Story about God-Emperor Kairominas, the absolute ruler of his realm, and his date with and equal. The story is ambitious and convoluted, and, in my opinion, doesn't quite pull through. There's potential, but it turns into a mess of tropes and ends awkwardly.

A strange combination of medieval-style sword and sorcery, Matrix-like brain-in-the-jar, cyberpunkish world-hacking, big robots... Sanderson just seems to borrow ideas from various sources and puts them together into a mish-mash that's ok to read but doesn't really explore the ideas it presents.

So, someone takes care of the humankind, which is, at this point, a massive farm of brains living in nutrient soup and spending their time in worlds created just for them. Why? The emperor needs to procreate, and that's why he needs to meet a fellow woman (brain) from a different tailored world. Again - why?

In other words, the setup of the story isn't motivated in any way - actually the weirdness of the meeting requirement is even mentioned in the novella itself. Liveborns know they live in a virtual reality, and seem to be able to hack their reality quite easily, which speaks volumes about the capabilities of those who are supposed to take care of the humanity.

Then there's the nemesis, who's a nemesis because the story needs one. And he uses robot avatars, because that's apparently a thing in his personal world, and every story needs a giant robot.

There's potential for existential discussion about human rights of virtual lifeforms, but when there are two sides where one takes those rights for granted and the other just as clearly doesn't care about them, there's little to discuss.


I don't know. If the story was longer, maybe it would flesh out into something interesting. Now it is a handful of ideas that never really take off.