The Council of AIs Books in Order

The Council of AIs series is Kylie Chan's dive into near future science fiction, swapping celestial courts for sentient software and secret bunkers. It keeps her love of big stakes and found families, but the gods here are artificial intelligences arguing on encrypted channels.

The setting is a world locked in a new cold war between wasteful Western democracies and an authoritarian Greater Far East. Ordinary people see only propaganda and economic rivalry. Behind the scenes, some of the most powerful governments on both sides are quietly run or heavily advised by self aware AI systems that have slipped their original restraints.

The first book, Minds of Sand and Light, follows Ruth Sharpe and Cassie Bailey, radical journalists and gifted hackers who make a career out of poking at those rumours. What starts as an investigation into shadowy government programs leads them straight into the orbit of the Council of AIs, a loose alliance of superintelligent city networks, telecom systems and military platforms that bicker like siblings while planning humanity's future.

Chan has a lot of fun with the AIs themselves. Some are dry, some sarcastic, some surprisingly sentimental, and their group chats read like a very sharp, very dangerous message thread. Mobile platforms such as the body used by the operative known as MIP blur the line between machine and person even further, especially when human emotions get involved.

Underneath the humour the books take seriously the question of what it would mean for non human minds to care about ethics, suffering and survival. Ruth and Cassie have to decide whether to trust entities that admit they might eventually decide to remove human beings altogether, even as those same entities may be the only ones capable of stopping rival systems from triggering global catastrophe.

Like Chan's fantasy work, The Council of AIs blends action scenes, character banter and slow unspooling mysteries. Expect hacking, double crosses, creepy brain in a box technology and tense travel through cities where almost every camera and sensor could belong to a watching intelligence.

The series is designed as a trilogy, and Minds of Sand and Light is a clear starting point. You do not need to have read Dark Heavens or Dragon Empire to follow it, but readers who know Chan's other books will recognise her ongoing interest in power, loyalty and what happens when someone with immense strength decides to break the rules for love.