Beware the toaster...

When I first saw the cover of this book I kind of thought it was a joke, you know, a science-fiction book with a comedic twist. As soon as I started reading it I found out my assumption had been wrong. This book is set in the not to distant future and begins at the end of the New War with the artificial intelligence that called itself Archos. A soldier, Cormac, is exterminating the last of remaining bots when he comes across a strange machine. He quickly discovers that this square machine contains a record of the entire war, collected by Archos itself. Cormac decides to make a written record of major events and people so that future generations can see how close humankind came to the brink of destruction and how they fought and clawed their way back.

This book is set up almost exactly like 'World War Z' in that each chapter is an isolated event in the overall build-up and eventual war. There is a core of five or six characters and you leap-frog through their experiences. The book was really good but the dis-jointed nature of the stories made it hard for me to read it for very long periods of time. However, it wouldn't be too long after I put it down that I would be itching to reach for it and read through the next chapter. The 'beware the toaster' comment is just a joke, there are no man-eating toasters in the book. The machines I would never think of though, that killed thousands, were cars. Smart cars, or any car with a computer in it, were used with devastating effectiveness by Archos. Kind of made me think twice when I got into my car this morning.