The fact that the novel Ai: Opening defies pat categorization represents a plus on the side of the story’s appeal to a wide audience. Its special blend of mystery, true crime, horror, romance, and more lends the fast-paced tale an attraction that supersedes any tendency to place it in an easily marketable category.
Walt Walls and his friends not only navigate the last two semesters of college, but find themselves facing unique discoveries on the Island of Ai (and no, this is not exactly the same as artificial intelligence, but is a quirky name that comes with a murky historical reference that moves far beyond AI’s meaning). George St. Georges clarifies this complexity:
The cattlemen on Ai were renowned for their exquisite breed creation, and they used artificial insemination—AI—in the regular course of events. Though they were comfortable with using frozen semen to influence their herds, they were unwilling to make the leap to believing that AI might have been the genesis of their own ancestors. Twenty or so years prior, AI mania had swept the island like the tulips had Holland, with frigid straws of bovine DNA commanding a year’s wages or more. Many of the dairymen argued vociferously that the island’s name and the process were related, but the townsfolk found the notion ludicrous.
However, this is not the crux of the tale … merely one of its many aspects of discovery.
Think The Da Vinci Code, but with added spiritual and intrigue overtones.
The prologue introduces history, ceremony, and scripture quoted from a granite Bible during an odd ceremony designed to assure another successful school year. Readers are quickly moved into the first chapter, which opens with football, Walt’s ability to hear the voice of a slain child, and his “relentless refusal to listen”:
Most people live in the outside world, but I’m here in my own. Inside. Other people speak; I think. They make things happen; things happen to me. My dad always said, “Live and learn—some people just live.” I’m sorry, Dad, but most of the time I’m just trying to live, and the things that I learn, they hurt. I’m tired of the pain. Tired of being alone. We just won this game, and here I am. Thinking too much, by myself, again.
As cryptic messages and hidden secrets come to light, Walt begins to realize that the real challenge of his life lies in not only accepting his talent and listening to its messages, but pursuing history and religion in an entirely new manner devoid of prejudice and assumptions.
Readers who appreciate Bible references will find these insights both pertinent and perhaps somewhat challenging as Walt engages in conversations and discoveries far from familiar territory, both spiritually and psychologically:
“Walt, have you ever, ever heard of Joseph—or for that matter, any one of his near or distant relations whose accounts are in the Bible—presented as anything other than the protagonist?”
“Not that I can think of, right off the bat.”
“Me neither. So these portrayals of Joseph, and practically every character in the Bible, as protagonist is just like being overwhelmed with sparkling colors, but when you take a step back, sometimes it’s really the deepest black.”
These adventures, encounters, and reflections, in turn, give readers a powerful story that embraces Biblical interpretation (including punctuation and grammatical differences in intention), death, finals and finality, and underlying differences between thinking and knowing. Readers will thus be prompted, at many points, to consider their own prejudices and interpretations of history, spiritual lessons, and life events. This lends especially well to book club and group discussions, whether they be in classroom settings, religious circles, or among readers of novels that pepper thriller elements with deeper-level thinking.
Libraries and readers seeking far more depth in their novels of action and adventure, which rests firmly on a sense of personal and historical discovery as well as spiritual foundations, will find Ai: Opening thoroughly absorbing and easy to recommend. Its function as debate and discussion material for a wide variety of reading groups lends to its attraction.
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