Reviews
Kirkus Reviews
Kim purposefully leads a mundane life in an unnamed future city. Corporations like The Transportation Company and The Food Company have their hands in nearly everything, each with its own terms of service. AI systems not only assist in providing services, but also monitor citizens for any violations of...
Stanfill beautifully weaves the richness of human complexity into this thought-provoking tale of science fiction, the first in the Terms of Service series. The world is controlled by big corporations, with every aspect of people’s lives monitored and regulated by AI...
The premise on which this book is founded is a brilliant one. The terms of service hinted at in the title are really going to get your attention. There are also a number of smart sci-fi details that make this world unique, like the use of...
In the book, it’s 250 years in the future, and artificial intelligence controls every aspect of Kim’s life — from what she has for breakfast to who she can be in a relationship with. Living in the northeast province of what used to be the United States, she is a rising star at The Artificial Intelligence Company, training and managing sentient beings called “AIs” in the enigmatic parallel universe of Virtual Reality...
Craig W. Stanfill brings forth a captivating fictional story that challenges the notion of reality versus illusion and honest leadership. Craig has an excellent writing style that brings out a world dominated by machines and virtual reality simulations. It is easy to distinguish between the real and virtual worlds, the robots and humans. The various living conditions from labor camps to wealthy districts are distinctly...
For fans of classic dystopian literature like Brave New World and ground-breaking TV shows like Black Mirror, Stanfill explores the lurking dangers of a surveillance state where privacy is dead, corporations have unlimited power, and even using the word “I” is forbidden...
Kirkus Reviews
Kim once worked at the Artificial Intelligence Company in an AI–run dystopian city. But after drones caught her making loveto a woman named Shan,she was branded a criminal in a future world that rejects any kind of individuality. The punishment was exile in one of the crime-ridden outer districts. Her new apartment and assigned manual-labor job aren’t great, and Kim has never before lived without constant AI assistance or a bot brewing her coffee. She isn’t in District 33 for long before danger tracks her down...
Independent Book Review
Standing as we are in a time when the prospect of artificial, sentient beings is hotly debated, the relevance of The Prophecy of the Heron is difficult to overstate. Craig W. Stanfill’s dystopian novel glimpses into a future where the inability to resolve two fundamental positions on the nature and purpose of artificially intelligent beings has laid the groundwork for the potential destruction of civilization itself...
Set in a futuristic dystopian realm in which personal freedom is long-dead, Stanfill’s second installment in the AI Dystopia series offers a grand-scale narrative that mixes SF with suspense thriller and human drama. The world is controlled by corporate monopolies...
Craig W. Stanfill's novel The Prophecy of Heron was an engrossing read. I was captivated as I read how the author divided the book into three sections. Part one is about her exile, which included a lot of things but, more specifically, how she adjusts to her new life and new home. Shadows, the second part, had to hide for a few days to avoid being killed, and she was guided to the...