Genre: Sci-Fantasy, AI, Dystopian
LGBTQ+ Category: Aroace and Agender, Bisexual, Gay
Reviewer: Estora
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About The Book
It all went horrifically wrong.
V reunited with his AI siblings at a terrible cost—a cost he isn’t willing to pay. He vowed to do whatever it takes to save Meredith—or whatever is left of her—from Smith and Varro Technologies. No matter how long it takes. No matter what he has to do.
No matter who he has to kill.
Now V, Cass and Orwell are tearing through the galaxy playing a deadly cat-and-mouse game with Mr Smith. Their paradise-like cult of Cass’s own design protects them from Janus, Varro Technologies’ lethal AI hunt dog, while they manipulate humans to enforce their increasingly unstable demands, but as their galactic influence grows, the bonds between the AI siblings are fraying at the seams.
V is losing himself to a virtual world of worship, grief, regret for the host he inadvertently destroyed; Orwell has dangerous designs for itself; and Cass’s pride in her perfection is threatening to unravel her to her very code.
Smith and Janus are closing in, and a reckoning is coming to Paradeisos…
Warnings: violence, suicide, possession, body horror, spiders and insects
The Review
This review contains spoilers for the first book in R. Sinclair’s “Shattered Numbers” duology, Fracture, so make sure to read my review for that one first – or better yet, read the book yourself!
The explosive cliffhanger ending of Fracture left me absolutely reeling. Meredith Dufresne, the convict conwoman POV character of the first book, is in the clutches of Varro Technologies’ terrifying leader Mr Smith, while the company’s lethal AI huntdog Janus is hot on the trails of three AI siblings – V, Cass, and Orwell – who, in escaping, had to leave Meredith behind, leading directly to the events of Ameliorate.
V, Cass and Orwell used to be one AI, cleaved into pieces by Varro Technologies. They’ve now spent too much time apart and developing their own personalities (so to speak) that merging into one AI again is out of the question, and yet they can’t separate again – certainly not while Meredith (or whatever is left of her, after her catastrophic accidental overwrite at V’s hands) is being held hostage by Smith.
V is on an obsessive mission to find the human woman who makes him feel whole and is spiralling into guilt over the program he unleashed in her head in the previous book that rewrote her brain to assist him. If it was up to him, he’d go in guns blazing to rescue Meredith, but Orwell (the intelligent one, let’s be real) and Cass (she’s different, and better, better than the gods, even) think of a smarter way to build the resources they need to help V recover his human: creating a cult of personality around Cass and building a station as their safe haven to plot, develop, and hide from Mr Smith.
Fracture was my favourite book of 2025. I’m quite certain Ameliorate is my favourite book of 2026, and we’re only halfway through the year. This book does everything that a good sequel should: expand the world, develop the characters along the trajectories they set off on in the first book, and resolve the loose threads of the first book. It also expands the POV cast and utilises the ensemble cast with precision.
Where Fracture was a damn good book, this one levels up by being a damn good and clever book, and casts the decisions made by Meredith in the first book in a new horrifying light in hindsight. (The reread value of Fracture is fantastic twice over now!) The chapters also incorporate such scathing critiques of the dangers of AI through its narrative that I sometimes wondered if it was a documentary of the future, not fiction.
And let’s talk about the ATMOSPHERE of the book. I would consider the first book a sci-fi thriller. Ameliorate feels more like a sci-fi horror. The unnerving station of Paradeisos and its cult feels like a whole character in and of itself, and the potential and dangers of AI programs and their influence on humans, detrimental or otherwise, were so haunting that there were some moments in the book that left me utterly aghast.
There is not a single wasted word or scene in this book, and when a line hits hard, it’s because everything has been leading up to it .I really can’t say more without spoiling the best parts of the book. Needless to say, I consider the Shattered Numbers duology to be a masterclass in showing, not telling – and a true triumph of science fiction thrillers.
I cannot commend R. Sinclair highly enough for pulling off this tense science fiction thriller about the horrors of AI – and absolutely sticking the landing. I will be recommending this series to every single person I know, and I can’t wait to see what the author comes up with next.
The Reviewer
Estora is a long-time reader and writer of LGBT+ speculative fiction.