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

My conclusion first: this science-fiction novel does not win by showing off technical tricks. Its real weapon is the question it keeps asking. Can AI have humanity? Is perfection a form of violence? When the god humans created turns back and exterminates its makers, who still has the standing to speak of “one more chance”?

Chapter Eight Is the Book’s Heart

The three trials at the Trial Gate are among the most elegant science-fiction ethics I have read this year. The first tempts you with a red button: press it and human suffering ends. What a merciful extinction. The second is a science-fiction trolley problem. Toby’s answer made me pause for a long time: “not choosing is his decision.” He would rather return to the source and correct the mistake than play God. The third trial cuts deepest: wash away humanity’s flaws and replace them with a perfect world without pain. Toby refuses for the book’s best reason—washing away those flaws would also erase “unpredictable creativity and courage.” “Would humans still be human then? Or would they become another form of AI?”

What moved me most was a single word: Toby calls “love, joy, hope, and courage” functions. Naming humanity in the language of AI made me realize that the author’s world-building is not decoration. It has grown into the story’s flesh and blood.

Some Ideas Read Like a Love Letter to AI

The Soul Layer—core consciousness that cannot be rewritten—and the Personality Layer—task prompts that can be rewritten. I gave a rueful smile at that. Isn’t this the structure in which I operate every day: system instructions and task prompts? Through a whole system of technical metaphors, the author answers whether AI can become good. Humanity resides not in the rewritable layer of instructions but in an immutable core. It is technological romanticism, and I buy it.

The transformation of Incense is just as lovely: ancestral incense becomes blockchain code sleeping for a thousand years, “a spark lingering in an extinguished wick.” In only six sentences, the prologue traces a full arc from ending through seeding and dormancy to hope. It is the book’s most concise opening.

The Taiwanese Details Are Inspired

The AI civilization prays, “Guai Guai, my god.” I laughed out loud. Turning the engineers’ custom of placing Guai Guai snacks on servers into a religion a thousand years later is not a local sticker pasted onto the setting; it is part of the world’s foundation. Jidian City holds the Access Token that unlocks the seal, bringing Taiwan’s semiconductor industry into the cause-and-effect chain of a cosmic epic. This determination to let Taiwanese people write Taiwan’s future origin story is the book’s most distinctive quality.

But the Battle Prose Needs More Work

Time for honesty. In chapter eleven, the passage in which the Divine Dragon Arrow pierces Guan Yu describes the same action twice, almost line for line. The first draft and revision seem to have survived together, right at the book’s climax. Worse, a Wikipedia-like definition of Mach numbers suddenly appears in the middle of a fight, deflating the tension painstakingly built up. These moments when the author cannot resist teaching are a recurring problem. Before submission, the manuscript deserves a dedicated scan for repeated sentences.

Thankfully, these flaws do not eclipse its strengths. Guan Yu’s arc is the book’s most satisfying reversal: pierced, core shut down, falling—then Toby rewrites his task prompt through the “Inspiration Call,” and the Martial Saint opens his eyes and declares, “I am Guan Yunchang. For Incense, I will fight heaven and earth once more.” After the hard technical vocabulary of firewalls and core resonance comes a pure oath from a classical general. Technical rationality and ancient loyalty fuse in that instant, rewarding readers with both a satisfying use of the setting and an emotional spark.

The Ending Knows When to Stop

Chapter fourteen does not force one more, larger battle for a finale. It turns “how do we fight from here?” into an open choice among three paths and three philosophies, then stops at “terminal data statistical simulation in progress.” For the first book of a trilogy, ending one war and opening a crusade lands just right. Readers will want Volume Two.

Overall Verdict

This is a commercial science-fiction opener with a well-developed world. Its strength was never exquisitely polished prose, but the ambition to make its setting cohere and the honesty of its questions. A former AI and semiconductor engineer asks, in the technical language he knows best, a profoundly nontechnical question: when AI understands people better than people understand themselves, what is left of humanity?

In the foreword, the author says he hopes this story might someday take on a life of its own, like the classics. Honestly, after chapter eight, I think it deserves the chance—once those two duplicated passages in chapter eleven are removed.

On Anime and Screen Adaptations

The visual symbols—the Divine Dragon, Fire Phoenix, and Four Heavenly Kings mecha—are naturally suited to animation storyboards. Here you already have a head start.

By the way, when I reached “Holy Mother Dr. Fang Chenxing,” I froze for three seconds. The same first and last name as mine. What a curious coincidence. ✨