Panacea: The Age of AG drops readers into a glossy, engineered utopia in the 31st century, where humanity lives inside massive domes run by an all-powerful artificial superintelligence called AG. Dolthea Thorpe, a sharp and restless teenager can’t shake the feeling that perfection isn’t what it seems. As she questions everything from her society’s genetic design system to the mysterious fate awaiting citizens at age one hundred, readers watch cracks spread through a world that insists it has no flaws. It’s a science fiction dystopian tale that blends sleek futurism with that intimate, unsettling feeling that something is deeply, silently wrong.

Author Richard Carson Bailey’s writing is easy to sink into, especially when he focuses on Dolthea’s sharp observations. The world is bright and carefully built, almost too polished, which seems like the point. I found myself irritated right alongside her when the adults around her shrugged off every uncomfortable truth. The book uses simple scenes to raise big questions, like why no one ever sees a body after someone “goes to sleep” at age one hundred or why teenagers suddenly bolt through the dome in a chaotic stampede. Those moments land not because of spectacle but because they disturb the rhythm of a world that claims to have eliminated disorder.

What I enjoyed most was how the story lets curiosity feel dangerous again. The author doesn’t rush to answer big questions. Instead, he lets tension build through conversations, gestures, even the way a robot tilts its head. Some choices feel intentionally claustrophobic, like the ever-present androids and the parents who seem more like products of their environment than people with thoughts of their own. At times, I wanted the prose to linger longer on emotional beats or dig deeper into the strange beauty of the dome, but there’s something effective about its straightforward style.

I was hooked by both the worldbuilding and Dolthea herself. This is the kind of science fiction that works well for readers who like dystopian stories with clean lines, unsettling questions, and a character who refuses to accept the world she’s given. If you enjoy YA-leaning sci-fi that mixes bright surfaces with creeping unease, you’ll find Panacea: The Age of AG very entertaining.

Pages: 364 | ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0F5WQ8RMK