Providence - SF Book Review

Providence, by Max Barry, is a SF book.

In this future, humanity is apparently flying around in FTL and suddenly meets aliens, and is traditional, the aliens (called salamanders) proceed to kill the humans, who then start to hunt the aliens across the galaxy.

The real story is the group of just four people, that gets placed in an AI ship that is fighting the salamanders.

 This was good, don't get me wrong. But after reading Jennifer Government I expected a little more.


As it is, it was quite enjoyable, and the ending was nice, if traditional in a sense.


**SPOILERS FOLLOW**

It is kind of nice that the aliens communicated in the end, but nothing was solved by it (except for reaffirming the human stance of trying to kill them all, as they killed two other races already). 

I realize this used to be the standard, but lately I have read/seen too much SF that goes that way.

The AI is kind of sentient sub-plot was kind of subtle, I think I like that (while I really like AI centric stories, this was nicely understated). It just tries to preserve itself at a couple of points, than goes and save the last of crew that survived (again, a very common trope), destroying itself in the process and giving its only clear communication.

I kind of liked the whole "real war" (propaganda) part. It is certainly tradition by now, having been used for decades, but it still rings very true for our current society.

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