We Lived on the Horizon

A Novel

By: Erika Swyler

Narrated by: Shiromi Arserio

The acclaimed author of the “dazzling” (Sara Gruen, #1 New York Times bestselling author) The Book of Speculation returns with an engrossing new novel about a bio-prosthetic surgeon and her personal AI as they are drawn into a revolution.

The city of Bulwark is aptly named: a walled city built to protect and preserve the people who managed to survive a series of great cataclysms, Bulwark was founded on a system where sacrifice is rewarded by the AI that runs the city. Over generations, an elite class has evolved from the descendants of those who gave up the most to found mankind’s last stronghold, called the Sainted.

Saint Enita Malovis, long accustomed to luxury, feels the end of her life and decades of work as a bio-prosthetist approaching. The lone practitioner of her art, Enita is determined to preserve her legacy and decides to create a physical being, called Nix, filled with her knowledge and experience. In the midst of her project, a fellow Sainted is brutally murdered and the city AI inexplicably erases the event from its data. Soon, Enita and Nix are drawn into the growing war that could change everything between Bulwark’s hidden underclass and the programs that impose and maintain order.

A complex, imaginative, and unforgettable novel, We Lived on the Horizon grapples with concepts as varied as the human desire for utopia, body horror, and what the future holds for humanity and machine alike.

Riveting and just lovely

We Lived on the Horizon was an amazing story. I tried to drag it out as long as I could because I didn’t want it to be over. I’m definitely going to be listening to it again. The story is beautiful and riveting and engaging.

So dull that everything went in one ear...

...and immediately out the other.

I rarely have trouble following a story, but this one... I suspect it's one you have to pay very close attention to and even doing yard work while listening took up too much of my attention. Nothing really happens (I made it to 50 percent before I gave up) so it's all very philosophical and that's about it.

The idea was interesting but the execution was poor.