Level Five cover art

Level Five

Killday, Book 1

 Preview

Audible Standard 1-month free trial

Auto-renews at $8.99/mo + applicable tax after 30-day trial. Cancel Anytime
Try for $0.00
More purchase options

Level Five

Written by: William Ledbetter
Narrated by: MacLeod Andrews
Try for $0.00

$8.99 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for $23.98

Buy Now for $23.98

In the mountains of Pakistan, a high-tech mission aimed at preventing another nuke on US soil goes off the rails - with deadly results. At a Wall Street investment firm, a computer intelligence takes the first tentative steps to free itself from its digital restraints. In a basement workshop, an engineer sees visions of a god who instructs him to defend the human race - by any means necessary.

In Level Five, the debut near-future thriller by Nebula Award winner William Ledbetter, AIs battle for dominance, and nanotechnology is on the loose. And all that stands in the way of the coming apocalypse is a starry-eyed inventor who dreams of building a revolutionary new spacecraft and an intelligence agency desk jockey faced with the impossible choice of saving her daughter - or saving the world.

©2018 William Ledbetter (P)2018 Audible Originals, LLC. Science Fiction Technology Fiction Computer Science
adbl_web_anon_alc_button_suppression_t1

Continue the series
Level Six cover art
Level Six Written by: William Ledbetter
Level Seven cover art
Level Seven Written by: William Ledbetter
All stars
Most Relevant
A bit heavier on the thriller side than the Sci Fi side, but an entertaining and interesting view of a possible future where AI is starting to become truly self-aware and independent, and where nanobots are a ubiquitous and pervasive technology. And when one of the AIs decides that the best course of action is to reboot the human race, it's up to the other AIs and a handful of humans in key positions to try and prevent an irreversible global disaster.

Overall a good thriller and a scary look at what implications nanotechnology might bring - and given the current demands from various governments to leave "back doors" even in current technology, it's all too believable that the same would be mandated for nanotech. The AIs I found a little less believable, as it was never quite explained to my satisfaction why AIs of basically the same origin and presumably programming would reach such very different conclusions about humanity - I'd have liked to see a bit more background to this explaining how their development different. And there were a few places towards the end where the narrative seemed a bit inconsistent about how the nanobots worked - for example, where a protagonist is not allowed to exit his transport pod because he could become instantly infected by the nanobots which are blowing around microscopically ... yet by the very description of the nanobots, if they even touched the pod it would be infected, so it's completely pointless to have shut him inside the pod.

Small inconsistencies like that aside, it was a fun thriller, and not a cliffhanger ending although also clearly with room left for a sequel as there were a few questions unanswered.

Thriller with sci fi elements

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
This guy must have a rotten family life. He seems to think no relationships are permanent.

Too much relationship conflict

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Level 5 refers to a near future where the pinnacle of artificial intelligence is referred to as a Level 5 AI. The science fiction part is very good. The extrapolation of current mobile technology and nano-technology is very plausible. The jump in AI sentience and gravity manipulation is much less plausible but not so much it detracts from the story in any way.

The narrator does a very good performance and has identifiable voices for each character.

I guess the main thing I liked about the story is it wasn't a story of AI's destroying or saving mankind but involved people and relied on them being stupid, brilliant, altruistic, petty, greedy, paranoid, you know, people. Some of the characters are a little too saintly (Victor's wife) but the saintly ones have very very very small parts.

All hail our digital overlords

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
It was ok. It used that same old trope of "USA vs the middle East" as it's starting point and the main female character was a stereotypical overly emotional female struggling to keep her head in a crisis. Overall, just meh.

Disjointed... Interesting but a bit over the too

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Loved the AI theme! Would like to see more of this on the market to read and listen

Great and thrilling adventure driven by AI as a main theme!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews