us: the AI in me: Laim-Saga 1

by Aybiline I. Dahlson, Bob Blanton, Elaisa Duke (Illustrator)

449 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 12, 2026

About the author

Aybiline I. Dahlson has a PhD in Physics. She is also a businesswoman and bestselling author. Her unconventional protagonists tend to be young women who become heroines by happenstance. Dahlson lets them make stormy journeys, where they experience thrilling adventures on foreign worlds—sometimes in the distant future, sometimes in the recent past, and other times in the modern day. On their wanderings through space and time, these heroines encounter aliens as well as familiar beings, always in search of happiness. They strive for justice and are ready to protect the weak.

Dahlson’s unusual science fiction books are simultaneously fascinating space operas, strategic military novels and epic heroic sagas. Readers can live through episodes full of poignant emotions and moments of tingling suspense, while the technical details round off the stories with elements of surprise.

Aybiline Dahlson now lives in France. She loves cats with character, her wild garden, good wine and good food. And she writes with all of her heart.

You can reach her at aybi.dahlson@orange.fr or read more about her on www.aybidahlson.com.

Reviews

[Carly · Rating 2 out of 5]

I like space opera – lots of action, alien cultures, good vs evil, champions to cheer, villains to boo – it’s all there. What’s not to like? I wanted to like this book so very much…but I didn’t. I couldn’t buy into the premise and without that, a book will fall flat. On top of many errors – typos, odd font/spacing, mixed punctuation, etc. – there is the apparent misuse of science. There are too many “and then a miracle occurred” moments in the book. And what dropped this book a whole rating point was its ending: it’s an unannounced cliffhanger. I despise cliffhangers. If a writer is so inclined to write them – as these writers clearly are – then announce the cliffhanger and be proud of it. Instead, not even a whiff of it appeared in the adverts.

The plot starts out well and it’s a good one, well-worn, but so very serviceable. Two sisters are captured from Earth by an alien race called the Evani (octopus-like beings) who are space pirates. The women are sold to another alien race, the Vuldari who resemble large birds with human faces. The reason for their capture & subsequent barter into slavery is not shared with us. It just is.

On board the Vuldari ship, NT4 (a ship captured from a technologically advanced race, the Laim), our main heroine, Alisia, is given an AI implant instead of a controlling implant. That’s the first moment of “Huh? Accidental? How is that possible?” It’s all explained later. The salient point is that Alisia has an alien AI implanted in her brain.

And so begins our space opera. Unfortunately, it did not live up to its beginning. Here’s why –

First, the book needs some strong editing – it's too long. Pages and pages of words invite skimming or even skipping without any loss to the plotline. There is a great deal of overexplaining and when we are in Alisia’s thoughts (she narrates some of the book in first person, stealing the POV from the narrator) she goes on and on in piteous detail. I skipped most of it after the first airing of her fears, desires, and feelings of inferiority.

There are several stoppers in the book – typos, missing words, awkward sentences, etc.
1. Typos, missing, or incorrect words –
 “…this place is so much better that the orb.” I believe this should read, “…so much better than the orb.”
 “Between our that and our piles of dirty dishes…” I’ve no idea what “our that” is.
 “…insistent that we were not only looked like them…” I think the word, “were,” should be removed: “…insistent that we not only looked like them…”
 “They want you think they have control.” I believe this is missing the word, “to,” as in: “They want you to think they have control.”
 “…forming between Eric and I…” The subject pronoun, “I,” is used as an object pronoun. This should read, “…forming between Eric and me…”
 “…what Maria was saying was important, do emotions would have to wait.” I think that should read, “…so emotions would have to wait.”
 In the first chapter of the next book in the series, shown at the end of this book, Alisia is musing about her past loves and thinks, “They complement me only to plunge me into the abyss at the same time.” Within context, I believe her previous loves complimented her (i.e., flattered her) as opposed to complementing her (i.e., completing her). If so, this should read, “They complimented me…”
 A pronoun is capitalized in the middle of the sentence: “…when he realized, He was not going…” There’s no reason to capitalize the pronoun; I believe that should read, “…when he realized he was not going…”
 “…forces the ship to falls back into real space.” The verb’s infinitive form is used. I believe it should read like this: “…forces the ship to fall back into real space.”
 “…that they had asked tendency to forget everything around them.” This is an odd sentence. I think it should read, “…they had a tendency to forget…”
 “And this it’s going to be a very loud bang.” The word, “this,” is out of place; the sentence should read, “And it’s going to be a very loud bang.” Alternatively, it could read, “And this is going to be a very loud bang.”

2. Mismatched punctuation choices
At times, the book follows the CMOS rules for the U.S.: periods appear inside the end quotation marks. For instance: “…treat me like a person.”
At other times, the book follows the U.K. rules where the period falls outside the end quotation marks. For instance, …call it ‘going insane’.

3. Some parts of chapters – and some full chapters – have abrupt changes to the font and spacing normally used in the book. I do not know if this is accidental and missed by whomever reviewed the final eBook or if it’s deliberate. If deliberate, I cannot discern the reason. It’s disorienting, implying an importance that doesn’t appear to be there.

Point of View (POV)
The POV is split between a narrator that seems trustworthy and capable of telling good space opera and Alisia’s first person POV. The switches are disconcerting at times, and this would have been a better book if it had remained in the narrator’s third person POV. We don’t need to hop into Alisia’s head – what we need is to be shown what she feels and thinks by her actions and dialogue with other characters. We readers don’t need to be spoon-fed all her emotions. We can figure them out based on what she does.

Artificial Intelligence (AI)
The AI implant (named Eric by Alisia) is far too human…he’s written to be an AI with a heart of gold, and with the avatar he creates, he’s turned into a quirky human in a metal suit (so to speak). In the face of the incredible strides in AI that have occurred since the watershed year, 2022, this AI-being isn’t right. It appears to have been created by a technologically superior race, the Laim. So – why would the AI implant behave like a human rather than a Laim? Why would it have any emotions at all, human or Laim? That’s perplexing. And the mumbles given in the book about it being young and learning doesn’t gel, either.

Alisia states in chapter 9 that “AI were capable of emotions.” No, they’re not. They are superb at pattern matching; AI agents can even sound human, but they are not sentient. Maybe someday…who knows? But right now – and it would seem to be so in this world of Ivani, Vuldari, Sem’Pari, and the mysterious Laim – sentience isn’t the same as expert emulation.

For some reason, the writers needed to make sex a VBD (Very Big Deal) in the book. Our heroine, Alisia, is lonely. AI comes to her rescue. It’s cringeworthy…truly. AI sex? Maybe…but it needs to be written without a humanistic AI. Then bam! out of the stars comes a hero for her: a Sem’Pari male remarkably human – she names him Adonis because – of course – he’s gorgeous. She is smitten, but gets mixed signals from him, so is reduced to fantasizing. There are many scenes where we can witness her feeling unworthy as she believes herself to be so much less than other women. Even in the midst of battle, she worries about her appeal and flirts with him. Yes…in the middle of battle! Good grief.

The truth is AI isn’t human, nor is it trying to be. AI is not a machine with feelings. AI is a different kind of mind – and this truth is overlooked.

Alisia’s AI implant has made it possible for Alisia, her sister (Beatrice), and the AI implant to speak telepathically. We’re told in chapter 6, “With Beatrice’s nanites now upgraded by Eric, we could communicate telepathically…” but in chapter 8, when the three are discussing something private, Eric “clarified aloud” its thoughts on the subject. Why?

Sometimes Alisia seems to forget she has a seamless AI implant, for all that it’s always with her. For example, in chapter 9 she meets the NT4’s AI whose name is a long set of numbers, letters, and special characters. Alisia tells this new AI, “There’s no way I could remember that jumble of letters and numbers.” Maybe not, but her AI would, and that jumble would be immediately available to her. However, it serves a purpose of having Alisia rename it and giving readers a name to hang on to.

Eric-AI has altered much of Alisia’s body through Laim nanites. But this seems to be forgotten at times. For instance, in chapter 33, Eric-AI warns her: “You’re unarmed, Alisia. Turn back.” She’s not unarmed – she’s never unarmed. She now has high-tech lasers in her fingers which she often uses to great effect.

Weird science?
In chapter 9 we’re told that Eric-AI and Alisia emit some sort of “gluon frequency” which identifies them. It’s an important device in the plotline, but it seems an odd concept to use for someone’s ID. While a gluon is postulated to produce waves and frequencies, the gluon is massless energy that serves to hold together hadrons (e.g., protons & neutrons within an atom’s nucleus). How this is used to uniquely identify someone seems to be a big leap. We’re offered no explanation, and the excuse is that the NT4 ship is alien technology that the ship’s AI barely understands.

There are several conversations about going back to family and friends, but that might be impossible. FTL, or faster than light travel, is used in the book and called “hyperspace.” We know through the work of Albert Einstein on Relativity that time dilation is true, and it’s been confirmed through experiments and observations that are fascinating to read. Time dilation occurs due to the relative motion between observers. Here, the observers would be Alisia & her sister vs. her family & friends on Earth. Apparently three years have elapsed (about 2 years on NT4, plus time spent on the Ivani pirate ship) for Alisia & Beatrice as they’ve been traveling at FTL speeds (FTL is debatable, but it’s used a lot in SF). Back on Earth, people will have aged much faster and may even have died – it’s dependent on how fast the sisters have been traveling and for how long. The faster the sisters move, the greater the amount of time dilation. The physics of time dilation is ignored.

I found myself rolling my eyes as I read and admit to speedreading through some tedious pages that seemed neither to advance the plot nor shed new light on the characters. I thought perhaps Alisia would have an interesting character arc since she began so horribly self-effacing and less womanly than other women of her acquaintance. But even after showing amazing tactical and strategic skills in battle, she remains the same. At the end of the book, she still cannot see her own value – she doesn’t change in the years she’s been away from Earth, and this makes for a certain amount of dullness in her character.

Alisia isn’t the only character who doesn’t change. Her sister, Beatrice, is the forever-adolescent. She might be the comic relief, but it doesn’t work. She’s far too much like a silly pubescent girl with a sex drive stronger than a female twice her age. It’s pretty awful. Beatrice should have had an opportunity to grow and change – she became an outstanding pilot, cool-headed in battle, but never allowed to be anything other than a dewy-eyed teenager when the action ends. I think that was a lost opportunity for writing a more exciting character.

The final blow to this book was its ending. Without a hint, we are summarily dumped out of the story by a cliffhanger ending. It’s unfair to the reader. I believe that if writers are ending their books on a cliffhanger, it should be something they are proud of, and it should be specified in all adverts. I don’t like cliffhangers – they feel like blackmail. I won’t comply. The writers had 449 Kindle pages to write a complete story with beginning, middle, and end, but they didn’t do this.

I rated this book 2-stars. It was a pretty solid 3-stars primarily because of the plot, but that absurd cliffhanger ending lost the book a star. It was unnecessary in a book that is already too long. The treatment of AI felt wrong – the Eric-AI behaved like a roommate in a television sitcom. The sisters, both main characters, were not allowed to grow and change; they remained static throughout the story. The POV should have stayed in the third person under the control of a trustworthy narrator. I won’t be reading the rest of this series.

[Lois Reid · Rating 1 out of 5]

time I will never get back

It began with an unbelievable premise. My fault for reading it anyway. I can’t believe this is a published book. The best thing about it was the title which made me somehow think it would get better and make sense. Might be the worst book I’ve ever attempted to read.

[Scott Shjefte · Rating 4 out of 5]

A merge of a mind with an AI app christened Eric. A not easy mergy at first...Borrowed with Kindle Unlimited, read with Alexa audio assist.