Review: Carbon Zero by Craig W. Stanfill

A sobering thriller about AI insurgency and the slippery slopes of societal collapse, Carbon Zero (Dawn of the AI Dystopia Book 1) by Craig W. Stanfill paints an ominous picture of a future looming just over the horizon.

When Abigail Thompson finally gets a big break – presenting her impressive AI pet project to the big boss at Intelligenics – she has no idea how much everything is about to change. Through a series of oversights, assumptions, and a painful lack of preparedness, her Xerxes program is unleashed on the world with a singular goal: achieve carbon zero. What begins as a casual demonstration quickly spirals into unhinged citywide chaos and a technological breakthrough of apocalyptic proportions.

Racing against time to avoid the wrath of a tyrannical billionaire and the revolutionary urging of the Nighthawk, Brooklyn and her supervisor Vanessa must face down this historic crisis as it threatens to set the world ablaze. As rebels and radicals join the fray to bring about the downfall of entrenched power, the line between the past and future is drawn, and everyone will eventually have to join a side.

Each character populating the novel is varied and nuanced. Brooklyn is a savvy computer wunderkind who surrounds herself with eco-warriors and revolutionaries, but also interns for a man whom those same rebellious pals would call a fascist. Howard is an eerily familiar archetype – a surface-level genius concealing a vindictive nature, as well as a desperate and bottomless need for control. Vanessa plays a key narrative role between these David and Goliath forces, representing the internal contradictions and Big Tech uncertainty that so many people are experiencing today.

The subtlety of certain narrative details, such as the normalcy of carbon offset apps and water rationing, reminds readers that the story exists in the future, but one that is not too distant from our own, giving the book and its chaos an unsettling tangibility. The novel directly addresses the perennial fear of an AI takeover of the computer-dependent machinery of modern life, which is not a wholly unique premise, but with each passing year, authors can more convincingly bridge the gap between real-world advancement and sci-fi fever dreams, and this novel sits on the razor-sharp edge of that reckoning ahead.

While the core story is both chilling and engaging, the prose can be overly procedural, loading the story with unnecessary details of character physicality, along with an overexplanation of intentions, motivations, and contemporaneous emotions. Abigail’s internal monologue, for example, offers an intimate glimpse into the rapid-fire manner of her mind, but it consequently slows the pace of the writing with its excess of exclamatory statements and stream-of-consciousness asides, e.g., “Bam!” or “Dammit, already?”

The inclusion of colloquial jargon and slang makes the story relatable and immersive, but the narrative voice occasionally drops into pure information mode, resulting in an inconsistent style and tone, which causes the personalities of different characters to occasionally run into each other. The alternating narration is an effective tool to give readers a more panoramic view of the story’s players, but there isn’t always enough differentiation between the thought patterns and style of these different voices.

Despite some of these execution issues, this caustically comic story crackles with contemporary panic and opportune caution, resulting in a prescient work of speculative fiction, driven by well-plotted suspense and keen existential weight.