Review: WWW: Wonder

WWW: Wonder by Robert J. Sawyer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This review will SPOIL books one and two in the next paragraph. I loved book three and thought it was easily the best of the set.

One of the things that I was reminded of at the start of the last book and again at the start of this book is just how little time has passed in the series so far. In the course of just a few weeks Caitlin gains sight, Webmind emerges, communication between the two is established, various international intelligence agencies monitor the interaction, Webmind reveals himself to the world and the US defence secretary runs an operation to terminate Webmind. Not to mention all of the events occurring on the peripheral. It's easy to think that months at least have passed but the speed of events is phenomenal and probably appropriate to the digital plot.

I was enjoying the relationships and such in the first two books but I must admit that it was distracting me in this book when all I wanted to find out about at this point was what Webmind was up to! Of course, that would have disappointed many other readers.

The stakes are very high in this one, especially for Webmind but also for those who believe he is an existential threat. Enter Colonel Hume, a cyber security agent from the Pentagon running around trying to recruit black hat hackers to clandestinely take down Webmind. It's great and especially tense reading if you're rooting for Webmind. The agent is exhibiting paranoia and obsession and convincing himself at every turn that Webmind is about to subjugate humanity.

Well, I'm glad with the way this played out. (I think I said that about book two also). What we get is a plot that somehow goes to expected places but doesn't do the expected. I don't know if that explains it well. Maybe I should say that the story does some expected things but the outcomes are unexpected. Anyway, I was pleased with it.

I was however, especially conscious of how many pages were remaining when the story was doing exactly what I wanted it to and there was still over half the book to go. A bad omen and a reminder to put my seatbelt on.

If you made it to book three you hopefully aren't going to be deterred by it, but you might be hoping that it was all wrapped up in book two, so FYI there's suicide stuff in this one too. It sucks to read but it is important to the story and how Webmind learns to think.

Also difficult to read is 16 year old Caitlin's sex life. I never like sex scenes and really this story didn't actually make us read through any sex scenes but it was talked about several times and it came pretty close. I was unable to enjoy any of that.

I began to feel like there was a little bit of fat shaming going on, except that it wasn't exactly shaming it was just that it was commented on a lot for one particular character. Almost every time he reappeared in the narrative it seemed that his size was mentioned.

Now, about people believing that they are actually talking to Webmind. Fair enough being convinced that he exists, but it seems that beyond finding a way to verify himself at every interaction it would be too easy to be fooled by bots or catfishers and I can't see people trusting so much information to.... oh, wait I suppose I can actually see people doing that. But he goes on talk shows and interacts via online chats and I just think I personally would struggle to differentiate the real slim shady from all those "just imitating."

This probably stems from my lack of understanding but I also struggle to grasp the idea of data packets on the Web becoming anything associated which has the potential to reach consciousness. I expect I'd be more thrilled by the concept if I was better educated on the subject

There are a few other plot points that didn't work for me but to tell you about them I'd have to spoil too much and I don't want to do that. Hyper-vaguely, one of those is that someone gets a slap on the wrist from the POTUS when they probably should have wound up in Guantanamo.

But those are a few personal quibbles and otherwise I completely bought into the rest of how Sawyer made this work, truly.

On a much lighter note, I wanted to share a quote of perhaps one of the most face-palm worthy lines in the book. Context: the conversation at the time was about Webmind's origin and comparing it with human origins...

"Caitlin walked over to the laptop and did so—thinking briefly that if it brought up a 404 error, it’d be the missing link."

Ha! This joke is so "dad" that I can't believe it got through editing. It's right up my alley for strange humour.

And that's all folks. I definitely recommend this series. It has a couple of issues in style but it is a fascinating scenario overall and it is full of wisdom.

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