella had some interesting concepts surrounding information/data/thoughts. I was only able to parse them in context, so an in-depth analysis has not yet coalesced in my mind. That being said, the concept of Earth needing to be quarantined from the larger universe because of our toxically invasive concepts on personhood, gender, sexuality, and finances/commerce was interesting.

More, the idea that we'd eventually blown ourselves to kingdom come because of the inability of many people to handle personal responsibility and thought has become a saddeningly more likely scenario these days.

The most problematic thing for me was the facile way the author handled convincing Gunn to abandon his pain and accept rest if not redemption. But, I liked the novella overall and do recommend the read.

I read this last night when I couldn't get to sleep. Not necessarily something to encourage sleeping, mind you.

Millions of years ago, gates were seeded throughout the galaxy allowing easy jumps between planets. Alice discovered one in 1968 on Earth and ever since has found adventure. In a bazaar she discovers an antique data core linked to the Unexploded Remnants (paper from Tordotcom) of an ancient war between two planets. When she awakens the core, she finds numerous groups after the device. All she wants is to rescue the personality locked in the device, but doing so means going to a vault on the device's home world, while being attacked by people with evil designs on the powerful device. Elaine Gallagher tells a hard-to-put-down tale that deserves many sequels.

Unexploded Remnants is a short but interesting look into a (nearly) post-human universe. At first, I was pretty lost, I'll admit. But the backstory of how Alice got to be the last human is explained, so I felt much better about the whole thing. Anyway, she finds this... sentient soldier trapped in some kind of object? This part confuses me a little, but I went with it. And she is trying to protect it from falling into the wrong hands, so she skips... not town, let's say she goes on the run.


The story is cool- I loved the backstory we got about how Alice got to be a lone human in an intergalactic marketplace. I loved the story of the soldier, and how he'd had to make some truly terrible choices, and how he'd been through just as much as Alice had. I just wish we'd gotten more of all of these things! It posited some great questions, and certainly wasn't boring, but I think this is one of the rare cases where more pages would definitely have made this go from good to great. Still, it's a quick, fun adventure through the universe, so it's still absolutely worth it. Just know you'll probably want more when it's done. There are a few concepts that I feel would have been excellent with just a bit more fleshing out, but I still enjoyed it anyway.

Bottom Line: An action packed adventure with a very intriguing main character, I just wish it had all been a little more, in the end.

Alice is the last surviving human in the universe, and she's on the run. When she was exploring the Alta Sidoie market, she found something in a scrap collector's booth that was far more than met the eye. Unfortunately for her, she wasn't the only one who recognized it. Now she's being chased throughout an intergalactic portal network by a warmongering alien race that wants to use the weapon-controlling AI she found to attack anyone who has ever wronged them.

Alice fell into the portal network by chance, an accidental bit of access from a world that wasn't supposed to be able to connect. She was observed by the Archive, one of the unifying forces for good in the universe, and sent back to report on humanity as a whole. Eventually Earth's conflicts grew to the point where the Archive opted to quarantine the world instead of attempting to keep helping, leaving humans to their own slow self-destruction. Alice, however, was allowed to keep performing work for them. Now alongside her virtual assistant, Bugs, she's employed as a blend of archaeologist and grave robber for the Archive, trading in favors and information as well as artifacts.

Alice has her hands on the key to one of the most powerful remaining weapons in the galaxy, and the enemy is closing in. The AI is a threat to everyone, but Alice is determined to save Gunn, the being trapped in the heart of the artifact. She doesn't know who she can fully trust, but she's going to do whatever it takes to free him.

Elaine Gallagher has packed a tremendous amount of detail into a very small package with Unexploded Remnants. This novella is fast-paced and a hell of a lot of fun. World hopping action and clever characters reminiscent of Indiana Jones, Lara Croft, and Evelyn O'Connor make for a quick, entertaining read that still manages to provide commentary on weapons of war and how we treat soldiers.

My utmost thanks to Tor and NetGalley for an eARC in exchange for a fair review. Unexploded Remnants is out today, 6/25/24. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

This review originally appeared here: https://swordsoftheancients.com/2024/06/25/unexploded-remnants-a-review/

This one was fun! I really liked that we were just dropped into this world and got to discover everything through some truly fascinating world building. I appreciated the trans rep in Alice! Some of the pacing was all over the place though, and all the Bugs Bunny stuff was a bit much for me. Still, a good time!

Fun, and fast paced. It’s very short so I sat down and read it in one sitting. I found it was try to cram too much into too little space. Here’s flash after flash of alien world with no detail, Might be interesting to see more of one of the world in a longer book. It’s a short novella and detours into a side story of why humans are extinct except for the main character who has been decanted into a body that has lasted far past human lifespans. It needs to either be edited down a bit to get rid of the fragments extended into a longer novel. It’s not bad, it just isn’t great either. It’s good enough I’m going to mark the author to follow on Goodreads. I did like the energy of the story. I’d try something else by this author to see if a sophomore effort improves on the promise of this first book.

I was intrigued by the premise of this story, but ultimately the execution didn't do much for me. The writing style combined with the absolutely dominating amount of exposition in such a short novella really slowed the story down a lot. Honestly, if this story had more pages to work with, the exposition wouldn't break the story up as much and I think that the ideas would flesh out pretty well. Though, this also would need a good edit because the amount of dialogue, and things that occur that don't push the plot forward or expand on character, is shockingly high. There are just a lot of little things about this that didn't end up working, but I think given more space for the ideas to breathe this could have been a lot better.

In “Unexploded Remnants” by Elaine Gallagher, Alice, the last human and a street-smart survivor, discovers an A.I. personality in an antique data core that turns out to be the control unit of a powerful ancient weapon system. As she attempts to find the A.I.’s origin or lay it to rest, she inadvertently unleashes a warrior A.I. still fighting a long-ended war, forcing her to confront an impossible choice against an unstoppable adversary.

I’m very conflicted about whether or not to post this review. The author seems to misgender one of their own characters in this and it’s really throwing me off and makes it very hard for me to get past that. But in the end, while this is a cool idea, I just don’t think the author pulls it off very well. I’m not a super big fan of the author’s writing style, so that plays into it a little.

The author also tries to give us so much exposition, but with as short a novella as this is, the exposition breaks up the pacing and takes up too much room in this novella. If this book were longer, if the exposition was given more space to occur naturally, to breathe, this book would work a lot better.

Thanks to NetGalley and Tordotcom for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I hate to be the kind of person that says a novella was too short, cause I really love novellas and I think you can pack a lot into them without the length affecting my enjoyment of the story. Sadly I think this should've been much longer - while the world and action scenes were fun, it was hard to care about them and feel grounded in the story without feeling a connection to the characters. And the characters had so much potential too! We have a soldier from an empire that experienced genocide trapped in a war machine, and a trans woman that's the last human being left. It's such a cool set up and I had such high expectations for this story, but it all fell a bit flat to me sadly. I just wish there was more time spent on getting to know the characters.

I see great potential here though and I'm definitely gonna check out the author's future works!

Alice is the last human, and discovers an AI personality within an antique data core. She soon discovers it's the sentient control unit of a deadly ancient weapon system, and she has a hard time convincing the warrior that the war is over. If the core falls into the wrong hands, then war might break out all over again.

This novella has amazing world building and Alice's characterization is fun and appealing. She has gone through a lot before the novella even starts, and we get only a few glimpses of it as she approaches allies while running from those who want the ancient memory core. Unlike those chasing her down, Alice talks to the core and doesn't demand anything, seeking to understand the warrior caught within it. I liked that about her, and how she was able to find connections and a new family out in the universe.

If I have any complaint about the novella, it's that the conclusion felt very sudden. It makes sense, but we don't see the response Gunn makes to Alice's argument, and the main crew chasing her across the stars suddenly goes very quiet and almost passive at the end. Maybe if this was a longer novel, we would have seen just as much detail in the ending as we did in the beginning.

I enjoyed this quick sci-fi adventure. The world was built well and really reminded me of the Mass Effect world, which made me super happy.
I think the story was a little short and could have done well with fleshing the plot out a bit more. We also left a plot twist to the epilogue.
I think we could have built on the characters a bit more. We were expected to care for a small range of characters who barely got any page time - which is why I think this story could have been better with a longer script. It also means that I would have 100% read more of this character and world!
I liked the backstory to Alice and the Alice in Wonderland phrases. It was a fun commentary, especially when people would get confused and she'd have to explain it's from a long lost country: Earth.
The adventure was quite interesting as well. I just wish we'd learned more about Gunn and who he is as a person now. I understand his backstory was extremely relevant to his story, but you can't just drop a bomb that's basically "everyone died 16 days ago to me" and then leave his trauma there!
I really enjoyed this story - it was a lot of fun and I loved Alice. She was a bit of a badass!

2.5 / 10 ✪

https://arefugefromlife.wordpress.com/2024/06/13/unexploded-remnants-by-elaine-gallagher-review/

Okay, where to start with this one?

First off, from the blurb, Alice grabs an AI core from a street vendor, and immediately is accosted by alien warriors who have apparently been staking out the stall. But instead of this raising ANY red flags, she continues on like it’s her life’s goal. Instead of her saying that she just found it there and liked the look of it. And the story STARTS from there.

Reading further into the concept: Alice is the last human. No context. Yes, there’s a little bit later on, but it’s a vague reference to the collapse of Earth, with no further explanation. Then some talk of politics (specifically relating to America’s current system and transgender laws), like they are responsible for the downfall of society and the extinction of humanity. Now, I don’t talk much politics on my blog or reviews, but I will say that American ones aren’t in the best place right now, and that the author raises some good points. Unfortunately, she chose to raise them while talking about the extinction of humanity in a book very much not about this, during a meandering conversation that doesn’t ultimately add anything to the tale, all while in the midst of a maybe-100 page novella. Just, it’s not the best time, it’s not the best choice. Furthermore, the vague “collapse” of humanity is just left at that. Alice heard Earth had collapsed (somehow), and without checking any further just decided she was the last human. Then the story moves on.

Which brings us to the amount of superfluous dialogue. There’s a lot. Not confined to the “last human” bit. Honestly, I felt most of the conversations Alice were immaterial, only vaguely relevant, or could’ve been cut entirely without impacting the story. It’s mostly witty banter back and forth, though I’d probably question the whole “wittiness” of it.

I actually enjoyed the glimpses we get into other worlds—treasures that need finding, artifacts that need looting, fantastic locations that need explored. A crashed spaceship, a bustling bazaar, an abandoned alien city—the glimpses we get demonstrate just how much there is to discover in this universe, but that’s all they are: glimpses. Glimpses with fuck-all to do with the plot.

The world-building was also a letdown. After the first bit (where Alice finds the AI core in the bazaar—literally right at the beginning), the world-building boils down to: there are so many unique and interesting alien species! There are the Delosi, who have a clandestine warrior society, and the other ones, that are pretty much anthropomorphic cats. And that’s pretty much it. Some additional names are thrown out, but with zero explanation, no details, no nothing.

Alice has a lot of friends and allies. She’s built a life in the stars after leaving Earth. After being born Andrew. Under the overarching story, there’s the tale of found family, finding one’s place in the world, that I actually found quite heartwarming. It’s just a shame that it takes place in the shadow of the main story—a rogue AI waging a vague war on people who are all dead, that it makes a snap decision about after being dormant for the last 15000 years. And then there’s basically a standoff at the end, which I found ridiculous for a number of reasons—especially the suddenness of it all, and the lack of any real gravity behind the decision. But really, there’s barely a story here. The author spent too much time meandering from one topic to another (which would be fine except that the novella is barely 100 pages long) to tell any meaningful story. I honestly think I’d have liked it more if she would’ve left out the story about the AI, and we just wandered around alien bazaars and unexplored worlds with the last human.

Oh, and Alice is well over one hundred years old. Again, no explanation.

I loved the idea of this and the synopsis sounded amazing, but I just don’t feel like that’s what I just read. I think the blurb gave more than the body of the book did.
Lovely writing that was immediately a very interesting and vibrant world but did not keep my interest. It very quickly lost momentum and after the introduction gave no more detail or depth to the world or characters.

It did great at getting my attention but was not easy to follow or keep it, I could not get into it at all and got bored.
It was well and consistently written, with good tone and personality to the writing but no life to the characters or story.
I had to keep checking back with the synopsis to remember what it’s even about as the book just didn’t explain or go into what it promised. I was so disappointed.

An interesting take on gender and the main character is trans, it was inclusive with normalised diversity which I loved, but again left me wanting more.
The characters are not that well developed, no depth or authenticity to them, particularly the villains very shallow.

It had so much potential and wasn’t bad at all, just lacking in quite a few areas and not for me. I would still have liked this as a teen or as an intro to a longer book or series, and I would gladly consider trying another book from this author, but this was not for me.

3.5 stars

Well, this was an interesting novella.

Alice, the last human, finds a sentient weapon and is soon on the run. She uses gates to jump from world to world to try to find where Gunn comes from.

I can't tell if I liked this or not. It's short, which means I didn't grow bored. But also I wasn't particularly attached to the setting or any of the characters. The allusion to Alice in Wonderland was neat. I think this almost suffers for being too short, but I can't imagine it being much longer either. I did appreciate the technology that allowed Alice to take on her true self.

Thank you to NetGalley and publisher for the opportunity to read and review.