This is a curious book. Not because of the story but because of the preamble by the author regarding “his” method of writing it and its detailed postscript. But we’ll come to that later.
I do like stories where little people are being pushed or corralled by big corporate money grabbers and, not to be quashed, they determine to fight their corner. When it’s a family business with a heritage and a key place in the community, all the better. I want the underdog to win out; I want there to be tension, skulduggery, dirty-handed tactics but ultimately, I want the goodness of people to prevail.
Harmony of Change has this. The story reads well and characterisation is there. Evan is a relatively passionate teen who along with Lila and his dad, Tom, try to out Victor Legrand for the man he is: one who is not pushing for better work conditions but is actually on the make. It’s a story about a small town struggling against the steady march of AI progression and how it will ultimately replace people as a cheaper, more efficient labour source. But is this really the reason for Legrand’s interest?
There are setbacks, some blackmail, some confrontations, family strife, surprises, potential for love – novel staples.
But this book is one of two halves and the second half is very different to the first.
I think the thing that needs to be mentioned now then is the fact that this book has been written with AI, with Chat GPT to be precise. The author is transparent about this in the introduction and perhaps, it’s been done to show how Chat GPT is a useful tool that can time save and generate text which holds a story in the same way as one created by a human, and there is some validity to this: this story is not bad at all.
It’s cohesive and flows. It’s not going to set the world alight but then many books I’ve read by humans don’t do that either. The process of how “Grayson Tate” reached this point though is insightful and I was amazed by how much can be generated by prompts, having only used AI for picture generation.
So, you’re getting 2 for 1 with this book: a fairly good story AND a behind the scenes look at AI composition.
The choice to delve further is yours.
This review was first published on Reedsy Discovery where I was privileged to read it as an ARC.
Scuffed Granny 