Book Review: The Legacy Human by Susan Kaye Quinn

 

Goodreads Summary: What would you give to live forever?
Seventeen-year-old Elijah Brighton wants to become an ascender--a post-Singularity human/machine hybrid--after all, they're smarter, more enlightened, more compassionate, and above all, achingly beautiful. But Eli is a legacy human, preserved and cherished for his unaltered genetic code, just like the rainforest he paints. When a fugue state possesses him and creates great art, Eli miraculously lands a sponsor for the creative Olympics. If he could just master the fugue, he could take the gold and win the right to ascend, bringing everything he's yearned for within reach... including his beautiful ascender patron. But once Eli arrives at the Games, he finds the ascenders are playing games of their own. Everything he knows about the ascenders and the legacies they keep starts to unravel... until he's running for his life and wondering who he truly is.

The Legacy Human is the first in Susan Kaye Quinn's new young adult science fiction series that explores the intersection of mind, body, and soul in a post-Singularity world... and how technology will challenge us to remember what it means to be human.

Goodreads Ratings: 3.93 stars with over 1,000 ratings

Genre Listing: Science Fiction, Young Adult, Dystopian, Fantasy, Apocalyptic

Goodreads Challenge: 38/50   

2021 Reading Challenge:  #23 Read a book with Human, People, or Person in the title (Find the entire challenge here)

Book Review:

Hi Readers! I hope everyone is doing well. I can't believe it's already October. I feel like this year has flown by. That means the 2022 challenge will be launching in just a few months! The lovely  Co-conspirator, Tress, and I already have a list started with goodies for next year. 

I initially put The Legacy Human on the Science Fiction prompt, but I realized that we had #23 for Human. It also dawned on me that I probably intended to read this book for that one initially. I expected this to be a lot shorter of a read than it actually was. I'm not sure if it was just a glitch in the matrix, but the book made it seem like page 408 was the last page; however, that was at around 80%.  There ended up being quite a bit of story left. There is not really a point to me mentioning this.

I'm still trying to piece my thoughts on The Legacy Human together. The more I over-analyze it, the less I'm going to like the book. For most of the story, I thought the concept was interesting. Humans figured out how to combine AI technology with Genetics and live forever. The Ascenders, as they're called, run the world and basically control how the Legacy Humans (non-AI population) live. I was entertained while reading it, but there were a lot of issues I had with it. I'm making no promises about keeping spoilers out of this review. Sorry.

For the vast majority of reading this book, I felt like I was reading a weird Hunger Games or Divergent knock-off. In Legacy Human, the ordinary people are all mainly creative people like artists or writers. Every year there's the Creative Olympics, which have replaced the regular Olympics. Teenagers can compete in their chosen art, and the winners of each group get to ascend. This is the only way to Ascend. There's this whole political aspect behind the games where Sponsors are getting to use their Legacy as a bragging right and maybe some nefarious activities to tip the scales. There's also a group of the resistance trying to fight the AI overlords and some big reveal about Elijah's lineage. The big secret made zero sense to me. I understood what was being said, even expected it. However, I just felt like the Science made little to no sense. 

I never really felt like any of the book's Science was actually explained. I felt like I was just supposed to know and understand it without an explanation. For example, Elijah kept referencing being in a "Fugue State." This is supposed to be a YA Science Fiction, so I would expect the Science wouldn't be highly complicated. I'd expect it to at least be summarized enough to where the average teenager or young college student can understand. Most days, I consider myself to be reasonably intelligent and have a vast understanding of things. I had no idea what a fugue state was. The whole time I thought it was some word the author made up that was slang for the story. I googled it after I finished reading the book. Per Britannica, "Dissociative fugue (psychogenic fugue, or fugue state) presents as sudden, unexpected travel away from one's home with an inability to recall some or all of one's past. Onset is sudden, usually following severe psychosocial stressors." Now that I know what it is, it makes sense, but I don't feel like the context was there for the average reader. This is just one example where I think the vocabulary needed to be better tailored to the audience. 

I felt like the most developed character was Cyrus. Everyone else fell a little flat and started to blend together. I didn't really feel like anyone had their own individual voice. I had to scroll back up to the summary to even remember Elijah's name. Everyone else has kind of escaped me. I think this is a case of an interesting concept and not great execution. I didn't hate the book (despite how this review probably seems), but I didn't really love it either. At best, I can describe it as ok but fell flat in a lot of aspects. I sort of enjoyed it while I was reading it, but I think I've talked myself down from 3 stars to 2 stars after writing this review.