The Mother Code by Carole Stivers

From the publisher: It’s 2049, and the survival of the human race is at risk. Earth’s inhabitants must turn to their last resort: a plan to place genetically engineered children inside the cocoons of large-scale robots—to be incubated, birthed, and raised by machines. But there is yet one hope of preserving the human order—an intelligence programmed into these machines that renders each unique in its own right—the Mother Code. In a future that could be our own, The Mother Code explores what truly makes us human—and the tenuous nature of the boundaries between us and the machines we create.

The Mother Code has a terrific premise, but it didn’t quite live up to its promise for me. The military releases a bioweapon that causes a global pandemic. In a desperate attempt to save humanity, a fleet of robots is launched containing genetically engineered embryos. The robots are coded with the personalities of the real women who donated eggs to the project. The robots disperse, the babies are incubated inside them and born, and the mother robots raise the children. A core group of military strategists given an antidote survive the pandemic, along with pockets of naturally resistant humans like the Hopi. Years pass as the children grow up and the team of humans tries to find them.

The Mother Code is very readable and moves along at a brisk pace. I totally bought into the sequence of events at the beginning. However, as it moved toward the end I felt the plot twists were too Hollywood-esque. The narrative tension felt artificial.

I never felt I got to know the kids, who read like a casting call for a movie: the combative natural leader; the meditative naturalist who communes with snakes; the reckless tomboy; the shy mouse; the boy with almond-shaped eyes who is good at cooking; the black girl who starts a garden. In fact overall this entire book reads like a detailed movie script, and indeed Steven Spielberg has optioned the movie rights.

The overall message of what it means to be a mother seemed very labored by the end. If you are looking for a fast-moving thriller that reads like an action movie, The Mother Code may be for you. As a book that will truly make a reader think, that’s perilously close to something that could happen in real life, the book is not quite as successful.

I read an advance reader copy of The Mother Code. It is scheduled to be published in May 2020 and will be available at the Galesburg Public Library in print and as an ebook.