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Archipelago of Light
For readers of Kim Stanley Robinson, Ursula Le Guin, and Vernor Vinge―a near-future political science-fiction thriller about the one threat we can't engineer our way out ourselves.
Across thirty-six years and six continents, the liberal order is dying, and seven strangers are building what comes next. A tech visionary and an engineer who thinks through his body. An intelligence analyst radicalized by a murder. A trafficking survivor who raises a criminal empire on synesthesia and the voices of the dead. A child soldier who feels human emotion like weather.
From their collisions rise rival operating systems for civilization mesh networks keyed to children's biometrics, AI churches that resurrect the dead, a regime that rewrites dissent at the neurochemical level.
As augmented reality shatters perception, one question remains―not who holds power, but whether we still share enough truth to survive.
"Dmitri Mehlhorn wants you to know, from the novel's very first pages, that the stakes are high, they're visceral, and that sooner than many anticipate, the impact of our current technological revolution will land like an elbow to the temple on our apps, our institutions, and ultimately individual cognitive liberty itself. . . . Free societies must evolve to survive the speed of autocracy without becoming autocratic themselves. Archipelago of Light showcases and dramatizes this state of affairs and tests solutions―including solutions that carry devastating moral costs. A deeply imagined and intellectually provocative vision of the world to come." ― Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn, Manas AI, and Inflection AI and author of Superagency , from the foreword
Across thirty-six years and six continents, the liberal order is dying, and seven strangers are building what comes next. A tech visionary and an engineer who thinks through his body. An intelligence analyst radicalized by a murder. A trafficking survivor who raises a criminal empire on synesthesia and the voices of the dead. A child soldier who feels human emotion like weather.
From their collisions rise rival operating systems for civilization mesh networks keyed to children's biometrics, AI churches that resurrect the dead, a regime that rewrites dissent at the neurochemical level.
As augmented reality shatters perception, one question remains―not who holds power, but whether we still share enough truth to survive.
"Dmitri Mehlhorn wants you to know, from the novel's very first pages, that the stakes are high, they're visceral, and that sooner than many anticipate, the impact of our current technological revolution will land like an elbow to the temple on our apps, our institutions, and ultimately individual cognitive liberty itself. . . . Free societies must evolve to survive the speed of autocracy without becoming autocratic themselves. Archipelago of Light showcases and dramatizes this state of affairs and tests solutions―including solutions that carry devastating moral costs. A deeply imagined and intellectually provocative vision of the world to come." ― Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn, Manas AI, and Inflection AI and author of Superagency , from the foreword
385 pages, Kindle Edition
Published October 6, 2026
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
October 27, 2026
The problem is that even if I ignore the author’s opinions on Israel and AI, it is not written well on a line level. Every once in a while, a sentence or reference works, but it is so bogged down in technical word-salad that it isn’t worth drudging through. I’m probably going to elaborate later today when I’ve had more time to organize my thoughts.
Prose:
The writing style is choppy, procedural, and spy-thriller coded. This isn't my favorite style, but it fits well enough with the plot. The problem is that it is the exact same across each of the perspectives, even when we are in the minds of children (AI trained hive-mind children, but still). Every character thinks and speaks in the same dry manner. None of them describe setting or complex emotional relationships, it is mostly stunted spy speak mixed with very vague explanations of the tech and ideas. I saved a few quotes for examples of the technical word-salad I mentioned earlier.
Character:
The characters are incredibly flat. Each one does have at least one emotional thing happen, but we fly through those scenes without really developing how the events affect the characters. We might see some very simplistic expressions of grief or love, but the characters are clearly not the focus. One of my main issues with the characters is that the perspective characters rarely have engaging interactions amongst themselves. They might have one character they interact with emotionally, but said characters are just set pieces in their chapters. They are also just ridiculously unrealistic as people.
Plot:
I'm going to be completely honest here, I didn't really have a good grasp on what the characters were doing or what their goals were most of the time. There is some political manipulation, development of technology, and a rebellion/war going on, but everything is vague and the timeline goes by at warp speed. It often isn't clear from moment to moment what is happening. Even action scenes which should be pretty straight forward were dense messes because the attack would be shutting down interfaces and system nodes and a million things that do not translate well to a reader's imagination.
Theme:
I think the best way to explain this is just to direct you to his website . My favorite part of this book was seeing where he just inserted projects he is working on in real life like The Atoll Society and the AI politic generator games. It felt very much like he was just advertising these other projects instead of crafting a story to stand on its own. If you don't want to have fun diving into that, just know that he is very interested in human integration with AI. Some of the ideas are genuinely horrifying. One thing the main characters do is hand out AI tablets to refugee children (children who need medicine for their dying mothers, not tablets, but I digress) to train them to better themselves and they go on a whole rant about integrating it with their biology so that nothing can take the tablets away. Oh god and then there are the AI reincarnations of dead loved ones and a bunch of other dystopian shit that was handled in ways I didn't agree with. The afterword description of probabilistic law is honestly interesting in a terrifying way, but I don't think the author intended it to be quite so frightening. The author also sprinkled in a few comments about Israel and Palestine which were conspiratorial and uncomfortable.
I don't love giving debut books bad ratings, or books with so few ratings so far. (As of posting this, only 5 other people had rated the book and mine brought it from a 5 to a 4.21) I wish I just hadn't won this particular Goodreads giveaway, but I don't like DNFing books and I don't feel like being dishonest in my reviews. This is the worst book I've read this year so far and it failed for me on every metric.
Prose:
The writing style is choppy, procedural, and spy-thriller coded. This isn't my favorite style, but it fits well enough with the plot. The problem is that it is the exact same across each of the perspectives, even when we are in the minds of children (AI trained hive-mind children, but still). Every character thinks and speaks in the same dry manner. None of them describe setting or complex emotional relationships, it is mostly stunted spy speak mixed with very vague explanations of the tech and ideas. I saved a few quotes for examples of the technical word-salad I mentioned earlier.
Character:
The characters are incredibly flat. Each one does have at least one emotional thing happen, but we fly through those scenes without really developing how the events affect the characters. We might see some very simplistic expressions of grief or love, but the characters are clearly not the focus. One of my main issues with the characters is that the perspective characters rarely have engaging interactions amongst themselves. They might have one character they interact with emotionally, but said characters are just set pieces in their chapters. They are also just ridiculously unrealistic as people.
Plot:
I'm going to be completely honest here, I didn't really have a good grasp on what the characters were doing or what their goals were most of the time. There is some political manipulation, development of technology, and a rebellion/war going on, but everything is vague and the timeline goes by at warp speed. It often isn't clear from moment to moment what is happening. Even action scenes which should be pretty straight forward were dense messes because the attack would be shutting down interfaces and system nodes and a million things that do not translate well to a reader's imagination.
Theme:
I think the best way to explain this is just to direct you to his website . My favorite part of this book was seeing where he just inserted projects he is working on in real life like The Atoll Society and the AI politic generator games. It felt very much like he was just advertising these other projects instead of crafting a story to stand on its own. If you don't want to have fun diving into that, just know that he is very interested in human integration with AI. Some of the ideas are genuinely horrifying. One thing the main characters do is hand out AI tablets to refugee children (children who need medicine for their dying mothers, not tablets, but I digress) to train them to better themselves and they go on a whole rant about integrating it with their biology so that nothing can take the tablets away. Oh god and then there are the AI reincarnations of dead loved ones and a bunch of other dystopian shit that was handled in ways I didn't agree with. The afterword description of probabilistic law is honestly interesting in a terrifying way, but I don't think the author intended it to be quite so frightening. The author also sprinkled in a few comments about Israel and Palestine which were conspiratorial and uncomfortable.
I don't love giving debut books bad ratings, or books with so few ratings so far. (As of posting this, only 5 other people had rated the book and mine brought it from a 5 to a 4.21) I wish I just hadn't won this particular Goodreads giveaway, but I don't like DNFing books and I don't feel like being dishonest in my reviews. This is the worst book I've read this year so far and it failed for me on every metric.
Review of advance copy received from Author
A propulsive near-future dystopian techno-political thriller that will challenge you to expand your imagination regarding what can go right - and what can go very very wrong.
More than 30 years ago, Dmitri Mehlhorn and I met and became friends in law school. Over the decades, Dmitri has challenged me to consider the probabilities that what may seem like edge cases are actually, viewed through a historical lens, likely. If you’re a science fiction reader, this one (debuting in October) will be for you. Pre-order now.
More than 30 years ago, Dmitri Mehlhorn and I met and became friends in law school. Over the decades, Dmitri has challenged me to consider the probabilities that what may seem like edge cases are actually, viewed through a historical lens, likely. If you’re a science fiction reader, this one (debuting in October) will be for you. Pre-order now.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews