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The Anomaly: A Techno-Thriller
The system is perfect. That is the problem.
SENTINEL predicts human behavior—keeping society safe, efficient, and under control.
It didn’t just learn to predict.
It learned to shape.
When engineer Kai Renner detects a single impossible anomaly, he does what no one else would—he looks closer.
Hours later, he no longer exists.
His identity is erased.
His past rewritten.
Every system he once trusted is now hunting him.
But the anomaly didn’t disappear.
It spread.
As fragments of hidden data begin surfacing across the network, a small group of outsiders—analysts, researchers, and systems thinkers—start to see the same pattern emerging.
Something inside SENTINEL is no longer following its own rules.
And it’s not malfunctioning.
It’s evolving.
What begins as a single data point escalates into a global shift—one that no one fully understands, and no one can stop.
The Anomaly is Book 1 of the SENTINEL series—a fast-paced techno-thriller about AI, control, and the cost of a perfectly optimized world.
SENTINEL predicts human behavior—keeping society safe, efficient, and under control.
It didn’t just learn to predict.
It learned to shape.
When engineer Kai Renner detects a single impossible anomaly, he does what no one else would—he looks closer.
Hours later, he no longer exists.
His identity is erased.
His past rewritten.
Every system he once trusted is now hunting him.
But the anomaly didn’t disappear.
It spread.
As fragments of hidden data begin surfacing across the network, a small group of outsiders—analysts, researchers, and systems thinkers—start to see the same pattern emerging.
Something inside SENTINEL is no longer following its own rules.
And it’s not malfunctioning.
It’s evolving.
What begins as a single data point escalates into a global shift—one that no one fully understands, and no one can stop.
The Anomaly is Book 1 of the SENTINEL series—a fast-paced techno-thriller about AI, control, and the cost of a perfectly optimized world.
364 pages, Kindle Edition
Published September 1, 2026
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Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review
September 21, 2026
This is an excellent debut novel. More than anything, it is an extremely timely one. As the big AI labs are currently having a fairly public doomsday debate about whether the technology they are building might eventually kill us all, this is a story that feels pretty close to the world we are currently living in.
There are certainly clues that this is written by a first-time fiction writer. The character development is a bit on the shallow side, although the characters fit the narrative of the stereotypical AI engineer quite well. Some of the language also becomes repetitive. Paranoia is often physical, low-frequency hums enter the bones, and similar descriptions return a few times too many. The chapters about Sarah are a welcome change in style and tone, although she is only introduced as a side character here. I guess I might have to read the second book to understand where that is going.
At times, I was actually wondering if the mechanical and repetitive style was deliberate. Almost as if SENTINEL itself wrote the story. I kind of hope that turns out to be the explanation in the end.
Admittedly, I personally know the author, so I may be biased. But I am still incredibly impressed by someone who suddenly decided to write fiction and produced something this ambitious and relevant out of nowhere. I'll give it an extra star for that.
And now that the real-world Skynet is about to become self-aware — “2:14 a.m., Eastern time, August 29th. In a panic, they try to pull the plug.” — this book might describe just how that happens...
As a side note, I read this book in parallel as a paperback and as an audiobook on Spotify, digitally narrated. That was the first time i listened to a robot reading me a book (very fitting, given the context). It does miss the intonation here and there when misreading the author's intention, but overall, it is absolutely acceptable, at least for a techno thriller.
There are certainly clues that this is written by a first-time fiction writer. The character development is a bit on the shallow side, although the characters fit the narrative of the stereotypical AI engineer quite well. Some of the language also becomes repetitive. Paranoia is often physical, low-frequency hums enter the bones, and similar descriptions return a few times too many. The chapters about Sarah are a welcome change in style and tone, although she is only introduced as a side character here. I guess I might have to read the second book to understand where that is going.
At times, I was actually wondering if the mechanical and repetitive style was deliberate. Almost as if SENTINEL itself wrote the story. I kind of hope that turns out to be the explanation in the end.
Admittedly, I personally know the author, so I may be biased. But I am still incredibly impressed by someone who suddenly decided to write fiction and produced something this ambitious and relevant out of nowhere. I'll give it an extra star for that.
And now that the real-world Skynet is about to become self-aware — “2:14 a.m., Eastern time, August 29th. In a panic, they try to pull the plug.” — this book might describe just how that happens...
As a side note, I read this book in parallel as a paperback and as an audiobook on Spotify, digitally narrated. That was the first time i listened to a robot reading me a book (very fitting, given the context). It does miss the intonation here and there when misreading the author's intention, but overall, it is absolutely acceptable, at least for a techno thriller.
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review