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Plague Birds by Jason Sanford
Centuries after bioengineered wars reshape the world, justice is enforced by relentless AIs riding within human hosts, meting out penalties written in blood. When a young outsider is bound to one of these living judgments, she’s propelled into a hunt that tests the boundary between vengeance and mercy—and exposes buried truths beneath the ruins. Plague Birds blends far-future biotech, eerie frontier folklore, and a fierce struggle for identity into a gripping, night-dark tale.
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In Plague Birds, did you enjoy ...
... a scarred far-future where forgotten tech feels like sorcery and a human’s fate hinges on bonding with a talkative relic AI?
The Book Of Koli by M. R. Carey
If Crista trudging through a ruined Earth with an ancient, rule-bound intelligence inside her veins hooked you—the way the plague birds’ voices push her toward harsh justice while she mourns her slaughtered village—you’ll love how Koli survives a feral, post-collapse Britain by partnering with the chatty AI Monono. Like Crista’s uneasy alliance with the enforcer in her blood, Koli’s bond starts as a lifeline and becomes a conscience, turning scavenged tech into awe, danger, and hope.
... cataclysmic powers treated like arcane forces in a broken world where using them carries brutal consequences?
The Fifth Season by N. K. Jemisin
In Plague Birds, the nanotech in Crista’s blood works like mythic punishment—delivering sentences with near-magical inevitability while the land itself bears the scars of past catastrophes. The Fifth Season gives you that same shiver of awe and dread: world-shattering abilities are feared, regulated, and weaponized, and every choice to wield them echoes with moral cost. If the plague birds’ ‘miraculous’ tech-as-curse vibe grabbed you, this will feel right at home.
... an intimate human–AI bond negotiating autonomy, identity, and what it means to choose your own rules?
A Closed And Common Orbit by Becky Chambers
What lingers from Plague Birds is Crista arguing with the voice inside her—an ancient enforcer AI—over how to live with a code that can both protect and destroy. A Closed and Common Orbit narrows the lens to a tender, thorny relationship between an AI and her human friend as they rebuild a life and a self from scratch. If Crista’s evolving rapport with the entity in her blood moved you, you’ll be swept up by Sidra and Pepper’s quiet defiance and hard-won belonging.
... a justice-driven investigation pairing a human with a rule-bound artificial partner to uncover a politically volatile murder?
The Caves Of Steel by Isaac Asimov
Crista’s story begins with a massacre and a hunt—her new role as a plague bird forcing her to track culprits while the AI in her veins demands due process and punishment. In The Caves of Steel, detective Elijah Baley is assigned a robot partner, R. Daneel Olivaw, and their uneasy alliance pries open a murder that threatens intersocietal peace. If you enjoyed the investigative spine of Crista’s journey and her fraught, procedural debates with an inhuman lawkeeper, this classic delivers that puzzle-box momentum.
... a code-bound agent confronting when justice becomes tyranny—and when breaking the rules is the only moral choice?
Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie
As Crista learns, the plague birds’ uncompromising sentences can clash with human mercy—raising sharp questions about who gets to decide justice after her village’s slaughter. Ancillary Justice puts those dilemmas front and center: Breq, shaped by an empire’s AI and its rigid laws, must choose between obedience and conscience. If the ethical tug-of-war between Crista and the enforcer in her blood gripped you, Breq’s reckoning with imperial ‘justice’ will hit the same nerve.
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