Ahhhh this is rough because I liked so much of it but my goodness it was such a slow burn. I was so bored and uninterested in so much and it makes me sad.

In the walled city of Bulwark, the AI Parallax makes sure its citizens are safe and cared for through the use of smart houses and meritocratic reward. Over time, this life credit system has separated and stiffened into a distinct and unfair class divide. Saint Enita and Saint Helen both try to live up to their ancestors’ wealth—Helen as a historian and Enita as a prosthetic surgeon—rather than simply coast on their privilege. And then, one of the wealthiest Saints of the city is murdered and Enita does the impossible…she gives her house AI a human body, separating them from Parallax and kicking off a revolution.

There’s a lot going on in this book, and the execution is mixed in my opinion. Underneath the info dumps, stilted relationships, and vague world-building, there is an interesting story with flashes of gorgeous prose and insight. I found Enita and Helen flat and unlikeable, which was especially disappointing because we get so few books with older women protagonists. The body martyr’s attempts at autonomy and Nix’s pain of becoming themselves both kept me turning the pages despite this, though. I think this is a book that will find its audience over time.

Thank you to Netgalley and Atria Books for an e-arc in exchange for an honest review.

Erika Swyler’s We Lived on the Horizon is one of those books that quietly gets under your skin. It’s set in a future where humanity and AI are deeply intertwined, and the story focuses on Saint Enita Malovis, a bio-prosthetist living in the walled city of Bulwark. Enita creates a physical body for her house AI, Nix, hoping they’ll carry on her life’s work. But when a fellow Sainted is mysteriously murdered and the city’s overarching AI, Parallax, erases the records, Enita and Nix are thrown into a mystery that forces them to question everything they thought they knew about their world.

The character development in this book is amazing—especially Nix. Watching them grow from a disembodied AI to something so much more was easily my favorite part of the book. The relationship between Enita and Nix is layered and full of moments that really made me stop and think about what it means to be human (or not).

Swyler also does an incredible job of showing both sides of technological advancement. The world she builds is full of innovation and possibility, but there’s also a darker undercurrent that’s impossible to ignore. It felt balanced in a way that made the story hit harder.

As much as I loved being drawn into this world, the reason it’s not a 5-star read for me is that I struggled to picture some of the settings and scenes. With similar books, I’ve felt like I was standing right there with the characters, but here the world didn’t feel as vivid to me. That said, this is absolutely a story I’ll be thinking about for a long time, especially the themes and the way Nix’s journey unfolds.

If you’re into stories that explore the complexities of humanity, AI, and what the future might look like, I’d highly recommend picking this one up!

Bulwark is a walled city in the desert built hundred of years ago by the survivors of an apocalypse. It is managed by Parallax, an AI whose primary purpose is to “ensure a basic quality and value of life, that everyone is cared for and no one needlessly suffers.” In this highly-stratified city, those known as Saints enjoy lives of ease thanks to the sacrifices of their ancestors in establishing Bulwark: “Being Sainted was akin to being dead; you needed no accomplishment, no action, all achievement had already been done.”

Saint Enita Malovis, known as “Stitch-Skin,” has devoted her life to growing body parts from nanofilaments for workers who had lost limbs in industrial accidents but can’t afford to incur the societal debt to receive treatment in a hospital. Nix, Enita’s loyal android house system, has been crafted by Enita to be human-like (although some refer to them as “a can opener in a skin suit”) because Enita is aging, her hands shake and Nix "knew the house, the surgery and the techniques used by Enita and her late grandfather to help people." Saint Helen Vitner, Enita’s former lover, is a student of ancient history. The action ratchets up when Saint Lucius Ohno is found dead in his home, having been stabbed thirteen times with multiple objects. Ohno’s was the first murder of a Sainted on record, and his death causes Enita and Helen to question their safety and to ponder other odd occurrences in Bulwark.

Despite her unease after Ohno’s murder, Enita opens her door to two worn and ragged siblings, Tomas and Joni, who bring a woman, Neren Tragoudi, who was grievously injured in an apartment collapse, to Enita’s surgery. They decline to take Neren to the hospital because “they’ll scan her. It’ll take more years than she’ll be alive to be able to repay the hours. She’s a musician, a singer.” Enita discovers that Neren is a Body Martyr with only a single lung and kidney because she had donated those organs along with a portion of her liver. “Body Martyrs are born with a sense that their lives are meant for the bettering of others, for easing suffering. They serve an essential role in society.” Their gifts were not only noble but essential when Bulwark was founded because illness was rampant. Although the tradition of Blood Martyrs had outlasted the need, the prestige of receiving a donation persisted. Thus, when Saint Ohno needed a lung transplant, he rejected Enita’s offer of the biocybernetic lungs that she grew opting for the “traditional path of a Body Martyr’s living donation.” It was typical for Sainted to not want any part of themselves to be considered less than entirely human.

When a second Saint is found murdered, Enita, Helen, Nix and Neren must make some difficult decisions in this engaging dystopian novel. Swyler has crafted a highly original contribution to the canon of dystopian literature. “We Lived on the Horizon” is an imaginative novel, addressing age-old questions about life, death, and how to live, while raising questions about our own stratified society. Particularly impressive is Nix’s voice, which is often humorous, as they describe their burgeoning consciousness. Nix, who finds sighing a “pleasant thing to do,” does not like to eat because they’ll need to void, which they detest. “As much as they dislike it, voiding is also satisfying in a way that nothing else having to do with a body is.” Swyler combines a murder mystery, fantasy and science fiction with graceful prose that will appeal to readers who enjoy novels that present sophisticated world building and that raise questions about artificial intelligence and bioethics. Thank you Atria Books Net Galley for this advance copy of this engrossing novel.

The world-building in this sci-fi is a bit challenging - with a few "they" pronouns and a mix of human and AI characters, finding ones bearings on the characters and plot demands some attention - but it is also its allure. The constant devices of haves-vs-have nots and a utopia-gone-bad still drives the main plot, but the sub-plots of affection, love, identity, responsibility, self-sacrifice are unique and built systematically (albeit a bit too slow for me, but others may find the pace OK). An interesting take on AI that evolves to different roles as it learns more of its purpose and relation to its human 'creators' (but this is not a HAL-type of story).

“We Lived on the Horizon,” by Erika Swyler, Atria Books, 336 pages, Jan. 14, 2025.

Bulwark is a walled city built to protect the people who survived a series of great cataclysms. Parallax, the artificial intelligence system that runs the city, rewards people. Over generations, an elite class, the Sainted, has evolved from the descendants of those who founded the stronghold.

Saint Enita Malovis feels that the end of her life is coming and that her decades of work as a bio-prosthetist must be protected. The lone practitioner of her art, Enita is determined to preserve her legacy and decides to create a physical being, called Nix, filled with her knowledge and experience. Nix refers to itself as “we” and “they.” Enita’s best friend is Saint Helen Vinter, who preserves books. The library is referred to as The Stacks.

Enita knows she received a kidney donation as a child. There are people designated as Body Martyrs, who donate organs to others. Any societal debt owed can be reduced or erased by donating organs. Recipient and Martyr are never allowed to meet. In the midst of her project, Saint Lucius Ohno is murdered and Parallax erases the event from its data.

Then Neren Tragoudi is injured in a building collapse. She is a Body Martyr. Her friends, Joni and Tomas, who are siblings, take her to Enita for help. Soon, Enita and Nix are drawn into the growing war that could change everything between Bulwark’s underclass and the programs that maintain order.

This novel is unusual. There are themes of utopia, revolution, artificial intelligence, body autonomy and friendship. There isn’t much action until the last quarter of the book. Much of it is speculation on the use of artificial intelligence.

Erika Swyler is also the author of “Light From Other Stars,” and “The Book of Speculation.”

I rate it four out of five stars.

In accordance with FTC guidelines, the advance reader's edition of this book was provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for a review.

Intriguing and challenging. I struggled with the beginning of this novel about, well, many things. There's been a murder, there's a sentient house that communicates with its owner who grows replacement body parts so that body martyrs need not given their own body parts to others (which btw means that the body martyrs lose the opportunity to get credits), and so on. And there's a love story between both humans and between a human and the house. It was both more and less than I expected. I'll be the odd one out who admired this more than enjoyed it. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. For fans of literary fiction.

Somehow I have missed out on reading Erika Swyler‘s short fiction and her two previous novels, The Book of Speculation and Light from Other Stars. So I came fresh to her new book (being released Jan. 14), We Lived on the Horizon. I was strongly drawn by the premise: An artisanal bio-prosthetist and her personal house AI become aware of growing data gaps in a post-cataclysmic city run by an artificial intelligence system, precipitated by the murder of an acquaintance and the subsequent erasure of facts about the victim and his death. I am happy to say that the book lives up to its promise: It’s a fascinating exploration of character, identity, memory, morality, choice, body horror, kinds of love, and utopia/dystopia. Some decisions that characters make are distressing, and the ending is bittersweet, but I am glad to have read this; I’ll be thinking about it for a long time.

I appreciate that this book is not afraid to start with an infodump-prologue, although later events reveal that significant action is happening even during this description of how the city of Bulwark is run by its system, Parallax, and why Parallax continually edits its own code. I also appreciate that the overt action of the book starts, not with the murder, not in the middle of an action scene as so many books start these days, but in the middle of a conversation between two old friends/lovers/frenemies. I understand the marketing motivation behind in medias res openings, but too often, readers are presented with a jumble of things happening without any context of why they should care.

Here, Swyler takes the time to introduce us to Saint Enita Malovis and Saint Helen Vinter; they’re a bit quarrelsome, but they clearly care about each other. They’re enjoying a mild dispute over how they spend their time: Helen has lots of history students, and Enita creates and installs artificial body parts to help the injured and sick, for free. Helen thinks Enita should socialize more and take on an apprentice instead of teaching Nix, the artificial physical avatar of her house AI, how to do her work.

Neither Enita nor Helen works for a living; their Saint status means that their ancestors worked so hard and sacrificed so much in the founding of Bulwark that they have nearly infinite social credit. Some Saints just party all the time, and some devote themselves to the arts, gardening, or other pursuits; these two find meaning in their callings.

Parallax keeps strict track of social credits, which control what kinds of housing, medical care, food, clothing, etc., are entitled to people. Most people are not Saints; they owe a lot of credits to the system, and many keep slipping further into generational debt. Some people, called Martyrs, donate body parts such as hands, lungs, liver lobes, etc., to benefit society (and gain social credits), although these donations often end up going to the Saints instead of the underclass.

When Enita, Helen, and Nix find out about the murder, they are mildly disturbed, but their lives seem to go on much as before, at first. What really disrupts the lives of Enita and Nix is when an unexpected patient arrives at Helen’s home; it’s an emergency situation, so Enita makes some choices that the patient later resents bitterly. Enita feels guilty, and all their lives are bound together as Enita and Nix find out more about how the other 99% live, and what’s going on with these data gaps and other phenomena. Great changes are coming for this society, and Enita, Helen, Nix, and the patient have to decide how they’re going to react, together and separately.

I really appreciated how the apparently simple choices in this book turned out to have complex repercussions, from the reactions to seemingly necessary but unwanted medical treatment, to the imbalances in society that evolved from what was meant to be a fair accounting for contributions to the community.

I also thought Swyler did a great job with characterization. Enita is a compelling character. Nix is very sympathetic while interacting with humans and other systems, trying their best to serve and protect Enita while starting to learn and set their own boundaries; Helen’s combination of love and frustration with Enita is vivid; and although I feel that the patient’s desires have been somewhat twisted by society, I feel that I understand her well.

Can humans figure out how to be fair to each other, and to respect each other’s choices? How wise is it to entrust a society to an artificial intelligence system, even if it’s real intelligence instead of an autocompleting plagiarism algorithm? Is change inevitably destructive? Swyler has some really interesting ways of exploring these questions.

We Lived on the Horizon is a thoughtful science fiction novel with interesting worldbuilding and engaging characters. It’s well worth giving it your time.

Content warnings: Murder (offscreen), violence (not gory), body horror and self-harm (not gory), class oppression.

It took me a bit to get into this one but after a bit I found it very interesting. Where AI will take the human race is unknown, but this definitely seems like a real possibility. I'm actually hoping there is a book two.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing an ARC of We Lived on the Horizon in exchange for an honest review.

Set in a dystopian desert city hundreds of years in the future, We Lived on the Horizon follows a society controlled by AI, which dictates everything from the tea supply to people's socioeconomic status. The novel presents an intriguing premise, positioning itself as a reflection of a future society on the brink of collapse, where the system of control is deteriorating and unrest is simmering. In many ways, the world Swyler has built reminded me of the French Revolution in the age of AI, a concept that I found fascinating.

The book explores a wide range of themes, including systemic inequality, the cyclical nature of revolution, ageism, gender identity, creation, and bodily autonomy. These themes are ambitious, and I admired the effort to weave such complex topics together. However, in trying to cover so much ground, I felt that few of these themes were fully explored or given the depth they deserved. It was clear the author had a lot to say, but I was left wishing certain threads had been fleshed out more fully.

As for the pacing, the first 70% of the book felt like a slow slog. I found myself trudging through long stretches of exposition and awkward dialogue, with only occasional hints of what was really going on. While this pacing might have been intended to build tension, it ultimately detracted from the overall experience. The final 30% of the novel picked up significantly, offering more clarity and action, but by that point, I felt the early pacing issues had already taken their toll. The rushed conclusion didn’t quite make up for the slow buildup.

I wanted to like this book—it had a premise that sparked my interest, but it ultimately fell flat for me. The world-building and thematic ambitions were compelling, but the execution and pacing left something to be desired. 2.5/5 stars

Interesting story that got a bit bogged down in details and dialogue.

This was a fascinating story to start but a very slow slog to get going. I loved learning about Elena and her skin-stitch business. Neren's body martyr details were a bit murkier but I slowly did learn what it meant and still shook my head in wonder at the necessity. These 2 felt like solutions to the same problem - only one felt rational and the other not.

Learning about Saints, Nix, Parallax, and Bulwark as a whole felt much slower and laborious. Nix took long stretches of story to inner struggle, wonder about thought and feeling, and then spoke in sweeping deep thoughts and ideas. It slowed the story down and, many times, I felt the message was clear and didn't need Nix to reinforce it again and again with thoughts and discussion.

There's a great story here, one I found fascinating. But it was hard to find it through the slow start. The ending was great.

A huge thank you to the author and publisher for providing an e-ARC via Netgalley. This does not affect my opinion regarding the book.

We Lived on the Horizon isn’t my usual kind of read, but the premise caught my attention.

First things first, I enjoyed the exploration of AI and humanity’s reliance on technology in a crumbling society. The world-building is undeniably detailed, with Bulwark's dystopian setting and rigid societal structures brought to life. However, the pacing didn’t quite work for me. Most of the novel establishes the world and characters, with the main action compressed into the final chapters.

That said, the writing was solid, and the novel had moments of brilliance. If you enjoy slow-burn sci-fi with a focus on philosophical questions about humanity and technology, this might be a good fit.

The premise of We Lived on the Horizon, that is centering a murder and living in an AI-run city, is not particularly groundbreaking. Having said that, I do think that this is a lovely book on the basis of character exploration and world building. The world building is intriguing but not particularly clear in the way that it is introduced. It took me a minute to grasp the way that the social debt is utilized due to the way it was explained and introduced. A lot gets introduced in many different ways, which makes for a nuanced and intriguing world, but I do believe that the pace of the revelations and such threw me off. The pacing was my other concern, it falls a bit flat at times when I think it could speed up and pages of prose could have been better integrated into a forward moving section. I'd recommend this book if speculative and dystopian is up your alley and if you don't mind a slower pace wherein not all that much gets resolved so much as it gets revealed.

This book left me with many feelings. Some good, some not so good.

Let’s start with the good — the early parts of this are truly hard to put down. The make up of the speculative sci-fi dystopian world is both unique and fascinating, something that I couldn’t help but be sucked into, despite the fact that this isn’t the type of book I normally read. It’s one of those stories that makes the reader feel smarter than they are, and I can’t lie and say that I didn’t enjoy the feeling.

At first, I found myself really fascinated by the characters. Nix, in particular, despite being a robot, was understatedly human and without a doubt my favorite character. I also started off liking Enita and Helen. But as the book went on, these feelings changed. As a very heavily character driven story, the dialogue seemed to swarm in on me from all sides, and not in a way that I wanted. It felt like much of the dialogue was there just for the sake of making the story feel heavy, and about halfway through I felt like I had to drag my feet to get through the slog of it all. Enita and Helen went from steadfast and simple to insufferable really quickly because of it. Their interactions were tedious, repetitive, and downright dull. Everytime they spoke it was to discuss how poorly they paired with each other — it was just a never ending stream of miserable self loathing that I could barely take. “I’m stubborn” — “no I’m stubborn” — “I’m childish and arrogant” — “I’m rude and egoistical” — and then again, as if I hadn’t read twelve times before, “I’m stubborn”. Okay, OKAY, we get it. They just kept talking, and talking, and talking, about absolutely nothing, until suddenly the story was 85% of the way through and still all they’d done was talk, and then things all of a sudden started to move. The pacing of it all was exhausting.

Overall, this had all the ingredients to be compelling and moving, but it just fell somewhat flat. I wish I’d gotten more from the plot and the world that so quickly sucked me into it. But maybe I just wasn’t the right type of reader to appreciate it.

Thank you to NetGalley and AtriaBooks for providing the advanced readers copy in exchange for a review.

I am so torn on this book. While I found the concepts and the main storyline intriguing, the book overall fell a bit flat for me. The book is well written, and incredibly descriptive, but the story seemed to drag in places and didn't flow as well as I was hoping it would.

This book centres on the city of Bulwark, a walled city centuries into the future. Most of the buildings are linked to a central AI, and the homes of the Sainted (descendants of the city's founders) have full AI that are specific to the homes. Within this world we're introduced to Saint Enita Malovis, who was raised by her grandfather and taught how to create replacement organs and limbs, with nanobots and lab-grown cells. She is feeling her age and decides to create a body for her home's AI, Nix. Through this body, she teaches Nix how to be her surgical aid. While they're working together, there are hints that the city's society is crumbling and that things are not as idyllic as they seem.

This book was quite enjoyable, and came across very similar to 'Logan's Run', and other dystopian movies of that era. There's this slow sense of foreboding throughout the story, where you're waiting for the collapse to occur. This was more of a slow burn, in a sense that the collapse never really came in the story. While the interactions between Enita, Nix, and the other characters was quite enjoyable, I think the pacing of this book just wasn't for me.

3.5~4 (still deciding)
A strange character driven and unexpected read. I was so confused at first (the world building threw me) with who’s who? Which names belong to which person, place, role, or robot? How the algorithm works. I WAS STRUGGLING. I didn’t love feeling lost, but by the end, I really appreciated how unique and thought provoking the premise was. An iRobot style murder mystery, layered with an ex couple and their AI “child” grappling with consciousness. The experience was bizarre yet i loved the stunning prose (occasionally a bit too much, but it works for the eerie, dystopian, revolutionary tone.

Wow this was a great science fiction novel. I was so engaged in it, right from the very first few pages. I feel like it's hard to grab someone in science fiction sometimes because of the world building element, but Swyler does an amazing job of world building with you right in the middle of it. Fantastic novel, couldn't put it down, I thought it was so inventive and cool!

Bulwark is a walled city in a desert that is governed by an AI, its citizens protected and provided for in the face of an environmental disaster that has seemingly left much of the world uninhabitable. For the people living within its walls, status is determined by the value of the service you provide to the city, with people's life hours dedicated to their craft/service determining their worth and creating a system of debt, sacrifice, and value that is managed by the city. Those whose families sacrificed or provided the most during the near-apocalyptic period which the city was built were granted the status of Sainted, essentially placing them above the system of debt and making them a kind of aristocratic elite that tends to not interact with the rest of society. When a Sainted is found dead under mysterious circumstances, and then evidence of this death is alarmingly covered up, a grand conspiracy that hints of revolution threatens to overturn the status quo and claim even more Sainted lives.

A difficult read with gorgeous worldbuilding, excellent characters, and some pretty heavy topics explored in an intriguing manner. I particularly enjoyed the book when it looked at the idea of utopia/dystopia, AI, the nature of sacrifice, and identity. There is so much here to dig into, and I am now eagerly awaiting the author's next work. A great addition to any science fiction collection.

Thank you NetGalley and Atria Books for this ARC! I thought the concept of this was very unique, this is set in a city run by sentient AI and some of the main characters in this book are also AI (The Stacks which is the main library/information system, and one of the main characters Nix). The main character Enita is a bio-prosthetic surgeon who is Sainted, an elite class descended from those who gave the most to found the city. I also thought the government system that runs by rewarding for sacrifice was interesting, especially the Body Martyr concept and the themes of bodily autonomy.

I think this could work well for a lot of people, and I don’t think I can give this a fair review because I read it at a time where I was having difficulty concentrating, but I for some reason couldn’t get hooked into the plot. Overall I still would recommend this to anyone interested in this genre!

3.5 out of 5 (rounded up to 4)

General Thoughts:
We Lived on the Horizon is my first science fiction book ever, and I had no idea what I was in for. It was a slow burn, plot-driven over character-driven dystopian novel that didn’t disappoint. I found the story to be beautifully written and thought-provoking. We have AI now but what will the future be like as AI gets more advanced?

Positives:
I loved the main characters: Enita, Nix, Helen, and Neren. I loved learning about them and their backgrounds while also watching them grow as characters as I progressed through the story. I grew to love these characters and was sad at how some events had to play out for the sake of the story (when you read it, you’ll understand). Throughout the book, I was also waiting for there to be a ton of violence written in great detail. With an inevitable revolt on the horizon (see what I did there?), you would expect to read about a ton of violence, but you don’t – it’s there, but you’re watching from far away. This was a nice change from what I normally read, and it wasn’t something I knew I needed until reading this.

Frustrations:
In my opinion, my frustrations with this book are most likely related to my lack of experience reading science fiction. The first 30% or so was a slow read and hard to follow – I struggled with understanding what was going on in the moment and found myself going back a few pages or rereading paragraphs to truly understand. The timelines throughout the book were also difficult to understand at times. You’re reading one chapter then the next chapter is a few months later, and it made my head spin. Again, though, I feel these are due to this being my first science fiction book and not because of Swyler’s writing.

Rating and Why:
I rated We Lived on the Horizon a 3.5 out of 5 (rounded up to 4) because it was an interesting, new-to-me premise for a book. While there were moments that I didn’t understand exactly what was happening or moments that I had to reread passages or slow down altogether to grasp where I was in the story, I had a good time reading it and want to read more science fiction in the future.

Recommend?:
Would I recommend this? Absolutely. I may not recommend it as one’s first science fiction read ever due to my lack of understanding as a first-time science fiction reader; I would definitely recommend this to those who enjoy reading science fiction books or watching science fiction shows/movies. Overall, I really enjoyed We Lived on the Horizon. It was thought-provoking with a ton of themes – body mutilation, utopia and dystopia, the future of technology. It was beautifully written with a lot of character and plot development that had me rooting for all of the main characters to get the sci-fi version of a ‘happily ever after’.