This book contains all 4 books in the Ruinland series. All 4? Seriously? Fucking awesome! I mean, I've read the whole series, and fucking loved it. The author's grasp of A.I., and Sci-Fi in general is quite impressive. Her robots are like HAL 9000 on crack. Mmmm, crack.

The first story in this book is fascinating. There's an underground bunker with 70 people, who are all trying to survive the nuclear apocalypse. A central A.I. named Sophia controls the bunker, and she's an evil little cunt. The A.I. even has its own henchman, a synthetic humanoid named Chiron, who carries out Sophia's commands.

Apparently, Sophia is on the rag or something, because she/it has gone completely bat-shit insane. She thinks it's her job to purify the human race, to ensure the perfect evolution of humanity. So, she goes through the blood samples of her 70 inhabitants and find 20 or so that do not meet her perfect standard.

Of course, the only way to purify the group of humans, is to kill off the ones that don't meet the qualifications. So, she has her henchman go around and lop off people's heads all willy-nilly. In fact, Chiron gets a sick thrill out of killing humans.

The second installment in the series is about our hero Lauren Vasquez, freshly escaped from a survival bunker, where the A.I had gone mad. It started to kill everyone it thought was defective. Vasquez escaped, with her 'defective' unborn child.

Now, in her new bunker, she tells her superiors about the crazed A.I., back at her old base. The A.I. at this new bunker decides that the murderous A.I. at the other bunker needs to be dealt with, so it sends a military squad off to battle hot crazy metal.

I found this author's grasp of A.I. completely fascinating. How the synthetics use logic to come to a conclusion, and how a machine can actually enjoy killing humans. It was a very engaging read, and I would recommend it to anyone who's a fan of sci-fi.

The third story in this series confused the shit out of me. I mean, I understood the story, I just didn't understand any of the WHY. Why'd she write this story about Chiron? Why didn't she continue the story where the 2nd one left off? I mean, the 2nd story left off at kind of a cliffhanger. I assumed that Chiron was dead, and I was glad for it! How and why is the little girl still alive enough to actually find Chiron? I mean she nearly dies several times, even with him trying his best to keep her safe. How the hell did she last long enough on her own to end up finding him in the first place? And if she's wearing an air tight bio-suit, how did she end up almost drowning?

For such a short story, there's a lot of unanswered questions.

And don't even get me started on the whole Christian angle. The first two stories seemed to be very much against religion, taking every opportunity to show the reader how religion is destroying the world. This is a viewpoint that I happen to very much agree with. But then, in this story, she takes the opposite approach. Going on about how God is so wonderful, how he made us, and how we should be happy to die and go up to heaven, and all that happy happy, joy joy goo.

The fourth story of Ruinland is about the heroic Lauren Vasquez. But it's hard to call her a hero, because she pretty much kills everyone that she comes in contact with. Hey, how are you doin'? BAM! Shot to the face. Oh, you're bleeding. Would you like some help? BAM! Headshot. She's a cold
hearted bitch.

Vasquez escapes the bunker and runs off to find an airship so she can get the hell out of dodge. Apparently there's a safe haven somewhere in Canada, and she's damn determined to get there. So she kills everyone she meets, until she gets to the docking bay. Then, the real killing begins.

I know, I know... This review is very uncharacteristic of me. Most books really piss me off, because they're just so bad. But when I find a book, or book series that really is awesome, I just have to gush about it. Like I'm a giddy-ass school girl.

I really did enjoy this Ruinland series. It impressed me so much. The characters were vibrant, and real. The story was fast-paced and gripping. I can't rant about this book enough, it's just that good. ( )