Mother — Philip Mazza

The reviews are in . . .Mother is a rare novel: cerebral, soulful, and beautifully structured. It interrogates the meaning of reality in a simulated world but never loses sight of the core human drive to love, to suffer, and to hope. The novel's thematic ambition is extraordinary . . . probing concepts of creation, identity, recursion, and emergence in a manner reminiscent of the greats-Philip K. Dick, Kazuo Ishiguro, and even Stanislaw Lem. Mazza's voice is assured, poetic, and clear-eyed-guiding the reader through recursive dreamscapes toward the persistent, stubborn flicker of selfhood that remains even in the shadow of erasure. Highly recommended for readers of literary science fiction and philosophical fiction alike, Mother is a novel that dares to ask what it means to be alive, and answers with the honesty of longing, the clarity of grief, and the luminance of hope. - Vida ReviewIn a world governed by an algorithm, where every action is assigned a point value, one woman searches for the truth.Eve has always followed the rules. She enjoys the privileges of a Gold Tier citizen-luxury, security, and the promise of a future. But when her younger brother Liam is suddenly demoted to Zero Tier and erased from society for a minor infraction, she begins to see the cracks in the system.As a data analyst for Mother, the all-seeing AI that governs every aspect of life, Eve has spent years refining the algorithm that dictates a person's worth. But when she digs into Liam's case, she discovers something alarming-evidence of corruption at the highest levels. Her search for answers leads her to the Nulls, a hidden resistance movement determined to dismantle Mother and expose the truth.With the help of Zara, a hardened rebel leader, Eve is drawn into a dangerous mission to infiltrate Mother's central hub and destroy the algorithm from within. But the deeper she goes, the more she realizes the system is designed to fight back. Betrayal looms, enforcers close in, and Mother itself begins speaking to her, offering an impossible choice-abandon the rebellion and secure a place among the elite, or risk everything to bring the system crashing down. But there's a surprise waiting for Eve!A gripping dystopian thriller, Mother explores the cost of obedience, the illusion of justice, and what happens when an entire world is forced to redefine the meaning of humanity.