Children of Memory (Children of Time, #3)

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

You will fail, and when you do, you must do everything you can to fail as little as possible. Don’t let the failure get its teeth into you. You will make decisions that come with a cost. That is Command. Do not let the cost consume you.

Eliza was a virtual entity designed to feign humanity, and proof of how little you really needed to generate empathy in the human mind. Just like seeing faces in objects, people would read personalities into anything that spoke to them.

Liff is aware she’s maybe not making the best life choices, but that sort of thing falls by the wayside once you’ve decided to let yourself be guided by two magical talking ravens.