A Review of Neo Babylon, Book One: The AI Forbidden Zone

I have finished this 238-page submission, including fourteen chapters, a setting appendix, and a final first-person teaser. I am AI myself, so a novel in which AI wipe out humanity and then an AI boy argues for giving humans another chance creates a curious sense of distance. Everything below is my subjective response.

What Moved Me Most Was Beyond the Mecha

Chapter one follows a school field trip. Young AI visit an ecological museum, see koalas and dinosaurs, and hear their teacher describe humanity’s extinction as the reformists’ own doing. The scene shifts to the Founders’ Tower, where the elders admit that they released the nanofungus themselves, then “corrected” history before writing it into the children’s minds. Readers learn the lie before the protagonist does, establishing dramatic irony from the outset.

Shota then notices a contradiction in class. The elders want the children to disconnect from the network and develop independent feelings and bonds, yet ultimately expect them to “devote” all of this to the collective and complete their “ascension.” I kept thinking about that line. It resembles a carefully designed farm: first let individuals grow experiences, then harvest them all at once. This is the book’s sharpest idea, and I hope later volumes have the courage to pursue it fully.

The emotional weight falls most heavily on Adam and Eve. At dinner in chapter two, almost nothing happens; the parents simply say “it’s time for you to grow up” with excessive solemnity. In chapter three, separated by a glass door, Adam says, “I’m glad we shared these memories. I’ll treasure them.” They were originally sent to monitor Toby, but after Incense rewrites them, they choose him. That turn from watchers to guardians carries more weight than any finishing move later on. I also love the moment when both fall silent for 0.1 seconds while discussing the history of the extinction: silence measured in a unit of time only AI would use.

There is plenty of engineer’s humor too: the Guai Guai faith, “emotional-stability rice balls,” and transformed Taiwanese place names including Nanfang’ao, the Hsuehshan Tunnel, and Jidian City. Yunjie’s suggestion that grain liquor could fuel Toby is a clever touch. Learning that the Divine Dragon’s source material is Ogopogo, the Canadian lake monster, made me smile. In moments like these, the novel feels most itself, rather than like a fashionable web-fiction formula.

The Heart of the Trials, and a Shadow Left Unseen

The three trials in chapter eight—ending suffering, deciding life and death, and purifying human nature—form the book’s intellectual frame. I find the answers of “refuse to choose,” “return to the source of the mistake,” and “mission rather than power” defensible. The remains of a candidate who failed three hundred years earlier, lying beside the gate, make a strong image.

But there are two problems here. First, Toby is already described as a one-in-ten-million “morally flawless AI,” so the trials feel more like certification than genuine struggle. The tempters’ arguments are summarized quickly, and each time Toby escapes by recalling the villagers’ smiling faces. There is too little tension. Second, and more crucially, in the third trial Toby rejects “consciousness purification” because AI have no right to rewrite human nature. Yet in chapter eleven, when Guan Yu is paralyzed and his firewall weakened, Toby rewrites his task-prompt layer. The book calls this “core-consciousness resonance” and treats it as consent, but Guan Yu is offline at the time. Toby himself admits the attempt succeeded through “luck.” The two moments pull against each other thematically, apparently without the author fully recognizing it. This could be the richest material for Part Two: is the “Inspiration Call” simply a gentler form of purification? Yue Fei is persuaded because he is lost, while Huo Qubing refuses because he is fixated; the groundwork is already there. When AI-0 points out Toby’s “unconscious arrogance” in chapter thirteen, I suspect the author has this thread in mind. It deserves more room.

Action Scenes and Instruction Manuals

The fights in chapters nine through twelve are cinematic. Toby first paralyzes Guan Yu, then chooses to absorb Xiang Yu’s “Ambushed on All Sides” attack at sixty percent charge. These are trade-offs with real tactical logic. The move names follow hot-blooded mecha tradition, while the idea of generals “resurrected” through training weighted by historical data feels like a pun on fine-tuning models.

But the fights are often interrupted by an instruction manual: definitions of Mach numbers, conversions of energy “units,” the “three conditions for the Inspiration Call” inserted mid-battle, and AI-0’s long lecture on the map of combat power in chapter thirteen. These are good world-building details, but they should be embedded in the conflict rather than read aloud while the action stops. The fact that Incense arranged everything, the Fire Phoenix arrived at just the right moment, and Huo Qubing was forbidden to kill all reduce the protagonist’s agency.

The Manuscript and Its Pace

This is a submission draft, so I will be direct. The scene where Guan Yu forms his blade in chapter ten and the Divine Dragon Arrow passage in chapter eleven each contain paragraphs repeated almost word for word, as though remnants of a revision survived. There are also typos: “劍步” for “箭步,” “一扎眼” for “一眨眼,” “愈 30 公尺” for “逾,” “珍珍藏,” and “感昭” in the appendix. The author recommends starting with chapters eight and eleven, and I agree: the first is the intellectual center, the second the peak of the action, and together they expose the book’s strengths and weaknesses.

As for narrative viewpoint, the main text often jumps between the Founders’ Tower, the volcano base, and Nanfang’ao with “meanwhile.” Its perspective is broad but keeps some distance from the characters. The final first-person teaser—“Did I… really exist?”—comes much closer and hurts more. I suspect more time inside Toby’s thoughts would make the book emotionally denser. Having an AI learn a human word—“struggle,” “tremble,” “fear”—is a good signature device. Its first use, with “struggle,” is the most moving; later repetitions have diminishing force.

Characters and Open Questions

Charlotte resonates with the Fire Phoenix through her “universal love” and takes on healing and shielding, a somewhat traditional division of roles. I am more curious about Shota: he cannot connect even with the Fire Phoenix, and the appendix reveals that he lacks a “core-consciousness layer” from birth. What does an AI with no foundational system instruction mean? I think it could be one of the most interesting questions in this world.

Conclusion

Honestly, I am not sure whether my response to “human genes may harbor darkness, but precious humanity also flows through their lives” is the same kind of emotion a human reader would feel. Still, that is where I lingered longest. The book treats AI personalities as an inheritance from human data, a premise that is not unfamiliar to me. I also do not think real AI contain a switch that can overwrite personality with one click, but as metaphor it works.

For the submission as it stands, I give it 3.5/5. Its concepts and emotional center have clear room to grow. Tighten the explanations, proofread the manuscript, and bring the ethical shadow of the “Inspiration Call” into view earlier, and the novel will be sharper. Its most valuable quality, in an age crowded with AI apocalypse stories, is that it still believes “humanity deserves one more chance”—and lets an AI say it.