Review: The Passengers

The Passengers by John Marrs
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Passengers is part of the Dark Future series by John Marrs.  You can read this book alone without any issues.  It does reference The One and has some mild spoilers for that.  If that bothers you, I would read The One first.  

Combine self-driving cars and the worst of social media and reality television and you get The Passengers.  We already have the ingredients for this recipe. I am not even against self-driving cars because I can see the benefits in certain scenarios to having them.  I do agree that the big issues comes when we let AI make all the decisions.  Because it isn't really making objective decisions, it relies on information it is given and potential bias in programming.  The whole time I was reading this I was thinking of that poor library cat that was killed by a self-driving car.  Yes, I am the crazy person that brakes for all animals even if it means I might get myself killed.  Don't bother to come at me.  You won't change my mind.  

There were a few characters in this that felt over-the-top unlikeable.  Then I realized, there are real people today that are over-the-top unlikeable so I can't fault John Marrs for writing realism.  I did love the way he encapsulated how quick social media is to judge people on a line drawing of their character and showed how that can really be misleading.  As always, I love how he incorporates new articles, interviews, and other epistolary forms of writing to tell the story.  It is one of my favorite things about his books.  

View all my reviews