For We Are Many by Dennis E. Taylor

TL;DR: A fantastic sequel to a stellar first volume
Source: NetGalley, thank you so much!

Plot: With humans scattering across the universe we start to see more of the worlds out there and find out our biggest threat.
Characters: I ride or die for some of these Bobs and we get one of first intense deaths.
Setting: Space is a great setting and Dennis E. Taylor makes it feel adequately vast.
Science Fiction: I’ve never claimed to be a smart person, but this one has a good line between hard and casual for me.

Summary:

Bob Johansson didn’t believe in an afterlife, so waking up after being killed in a car accident was a shock. To add to the surprise, he is now a sentient computer and the controlling intelligence for a Von Neumann probe.

Bob and his copies have been spreading out from Earth for 40 years now, looking for habitable planets. But that’s the only part of the plan that’s still in one piece. A system-wide war has killed off 99.9 percent of the human race; nuclear winter is slowly making the Earth uninhabitable; a radical group wants to finish the job on the remnants of humanity; the Brazilian space probes are still out there, still trying to blow up the competition; and the Bobs have discovered a spacefaring species that sees all other life as food.

Bob left Earth anticipating a life of exploration and blissful solitude. Instead he’s become a sky god to a primitive native species, the only hope for getting humanity to a new home, and possibly the only thing that can prevent every living thing in the local sphere from ending up as dinner.

Thoughts:

The first Bob book was a great jumping off point and book two really took it and ran. This one has us really seeing the rewards, and consequences of exploring the universe and scattering humanity. We have begun to settle on new planets, new challenges pop up, and new complications occur.

For me the highlight of this volume was the focus in on several of the Bobs and how they interacted with humanity. There is a distance, a break between the Bobs and humanity starting to show. At the same time we see a Bob maybe catch feelings for a human, and another to suffer. We also see some new aliens and the new bad guy? Oh man, that’s going to be very fun.

I can’t wait to see how the Bobs handle this huge threat in book three. The ending of book two really teases at it and if they don’t pull off what they’re aiming for things can go bad real quick. This one is a ton of fun, keep reading the series if you’ve started it. And if you haven’t, you totally should.