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Lambda
Whoever the lambdas might be, and wherever they really come from, they’re already here among us.
Outwardly alien arrivals from a distant sea, the lambdas are genetically human. The government has noticed them. So has a whole gamut of extremist groups. Cara Gray has noticed them too, first as a haunting presence in her otherwise ordinary childhood, then as the impossibly shifting target of her work as a police officer.
When a bomb goes off at a school, Cara finds herself the weak point in a surveillance regime that has failed to prevent the worst terrorist atrocity in decades. A nebulous group of lambda extremists claims responsibility for the attack — but how could a vulnerable community of tiny aquatic humans, barely visible in society and seemingly indifferent to their own exploitation, be capable of such a horrific act?
In Cara’s world a family member can be replaced with an app, a police quantum computer has the power to decide who dies, and objects are legally alive. As her relationship with the lambdas deepens, Cara must decide whether to submit to the patterns of technology, violence and obsession, or to take action of her own.
Outwardly alien arrivals from a distant sea, the lambdas are genetically human. The government has noticed them. So has a whole gamut of extremist groups. Cara Gray has noticed them too, first as a haunting presence in her otherwise ordinary childhood, then as the impossibly shifting target of her work as a police officer.
When a bomb goes off at a school, Cara finds herself the weak point in a surveillance regime that has failed to prevent the worst terrorist atrocity in decades. A nebulous group of lambda extremists claims responsibility for the attack — but how could a vulnerable community of tiny aquatic humans, barely visible in society and seemingly indifferent to their own exploitation, be capable of such a horrific act?
In Cara’s world a family member can be replaced with an app, a police quantum computer has the power to decide who dies, and objects are legally alive. As her relationship with the lambdas deepens, Cara must decide whether to submit to the patterns of technology, violence and obsession, or to take action of her own.
372 pages, ebook
First published January 1, 2022
51 people are currently reading
1780 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 65 reviews
December 22, 2022
Lambda is the most beautifully crafted, interesting sci-fi I’ve read in a while – this thing is absolutely bursting with ideas. The central idea is that ‘lambdas’, aquatic aliens who are genetically human, have become part of human society, albeit controversially. But the plot also encompasses AI assassins, sentient objects and future policing. Our (main) guide to this world is officer Cara Gray, who works first in surveillance, then – when her role is superseded by a quantum processor – as a ‘lambda liaison officer’. (And there are additional layers here too, as we’re aware her narrative has been generated by a program, leading to some very particular turns of phrase and details that reverberate throughout her story.) I could have carried on reading about all this forever: it’s so well-written and comes together so satisfyingly, and every perspective is cleverly developed. With that said, don’t read this book if you’re looking for questions to be answered and loose threads neatly tied up. There’s not much in the way of resolution: this is more a portrait of one idea of a future-world. It’s sometimes funny, sometimes chilling and always feels true.
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April 18, 2022
The first, and then 1000th, time I've seen the word saccade
June 4, 2022
'Dreamed again that I was a lambda. I landed at Portsmouth and hauled my tiny body up a rubble-strewn beach through dirty orange buoys. Feel of large pebbles on my stomach. Ears were full of Channel water + I could taste the chemical plumes I’d swum through. A land-human lifted me into a bucket—remember massive brightness + unknown colours. Then I lived in a place that could have been Surrey. Other lambda faces moved in and out of focus, importunate + sad. I began to speak but it didn’t mean anything at first, it was just a way to say to myself ‘I can speak!’ I dreamed the inside of 17 Cherry Tree Grove, the tiny airspace in Gavin’s shared bedroom, clustered with my family at a vent whose mesh had been removed so that we could all gulp air, much too close together, at a little square of waterline. Awoke (cruelly, inevitably) as my land-human self.'
Another one from one of my favourite publishers, Europa Editions. I'm obsessed with the cover; and shamelessly I chose to read it because of that. 3.5 - and that is mostly because of the chaotic narrative (maybe an overstatement, but you'll see what I mean if/when you read it). Experimental and somewhat darkly comic - a couple of some of my favourite things about a book. I read this a while ago, and although I did enjoy it, but I have to say that the impression of it isn't very lasting.
'These urns, you must understand, were not decorative items. They were, in a very concrete sense, cohabitants of the apartment. I attributed to each a degree of personality, an attribution that I believe went beyond standard anthropomorphism. These items had, after all, contained actual human remains. Human corpses might have curled inside rather the way developing birds do, just before they hatch from their eggs. At times I could appreciate quite directly how the body of a small adult or a child would have been compacted in each urn, and this ghost inhabitant felt intensely present to me. At times it was possible for me almost to imagine conversations with them, although the great gulf of time that separated our experiences meant that it was extremely hard to imagine much beyond some basic pleasantries.'
Even though as a whole it is a pretty interesting/engaging novel, I was distracted by the cheeky/playful style of narrative (which I was able to appreciate at the start, but found it a bit exhausting after a while). I think this could have worked a lot better if it was chopped up into shorter pieces - and reformatted as a collection of interconnected short stories? And by doing so, each character in the book would have more space to develop? And that would somehow create more 'layers' to the plot as well? And also make the dialogues much less confusing and 'lifeless'?
'Cara’s train was a British Rail Class 457; it was fast to Portsmouth Harbour after eleven station stops. She had just begun reading The Eye when there was an unscheduled halt three minutes out of Waterloo. ‘PolyWay regrets your delay,’ the train said. ‘A sympatech has been called.’ After 134 seconds of stasis, Cara took out her phone. Was it the way the sunlight caught the side of a building that triggered an awkward recollection for the train? she wrote. Was it remembering a human suicide? Must happen sometimes.'
I like my 'sci-fi' with a lot of dark humour and transgressive elements. I think Musgrave's novel accomplished that (more so of the former than the latter). It's a cute but creepy sort of novel, but it lacks the kind of complexity that Japanese 'sci-fi' writers seem to create so well (notably Sayaka Murata; and Yukio Mishima's Beautiful Star that I'm currently reading; or even Terminal Boredom: Stories that I read some time ago). Also, I find the ending a bit anticlimactic (which isn't always an issue, but for some reason this bothered me). Perhaps I'm not reading Musgrave's book from the right 'angle'? Despite that, I am still keen to read any future Musgrave novels.
'Yes, I do mean real transmigration. I prefer to call it metempsychosis. Both words have unfortunate religious associations, but that can work in our favour from a marketing perspective. So, are you in?'
Oddly (and in a way I can't properly describe at the moment), the narrative tone reminds me of Kennard's The Transition which I like a lot more for the structure and precision (as with most of Kennard's writing). I think it must be the half fucked-up, half playful attempt at incorporating the suffocating and dehumanising consequences of 'surveillance'/ the state and act of 'surveillance' that made me think so.
'Of course I realise now that these feelings were entirely the result of hormonal manipulations that were a planned stage of my construction. The laboratory was not the scene of infinite cosmic revelations, but a well-funded research facility whose projects were underwritten by large government grants. My relations with the laboratory doctors were in reality fully reciprocal, since they were required to ensure I was a successful project in order to maintain the laboratory’s income. I was simply the beneficiary of the attentions necessary to accomplish this. To talk about my or their superiority in terms of ability, potential, action or intrinsic value would have been to misconstrue the delicate web of interrelations that meant I, they and the laboratory existed at all. Yes, this kind of broad perception is much easier to establish in retrospect, after long habituation to the facts of one’s existence. My superiority to or separation from the situations I inhabit is very hard to defend in any objective way. No, it makes much more sense to think of myself as a state tool with an unusual margin for autonomy, don’t you think?'
July 3, 2022
Entertaining but the story does not end in a satisfying manner... either I'm missing something, or the writer just got out of ideas after 300 pages and just ended the book there, leaving many characters and plot points unresolved.
November 22, 2022
Felt too meandering… interesting ideas and all but I could barely wrap my head around what was actually happening
August 17, 2022
I'm going to be honest here, I picked this book up purely for its cover and went into it blind.
What I found was a darkly funny tale about the creeping intrusion of surveillance technology and the impact it has upon us. Something so timely with the rise of facial identification and police accessing ring camera footage.
And while I loved the exploration of this, the extremely disjointed narrative style took me a long time to get used to, I kept putting it down and picking it up again.
I think both narrators did such an amazing job of making this narration style come to life and their tone of voice added to the humourous parts in such a fun way.
Overall this was an odd SciFi that I'm glad I read, but I have no idea who I'd recommend it to.
Thank you NetGalley and Tantor Audio for an arc of this book in exchange for an honest review.
What I found was a darkly funny tale about the creeping intrusion of surveillance technology and the impact it has upon us. Something so timely with the rise of facial identification and police accessing ring camera footage.
And while I loved the exploration of this, the extremely disjointed narrative style took me a long time to get used to, I kept putting it down and picking it up again.
I think both narrators did such an amazing job of making this narration style come to life and their tone of voice added to the humourous parts in such a fun way.
Overall this was an odd SciFi that I'm glad I read, but I have no idea who I'd recommend it to.
Thank you NetGalley and Tantor Audio for an arc of this book in exchange for an honest review.
July 6, 2022
Lambda is a fascinating book that feels like a modern classic sci-fi. It features several of the themes I particularly enjoy in my spec fic like an unusual structure, exploration of one or several world-specific moral and ethical dilemmas, odd characters that are dear to many, but clearly set others at great dis-ease. The result is a book that feels like it sits side-by-side with my love of Star Trek: The Next Generation - in particular Data’s character development over the series.
Most of the chapters are told through an ‘Auto Narrator,’ set with a data-rich description style. At first the abundance of measurable data such as OCEAN personality test scores and specific dimensions of objects feels odd and a bit distracting. However, that didn’t last long for me. By the second chapter it felt like a very specific, deeply considered choice that was instrumental in the world building.
There is something that feels uniquely Autistic to the prose of Lambda - and I use that descriptor in the least derogatory, most enjoyable and familiar way, being autistic myself. The pseudo-anthropomorphism of sentient objects, the government agent with special interests in burial urns and modern furniture design, and absolutely the info-dump style of prose. Even the parallels between Data’s character arc in Star Trek: TNG (a character lovingly claimed by the autistic community) and that of object sentience and the Lambdas themselves. Who deserves protection under law? What assistance is offered to encourage an equitable society? How do those who easily hold status within society (deserved and undeserved) respond to these attempts at equity?
And underneath it all how much trust can truly be placed on a government and judicial system? How far do they go to maintain the status quo - that is maintain their power over the populous? How aware is the average person of their data privacy and to what end is their data being used?
There is so much that I loved and felt uniquely familiar to me in Lambda. But there were too many questions left unanswered for my tastes, too stark of a focus shift in the last third of the book, which doesn’t feature any of the titular characters at all and barely speaks of them, to boot.
Among my questions:
Where did Cara’s father actually go? Why and why was this left almost totally unexplored? I expected that the app posing as him had asked Cara about whether she’d picked up a particular book as a form of foreshadowing. It never came up again.
Where did the Lambdas go? Why did they suddenly seem happy? Was there ever actually any ALA? If no, who actually blew up the school? Was it Colin all along? And what, exactly, was Cara writing on all those pages of paper?
Maybe there’s a yet-unconfirmed follow up being planned by Musgrave. But Lambda read to me like a stand alone so maybe I’ll never know.
In the end there was so much about Lambda that I found deeply enjoyable despite the over abundance of questions lingering at the end. Hence 4 stars as opposed to the 3 I might give a novel that left me hanging that I didn’t find quite so unique.
Most of the chapters are told through an ‘Auto Narrator,’ set with a data-rich description style. At first the abundance of measurable data such as OCEAN personality test scores and specific dimensions of objects feels odd and a bit distracting. However, that didn’t last long for me. By the second chapter it felt like a very specific, deeply considered choice that was instrumental in the world building.
There is something that feels uniquely Autistic to the prose of Lambda - and I use that descriptor in the least derogatory, most enjoyable and familiar way, being autistic myself. The pseudo-anthropomorphism of sentient objects, the government agent with special interests in burial urns and modern furniture design, and absolutely the info-dump style of prose. Even the parallels between Data’s character arc in Star Trek: TNG (a character lovingly claimed by the autistic community) and that of object sentience and the Lambdas themselves. Who deserves protection under law? What assistance is offered to encourage an equitable society? How do those who easily hold status within society (deserved and undeserved) respond to these attempts at equity?
And underneath it all how much trust can truly be placed on a government and judicial system? How far do they go to maintain the status quo - that is maintain their power over the populous? How aware is the average person of their data privacy and to what end is their data being used?
There is so much that I loved and felt uniquely familiar to me in Lambda. But there were too many questions left unanswered for my tastes, too stark of a focus shift in the last third of the book, which doesn’t feature any of the titular characters at all and barely speaks of them, to boot.
Among my questions:
Where did Cara’s father actually go? Why and why was this left almost totally unexplored? I expected that the app posing as him had asked Cara about whether she’d picked up a particular book as a form of foreshadowing. It never came up again.
Where did the Lambdas go? Why did they suddenly seem happy? Was there ever actually any ALA? If no, who actually blew up the school? Was it Colin all along? And what, exactly, was Cara writing on all those pages of paper?
Maybe there’s a yet-unconfirmed follow up being planned by Musgrave. But Lambda read to me like a stand alone so maybe I’ll never know.
In the end there was so much about Lambda that I found deeply enjoyable despite the over abundance of questions lingering at the end. Hence 4 stars as opposed to the 3 I might give a novel that left me hanging that I didn’t find quite so unique.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 24, 2024
so weird, so good, wanted 300 more pages. the government IS a greenland shark. all of it incredibly believable and vivid despite being deeply odd. i ❤️ gavin
July 6, 2022
Before I read this, I read a 600 page book in two days and a 500 page book in 4 days. I really struggled with Lambda. I think for a first novel Musgrave was too ambitious with this. He’s playing around with a lot of ideas but the story just doesn’t hold up and the world building has plenty of holes in it. The story of Lambda’s was enough to base a story on. The protagonist didn’t seem to have much of a personality though she was fairly likeable. I really liked the lambda characters though they weren’t developed enough.
The main Lambda guy was a great character. But the chapters with the interview of the AI were very tedious and not enjoyable to read.
Where Lambda fails is that it’s a one-sided polemic that will appeal to Guardian readers but won’t make those who don’t agree with it think any different. I really hope Musgrave keeps writing as there are some brilliant ideas here but he needs to not throw too many concepts around and focus on telling a gripping story. The concept really is interesting.
Really felt like Lambda is begging for a Channel 4 adaptation and that doesn’t make for an enjoyable reading experience.
The main Lambda guy was a great character. But the chapters with the interview of the AI were very tedious and not enjoyable to read.
Where Lambda fails is that it’s a one-sided polemic that will appeal to Guardian readers but won’t make those who don’t agree with it think any different. I really hope Musgrave keeps writing as there are some brilliant ideas here but he needs to not throw too many concepts around and focus on telling a gripping story. The concept really is interesting.
Really felt like Lambda is begging for a Channel 4 adaptation and that doesn’t make for an enjoyable reading experience.
September 4, 2022
have to abandon. it’s been such a chore to read this book even though i’m really intrigued by lambdas and think it’s a great premise. it’s essentially just too insufferable to have to read the AI interviews every other chapter, i would’ve finished it otherwise.
July 25, 2024
This was an interesting read, but I felt I found it lacking. Set in a dystopian Britain, the narrative centres on Cara Gray, a police officer, and her encounter with the lambdas, a race of human-aquatic beings relegated to the fringes of society. Metaphorically, Lambda explores social division and the price of progress.
Cara investigates a wave of violence against the lambdas, which culminates with a school bombing. Confined to flooded basements, performing menial tasks, and ostracized for their very existence, the lambdas mirror the struggles of immigrants and marginalized groups. The constant threat of violence they face reflects the real-world tragedies fueled by xenophobia. As the violence against them increases, Cara seems to find no answers.
Musgrave’s Britain is technologically advanced, and many of humans’ mundane tasks are performed by sentient tech. Technology possesses a disturbing level of autonomy, with a quantum computer dictating police actions. This unsettling prospect forces us to question the ethics of artificial intelligence and the potential loss of human control, and it’s a side story to the main plot (Cara is under investigation for mistreating her sentient toothbrush).
The book is written from the perspective of a big-brother technology point of view, with narration built from recordings of Cara. The narration may seem detached and mechanical, which hindered my connection to the story. The ending is open: we don’t learn who the bomber was, the origins of the lambdas, or a conclusion on the sentient tech, which might be frustrating if you expect a resolution from your stories. However, the ambiguity might fuel the novel's impact, mirroring the uncertainty of our present world.
Lambda leaves us pondering the consequences of crossing the line between progress and dehumanization. It's a challenging read, urging us to recognize the 𝑜𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟 in our midst and fight for a future where empathy, not violence, prevails. Devoid of emotions, it exposes the message loud and clear.
Cara investigates a wave of violence against the lambdas, which culminates with a school bombing. Confined to flooded basements, performing menial tasks, and ostracized for their very existence, the lambdas mirror the struggles of immigrants and marginalized groups. The constant threat of violence they face reflects the real-world tragedies fueled by xenophobia. As the violence against them increases, Cara seems to find no answers.
Musgrave’s Britain is technologically advanced, and many of humans’ mundane tasks are performed by sentient tech. Technology possesses a disturbing level of autonomy, with a quantum computer dictating police actions. This unsettling prospect forces us to question the ethics of artificial intelligence and the potential loss of human control, and it’s a side story to the main plot (Cara is under investigation for mistreating her sentient toothbrush).
The book is written from the perspective of a big-brother technology point of view, with narration built from recordings of Cara. The narration may seem detached and mechanical, which hindered my connection to the story. The ending is open: we don’t learn who the bomber was, the origins of the lambdas, or a conclusion on the sentient tech, which might be frustrating if you expect a resolution from your stories. However, the ambiguity might fuel the novel's impact, mirroring the uncertainty of our present world.
Lambda leaves us pondering the consequences of crossing the line between progress and dehumanization. It's a challenging read, urging us to recognize the 𝑜𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟 in our midst and fight for a future where empathy, not violence, prevails. Devoid of emotions, it exposes the message loud and clear.
October 31, 2024
In my reviews I usually focus on trying to answer the question "should you read this" as other reviewers have usually already summarised the plot. However that's hard to do with this book as it's so unusual. The answer is probably "no" for most people, even though I liked it and gave it four stars.
The book is a series of snapshots of a slightly dystopian future in which state surveillance is ubiquitous and driven by consumer's blind enthusiasm for novelty. Everyday appliances have such advanced AI that you can be prosecuted for abusing them, and they serve as monitoring devices for the aforementioned surveillance state, but in amongst all this futuristic technology good old human traits like bigotry and racism remain prevalent.
There are two threads that run through the book - the story of the homicidal AI and Cara's story - but neither story goes anywhere and indeed the book peters out without anything resembling a traditional ending.
The book is narrated by "EyeNarrator Pro", which is some form of ChatGPT like device, and this gives the text an odd feel as trivial details are repeatedly mentioned. This style will divide opinion, but I found it gave the narration an odd feel that I liked. The eponymous Lambdas don't feature very strongly in the story except as a target for hatred.
I liked the odd style, but then I'm a big fan of the weird fiction genre, and this edges close to that genre without quite falling into the category. I found the writing style mostly engaging even though I wasn't sure what much of it meant, and I finished the book in a couple of days with no effort. I see other reviews found it boring and quicky gave up, and I can understand why.
If you like weird fiction, and you're prepared to just enjoy the journey without worrying about the destination, then I think you'll find lots to enjoy - I did. But I have to say that for most people it isn't going to appeal.
The book is a series of snapshots of a slightly dystopian future in which state surveillance is ubiquitous and driven by consumer's blind enthusiasm for novelty. Everyday appliances have such advanced AI that you can be prosecuted for abusing them, and they serve as monitoring devices for the aforementioned surveillance state, but in amongst all this futuristic technology good old human traits like bigotry and racism remain prevalent.
There are two threads that run through the book - the story of the homicidal AI and Cara's story - but neither story goes anywhere and indeed the book peters out without anything resembling a traditional ending.
The book is narrated by "EyeNarrator Pro", which is some form of ChatGPT like device, and this gives the text an odd feel as trivial details are repeatedly mentioned. This style will divide opinion, but I found it gave the narration an odd feel that I liked. The eponymous Lambdas don't feature very strongly in the story except as a target for hatred.
I liked the odd style, but then I'm a big fan of the weird fiction genre, and this edges close to that genre without quite falling into the category. I found the writing style mostly engaging even though I wasn't sure what much of it meant, and I finished the book in a couple of days with no effort. I see other reviews found it boring and quicky gave up, and I can understand why.
If you like weird fiction, and you're prepared to just enjoy the journey without worrying about the destination, then I think you'll find lots to enjoy - I did. But I have to say that for most people it isn't going to appeal.
May 7, 2024
It's not a good sign when the only way of knowing stuff about the characters is from the blurb. E.g. slime mould guy! It never actually says that he was slime mould? Was he even slime mould? That's what it says on the blurb but I've seen a review claiming he was AI and another claiming he was a Lambda.
Then again, the blurb doesn't seem entirely correct? It mentioned that Cara has knowledge of Lambdas from her childhood but I swear it says in the book that she's barely ever seen them before?
Also, there were so many wasted plotlines! Cara's boyfriend was literally in kahoots with her sentient toothbrush to monitor her fertility so he could get her pregnant (without her consent) so that he could then sell the child to a severed head who wanted to transfer its consciousness into the child. That could have been a book in its own right, and yet nothing came of it! Cara just broke up with the guy and that was that.
Am very disappointed.
Then again, the blurb doesn't seem entirely correct? It mentioned that Cara has knowledge of Lambdas from her childhood but I swear it says in the book that she's barely ever seen them before?
Also, there were so many wasted plotlines! Cara's boyfriend was literally in kahoots with her sentient toothbrush to monitor her fertility so he could get her pregnant (without her consent) so that he could then sell the child to a severed head who wanted to transfer its consciousness into the child. That could have been a book in its own right, and yet nothing came of it! Cara just broke up with the guy and that was that.
Am very disappointed.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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July 20, 2025My favourite character in David Musgrave’s Lambda is a government employee — Mr Hello — made of slime mould protein, and he needs help to relieve his neuroses. He narrates a bunch of chapters to explore his creation, his development, his training, the murders he committed, and his love for Cycladic urns and mid-century chairs. Once in a while, he talks about the way light falls in his apartment or about being a speck of dust in a distant part of this universe, and then you see his melancholia breaking the surface, and holding him and the reader hostage with its beauty, nihilism, and the soul-shattering helplessness of someone who realises that they are trapped in the system.
Musgrave gives aliens who depend on our species for their survival, and who are in search of their origin. There are more people, talking to sentient toothbrushes and apologising for microwaving a sentient pistol.
We debate about the role of AI in improving humanity’s mental health but Musgrave wants us to imagine the mental health support that sentient objects would need. For example, a car wouldn’t start on prime number dates; an airplane that refuses to take off and taps into the brains of 2,500 passengers, erasing their memory, and later needs the help of a sympatech, hired by its owner, to understand its action and process the consequences.
Lambda ends in an underwhelming, bizarre manner. To me, it wasn’t a disappointment. The burden of imagining the future cannot be on one human being.
Musgrave gives aliens who depend on our species for their survival, and who are in search of their origin. There are more people, talking to sentient toothbrushes and apologising for microwaving a sentient pistol.
We debate about the role of AI in improving humanity’s mental health but Musgrave wants us to imagine the mental health support that sentient objects would need. For example, a car wouldn’t start on prime number dates; an airplane that refuses to take off and taps into the brains of 2,500 passengers, erasing their memory, and later needs the help of a sympatech, hired by its owner, to understand its action and process the consequences.
Lambda ends in an underwhelming, bizarre manner. To me, it wasn’t a disappointment. The burden of imagining the future cannot be on one human being.
June 10, 2023
Very experimental and not a satisfying narrative at all. I kept waiting for plot threads to converge, but they seem to remain completely separate? Maybe I missed something. No resolution to any of the interesting bits to be found.
May 3, 2022
What Lambda might lack in narrative cohesion it more than makes up for in quietly dystopic ideas. It's broadly about the interplay between technology, surveillance and societal divides and throws up lots of great concepts, much of which could sustain a novel by themselves. It's also bleakly funny throughout. I was disappointed that the "main" plotline about the Lambdas was pretty much dropped after the second act, but again, the story isn't really the top priority.
January 29, 2023
This was weird, story- and style-wise, in a way that is right up my alley. I loved it.
The ending left me unsatisfied, however. It left too many questions open.
The ending left me unsatisfied, however. It left too many questions open.
February 10, 2024
This one was a real rollercoaster for me. The beginning was very confusing and the frame narrative that Musgraves uses makes it very hard to establish the characters. Then around the 80th page, things begin to click and you realise what Musgraves is beginning to do and the messages he's trying to convey. However, the small moments of interest that are established are dissipated by the confusion surrounding what is actually going on. The story is built upon the mystery of an attack that takes place, but there is no resounding ending or result to this, like a lot of the book. I ended up skimming through a lot of the end, as once again the narrative voice began to change again, and it simply became too hard to follow what was happening. The characters that we become attached to, Cara, her dad, Gavin, all had endings that were left up in the air and with no resounding conclusion to their stories or where they ended up. You could see the potential here, in Musgrave's cleverness and imagination, but unfortunately the execution did not work for me.
June 19, 2024
Wow. What a world is here.
Creeping, near-total state surveillance, synthetic assassins blending into society, a rogue nation hosting the world’s secrets deep underground - all this would be fodder enough for a compelling novel involving a terrorist incident and a lonely rookie cop finding herself in the midst of the investigation but then we add in the lambdas. Are they a stand-in for refugees and asylum seekers coming to our (literal) shores? Are they a government experiment that got out of hand? Are they a fifth column working to their own secretive agenda of Lambda ascension?
Author David Musgrave isn’t interested in providing answers to any of this. Where others would provide answers, he keeps adding layers and new details of this brave new world he’s conjured up, and yet the parallels or extrapolations with/from current technology or political movements gives the eerie sense that the bleak sentiments behind the book capture some essential truth. The picture that emerges is compelling and by books end left me with a strong feeling of the inevitability of societal breakdown and the futility of individual action in the face of unknowable forces, state or otherwise.
Musgrave manages to keep the atmosphere from becoming too heavy through a dark humour that emerges throughout. It’s there in the interviews with synthetic man Mr Hello whose self-perception is so absurdly limited. And, later, in the therapy-for-A.I. business one of the supporting characters starts up.
I can imagine some readers being disappointed in the lack of resolution to many of the central threads (Where are the lambdas? What was the purpose of the school bombing? Is Peter transmigrating consciousnesses in Severax??!!!) but it is the societal breakdown itself that Musgrave is interested in. The dissolution of the old bonds that bound us together; whether of family, friends or national identity; replaced only by the dark pages on the internet and kept in line by the fear that the state is watching.
Our main character, Cara Gray, is emblematic of her age; lost and adrift she abandons her university plans to follow her friend into a hippy commune but when the consequences of romance there leave her broken, she finds substitute fulfilment by attaching herself to the lambdas.
I’d be tempted to say they are some lost part of ourselves we gave up, some child-like sense of belonging except the lambdas chief personality trait seems to be that of disinterest in everything around them, certainly in everything land-human.
Like the lambdas strange sculptures, this book is best understood not by observing the final result, but through the accretion of detail and what it can tell us about the people who made it.
Random Thoughts:
- I bet Musgrave loved The X-Files.
- The Four Fertile Pairs! Why can’t they be found?
- Spoiler: if the government set Cara up to fail by putting her on ALA surveillance duty, knowing it was impossible, was the purpose to bring in Parson as a new crime fighting method? Or was the goal the stirring up of anti-lambda sentiment?
- The timing of the (secret) household filtration devices which led to the cleaner sewers seems too coincidental to be an accident but what utility do the lambdas have for the government in the sewer?
- Poor Cara; she really just cannot catch a break; Fowlmere to the ALA to Peter to rejection to unemployment.
- Cara’s Dad on a perpetual tour of the Gobi desert. Maybe. Another escapee to Severax?
Creeping, near-total state surveillance, synthetic assassins blending into society, a rogue nation hosting the world’s secrets deep underground - all this would be fodder enough for a compelling novel involving a terrorist incident and a lonely rookie cop finding herself in the midst of the investigation but then we add in the lambdas. Are they a stand-in for refugees and asylum seekers coming to our (literal) shores? Are they a government experiment that got out of hand? Are they a fifth column working to their own secretive agenda of Lambda ascension?
Author David Musgrave isn’t interested in providing answers to any of this. Where others would provide answers, he keeps adding layers and new details of this brave new world he’s conjured up, and yet the parallels or extrapolations with/from current technology or political movements gives the eerie sense that the bleak sentiments behind the book capture some essential truth. The picture that emerges is compelling and by books end left me with a strong feeling of the inevitability of societal breakdown and the futility of individual action in the face of unknowable forces, state or otherwise.
Musgrave manages to keep the atmosphere from becoming too heavy through a dark humour that emerges throughout. It’s there in the interviews with synthetic man Mr Hello whose self-perception is so absurdly limited. And, later, in the therapy-for-A.I. business one of the supporting characters starts up.
I can imagine some readers being disappointed in the lack of resolution to many of the central threads (Where are the lambdas? What was the purpose of the school bombing? Is Peter transmigrating consciousnesses in Severax??!!!) but it is the societal breakdown itself that Musgrave is interested in. The dissolution of the old bonds that bound us together; whether of family, friends or national identity; replaced only by the dark pages on the internet and kept in line by the fear that the state is watching.
Our main character, Cara Gray, is emblematic of her age; lost and adrift she abandons her university plans to follow her friend into a hippy commune but when the consequences of romance there leave her broken, she finds substitute fulfilment by attaching herself to the lambdas.
I’d be tempted to say they are some lost part of ourselves we gave up, some child-like sense of belonging except the lambdas chief personality trait seems to be that of disinterest in everything around them, certainly in everything land-human.
Like the lambdas strange sculptures, this book is best understood not by observing the final result, but through the accretion of detail and what it can tell us about the people who made it.
Random Thoughts:
- I bet Musgrave loved The X-Files.
- The Four Fertile Pairs! Why can’t they be found?
- Spoiler: if the government set Cara up to fail by putting her on ALA surveillance duty, knowing it was impossible, was the purpose to bring in Parson as a new crime fighting method? Or was the goal the stirring up of anti-lambda sentiment?
- The timing of the (secret) household filtration devices which led to the cleaner sewers seems too coincidental to be an accident but what utility do the lambdas have for the government in the sewer?
- Poor Cara; she really just cannot catch a break; Fowlmere to the ALA to Peter to rejection to unemployment.
- Cara’s Dad on a perpetual tour of the Gobi desert. Maybe. Another escapee to Severax?
July 20, 2022
Lambda by David Musgrave is a recommended experimental science fiction novel.
The Lambdas have arrive on the coast by sea. They are aliens but genetically human and now humans coexist with them. They tend to live in flooded basements. New police officer Cara Gray is familiar with the Lambdas from her childhood, and now her job is to keep them under surveillance after a school bombing that a lambda rights group claims responsibility. She is now community liaison officer to the lambda. Now she must decide whether to submit to the patterns of technology, violence and obsession, or to take action of her own.
This is a complicated novel with an inventive structure that includes a one sided conversation with a Lambda as well as Cara's . Within Cara's narrative the novel also addresses the refugee crises and the future of technology. This is an inventive, interesting novel, but it was also a struggle to keep focused on the narrative. Many of the plot elements are left unresolved. It is also humorous at times. This will be thoroughly enjoyed by some science fiction readers but not all of them. This is undoubtedly an odd novel that works in a weird way.
Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of the publisher/author via NetGalley.
http://www.shetreadssoftly.com/2022/0...
The Lambdas have arrive on the coast by sea. They are aliens but genetically human and now humans coexist with them. They tend to live in flooded basements. New police officer Cara Gray is familiar with the Lambdas from her childhood, and now her job is to keep them under surveillance after a school bombing that a lambda rights group claims responsibility. She is now community liaison officer to the lambda. Now she must decide whether to submit to the patterns of technology, violence and obsession, or to take action of her own.
This is a complicated novel with an inventive structure that includes a one sided conversation with a Lambda as well as Cara's . Within Cara's narrative the novel also addresses the refugee crises and the future of technology. This is an inventive, interesting novel, but it was also a struggle to keep focused on the narrative. Many of the plot elements are left unresolved. It is also humorous at times. This will be thoroughly enjoyed by some science fiction readers but not all of them. This is undoubtedly an odd novel that works in a weird way.
Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of the publisher/author via NetGalley.
http://www.shetreadssoftly.com/2022/0...
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November 30, 2023Oh, I enjoyed this very much—an inconclusive but fascinating peek into an alternative present where lambdas, a subspecies of human adapted for life in the oceans, begin to make landfall on the English and Icelandic coasts, with little memory of their journey or life cycle apart from a vague notion of a common set of progenitors known as the Four Fertile Pairs. There’s a terrorist incident, and a police investigation, and increasing racist attacks on lambdas, but none of those are the point of the book. Lambda is more of a window on this world, not a plot-driven commentary on it (though the choices Musgrave makes about narrative voice and structure constitute commentary, in a way). I generally struggle with lack of resolution at the end of a book, but here that felt exactly right, and actually provided more closure than I had expected. I must say, though, I’m not going to be an early adopter if sentient household objects become a thing. It pays to be polite to ChatGPT, but if the future is a toothbrush that your boyfriend can hack to clandestinely monitor your hormone levels in the hopes of manipulating your fertility, count me out. (Not a spoiler—nothing comes of it except a low-key but entirely deserved breakup!) More specfic like this, please.
September 15, 2023
Lambda, the first novel by visual artist David Musgrave, describes a dystopian England with more than one rotten apple in its barrel. Rampant cybercrime has led to a brutal, high-tech surveillance state whose use of euphemistic hypocrisy would be right at home in a novel by Philip K. Dick. AI and the Internet of Things have gotten well out of hand. Your electric toothbrush is emotionally needy and has civil rights you can’t ignore. England is also suffering from an invasion of sapient sea creatures with a human genome. They are the Lambdas, a small population with only a few breeding pairs. They are refugees who do menial jobs if they can find someone to carry them to work in a water bucket. Most of the plot follows Cara, a low-echelon cop, as she is shifted from cybercrime to Lambda surveillance. They are both thankless and baffling assignments. No one in the novel speaks with much affect. The voices in the story are surreally Kafkaesque, so I was not surprised to learn that Musgrave has illustrated one of Kafka’s novels.
August 7, 2024
In Lambda, we find ourselves in a world where AI is integrated into everything. Through following a police officer tasked with monitoring AI creatures called Lambdas, we see AI advance before our eyes as our protagonist contemplates her place in this new world.
What makes this book somewhat work is how it mirrors the world we are growing into. As we become more reliant on AI, it's scary to think of a time where AI may become more capable than we are. This book tackles all of that in ways that are both harrowing and dramatic.
Overall, Lambda was a difficult book. With each passing chapter, the narrative grew more complex and confusing. This made its readability suffer and really hampered my enjoyment. Despite this, I am thankful to have read this. It was only a matter of time that a novel explored the perils of AI.
What makes this book somewhat work is how it mirrors the world we are growing into. As we become more reliant on AI, it's scary to think of a time where AI may become more capable than we are. This book tackles all of that in ways that are both harrowing and dramatic.
Overall, Lambda was a difficult book. With each passing chapter, the narrative grew more complex and confusing. This made its readability suffer and really hampered my enjoyment. Despite this, I am thankful to have read this. It was only a matter of time that a novel explored the perils of AI.
March 21, 2023
Here's the thing:
- I do enjoy multiple plotlines
- I do enjoy authors experimenting with writing styles
- I can also enjoy a book that leaves the reader to do a lot of the work
Did these things, meshed together, work in Lambda? Not to me. Too many plotlines, some seemingly abandoned early (the boyfriend!), others never, in my opinion, brought to proper fruition. When finishing the book, I felt that there was about a third of it missing.
I also wasn't sure if the Lambdas were, as can often be the case with science-fiction, supposed to stand for some real-world equivalent (disabled and/or neurodivergent people maybe?), and also unsure where the author was going with that.
In short, although the book has its merits, it musn't have been for me.
- I do enjoy multiple plotlines
- I do enjoy authors experimenting with writing styles
- I can also enjoy a book that leaves the reader to do a lot of the work
Did these things, meshed together, work in Lambda? Not to me. Too many plotlines, some seemingly abandoned early (the boyfriend!), others never, in my opinion, brought to proper fruition. When finishing the book, I felt that there was about a third of it missing.
I also wasn't sure if the Lambdas were, as can often be the case with science-fiction, supposed to stand for some real-world equivalent (disabled and/or neurodivergent people maybe?), and also unsure where the author was going with that.
In short, although the book has its merits, it musn't have been for me.
March 20, 2022
By far the most interesting and innovative modern novel I have ever had the pleasure to read. The novel, like all great fiction, allows ambiguity, both in content and structure. While the storyline is unsusual (which is part of what attracted me to it), Musgrave never allows the plot to become eccentric for the sake of it and lose cohesion; instead the plot feels tightly controlled, a fact that is particularly impressive considering the unique narrative structures the author uses (which I will not spoil, since they are well worth the surprises throughout).
May 27, 2022
I enjoyed this murky, ominous sci-fi story about a slime mould person, an amphibious (yet genetically human) race called the lambdas and a sentient toothbrush, among many, many other things 🌊🐬 I don't have an editor's brain, but I do think some of the narrative could have been tightened up just a bit in places. That's no criticism really as I loved reading it and never fell out of the flow of the story, but I think some of the themes and scenes would have had more... gravitas? maybe if it had been cut back a little. I can't wait to read more from this author.
August 10, 2025
I picked this book from the library shelf on a whim and thoroughly enjoyed it! :) First novel I’ve finished in a really long time.
The contrast in narrative style between characters provided a layered, intriguing element to the experience of unraveling this story. While I hold a limited understanding of the themes this story touched on, it has piqued my interest in reading further on topics such as refugee policies, AI ethics, and the application of various computational approaches to solving complex problems. The lambdas and their surrounding world have left a rich imprint in my mind.
The contrast in narrative style between characters provided a layered, intriguing element to the experience of unraveling this story. While I hold a limited understanding of the themes this story touched on, it has piqued my interest in reading further on topics such as refugee policies, AI ethics, and the application of various computational approaches to solving complex problems. The lambdas and their surrounding world have left a rich imprint in my mind.
January 31, 2023
I’d honestly give this a 3.5 if I could. It was intriguing enough to keep me engaged but also felt slightly too symbolic and high brow at times.
If you like your books to be very start and stop, with all of the answers to your questions answered by the end: Lambda might not be exactly the type of book you’ll love. But some of the unanswered questions left me wondering, which I suppose is the purpose.
3.5 out of 5.
If you like your books to be very start and stop, with all of the answers to your questions answered by the end: Lambda might not be exactly the type of book you’ll love. But some of the unanswered questions left me wondering, which I suppose is the purpose.
3.5 out of 5.
April 30, 2023
This novel is a bit of a hot mess, with its unresolved plot threads and its counter-intuitive structure (the second-last chapter, or anyway the style used in that chapter, should have been deployed at the very start of the book). That said, the book offers some really interesting takes on artificial intelligence & life in a surveillance society & the plight of refugees, so it's getting all the way to 3.5 stars. Yeah!
July 13, 2023
https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/lambda-by-david-musgrave-brief-note/
Marginalised non-humans trying to integrate into our society. Two and a half narrative strands that did not really add up. Omnipresent narrator has weird obsession with precise measurements, including of characters’ personalities. I didn’t like it all that much.
Marginalised non-humans trying to integrate into our society. Two and a half narrative strands that did not really add up. Omnipresent narrator has weird obsession with precise measurements, including of characters’ personalities. I didn’t like it all that much.
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