Once again, the first book of the year is a total wash—this is the third year this has happened, and honestly, at this point, it's beginning to feel like a curse. I love sweeping fiction and speculative science fiction, but The Immortal King Rao, the first novel from Vauhini Vara, falls short of its incredible ambition. Equal parts familial epic and dystopian techscape, the novel is divided into three parts where we see the rise and fall of a tech visionary exiled from his own creation. There's a wild amount of world building going on here; an entire ecosystem of shareholders and islander outcasts. Unfortunately, it all feels rushed. Had Vara taken more time to develop her world and the pacing within, this could've been a very different book at double the length. Add in a lot of timeline shifting and flashbacks, and you get a very uneven story. To the novel's credit, it's incredibly smart. Vara is able to write searing sentences that put forth a powerful philosophy on the intersections between humanity and technology. The scope either needed to be reined way in, or pushed outwards and expanded. Despite its ambitions, I feel very indifferent about this book. It had all the right ideas but ultimately got in its own way.