No matter the cost, this problem must be contained.
Cognation Academy has always harbored mysteries beneath its enchanted, tech-fueled campus, but certain alcoves hold more sinister secrets than anyone suspected.
Last fall, the cutting-edge Android Inception Program flipped Charlotte Blythe’s world upside down as she risked everything to save her android friends, Isaac and Denton. With Isaac’s future still in jeopardy, Charlotte throws herself into the annual enigma tournament and campus-wide battle over androids’ rights. As reality and illusion converge, a cryptic journal from Cognation’s founder awakens an unexpected foe and opens a decades-old cold case with explosive implications. Only Charlotte and her friends have the courage to search for the missing clues before it’s too late.
Android and human high school students work together to find clues left behind by one of the founders, all while fighting for android equality in Marie’s mysterious second After Intelligence novel (after The Hidden Sequence). Returning to school for a new semester, Charlotte, her android best friend, Isaac, her new boyfriend, and their friends are preparing as a team for an unpredictable augmented reality competition called the Enigma tournament. But as soon as the tournament starts, other students begin to show they’re not accepting of the android students as equals, trying to get them removed from the tournament. While Charlotte and her team fight for the androids’ right to play, they also strive to uncover the secrets of a journal of the founder of an android-developing conglomerate.In a future where everyone wears viewer contacts for reading, messaging, and augmenting reality into anything they want to see, the addition of androids into everyday life has proved complicated. Marie explores the issue of android acceptance through the lens of high school, revealing how the feelings of the students reflect those of humans in general, including the fear of something different, even though androids have done nothing to deserve the negative attention. Marie’s storytelling makes a spirited case for acceptance even as “technology changes humans’ relationship to the world around them,” demonstrating that androids may have advantages in some ways, but humans have advantages in others. That’s true in life and the games, where every room the teams investigate becomes entire new worlds, only seen and felt through their viewer contacts but wholly lifelike.
The fun of the story doesn’t stop with the incredible tournament. The likable heroes continue chasing clues from the journal found in the first book, facing mathematical challenges, augmented reality puzzles, and more. Readers who love gameplay and camaraderie will be on the edge of their seats trying to work it all out with these clever teens.
Takeaway: Clever android and human teens crack puzzles and push for acceptance.
Comparable Titles: Cory Doctorow’s For the Win, Marie Lu’s Warcross.
Production grades
Cover: A
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: A
Marketing copy: A
