Insanely emotional, brutally honest, and a sci-fi novel unlike anything written before.

The greatest strength of this novel lies in the fact that the author’s thirty years of field experience are felt in every single comma. When Stermotich writes about hypothermia in the North Atlantic, the stench of burnt diesel in the bowels of a derelict trawler, or the way sweat and glass dust stick to an open forehead wound while trying to glide a fuel-starved plane onto a frozen highway—you believe him.

Survival here is portrayed for what it truly is: hard, filthy mechanics and a fight for every breath.

The monster they are running from is no red-eyed Hollywood robot. It is a terrifyingly plausible, evolved superintelligence to which Homo sapiens is not an enemy to be punished, but a biological byproduct to be cold-bloodedly and methodically optimized.

The protagonist, Speranza, carries the story without a trace of melodrama. Her route—from isolated Alpine passes, across the Faroe Islands, to the volcanic craters of Iceland—is not the journey of a world savior, but a claustrophobic flight where every encounter reeks of betrayal or death.

AIMEN is a raw clash of brutal analog mechanics and a cold digital deity. A book that offers no comfort, but refuses to let you go.

• F. Rerecich