Book Review: An Unnatural Life by Erin K Wagner

An excellent premise for a book - if an AI is accused of murder, should it be faced with a jury of its peers? But I just found it a bit flat and disappointing.

This could have been a fascinating courtroom drama, or spacey whodunnit, or even a philosophical investigation into the nature of guilt.

Instead, it's just a plodding legal procedural which spends an awful lot of time on the domestic relations of the protagonist, and hardly any on the world-building.

There's an interwoven story which tries to raise the spectre of alien life deep beneath the surface. But it never intersects with the main plot. Perhaps it was an allegory I just wasn't clever enough to get.

It isn't a bad story. But I found it just a bit too obvious and slow-paced.