Review of The Prophecy of the Heron

[Tami M]

[Following is a volunteer review of "The Prophecy of the Heron" by Craig W. Stanfill.]

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4 out of 5 stars

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If you are looking for your next Sci-Fi Dystopian read then look no further! The Prophecy of the Heron is a well thought-out adventure into a future where Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the Artificial Intelligence Company are running society with the help of various assistance robots. Our main character, Kim, is an AI creator who is forced out of her life of privilege into the periphery of society after she is caught being intimate with someone. The surveillance state that Kim lives in is reminiscent of Orwell’s 1984, just updated with the perspective of a computer scientist’s view on futuristic technology. As someone with only minimal experience coding I can’t claim to know how realistic the technology described was, but it made for an entertaining read!

Another extremely important facet of this dystopian society is its view on gender and sexuality. Throughout the book, everyone is referred to using she/her pronouns, but is encouraged to conform not to specific gender norms but rather to a genderless state. People are punished for any sort of gender expression, whether masculine or feminine. The end result is that the reader simply cannot make any assumptions about individual characters’ genders and is forced to actually give up on the gender binary.

Against this backdrop, Kim is trying to rescue her AI, Kimberly, who has been co-opted by the Artificial Intelligence Company. Living in the “outer districts” she has to learn to survive in a barter economy under the radar of the massive corporations, gets the opportunity to explore her gender, and also spends a good deal of time reflecting on the degree of self-awareness AI and various robots may or may not possess. In short, she has a bunch of adventures, while also raising a lot of questions about our current social order, and the direction that we as a society may very well be headed. A thought-provoking and entertaining read all-around. I rate it as a 4 out of 5. My only complaint is the sheer quantity of new vocabulary that I had to learn or intuit (some of which was programming-related) in order to keep up with the story. This would not be a downside if you like the world-building in your sci-fi novels to be less explicit.

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The Prophecy of the Heron
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