enne📚 reviewed Ignore All Previous Instructions by Ada Hoffmann
Ignore All Previous Instructions
3 stars
Ignore All Previous Instructions is an incredibly 2026 book. Ostensibly, this is at some nebulous far future time, but topically, it's about a world where generative "ai" has been normalized and is often required to avoid bias, whereas writing your own stories is illegal. Reasonably following from this, being trans is also criminalized and queers are closeted. The most improbable science fiction element here is that there is a functional hyperloop.
The backbone of the plot is that a trans man gets back in touch with his autistic ex in order to get her involved in a heist. The pacing is split with flashback chapters from when both characters were much younger in school together. Unfortunately, I found the pacing to be quite slow—there's just not enough elements and including flashbacks thins this out even further.
Not to forcibly put a label on it when this book isn't …
Ignore All Previous Instructions is an incredibly 2026 book. Ostensibly, this is at some nebulous far future time, but topically, it's about a world where generative "ai" has been normalized and is often required to avoid bias, whereas writing your own stories is illegal. Reasonably following from this, being trans is also criminalized and queers are closeted. The most improbable science fiction element here is that there is a functional hyperloop.
The backbone of the plot is that a trans man gets back in touch with his autistic ex in order to get her involved in a heist. The pacing is split with flashback chapters from when both characters were much younger in school together. Unfortunately, I found the pacing to be quite slow—there's just not enough elements and including flashbacks thins this out even further.
Not to forcibly put a label on it when this book isn't pitched as a YA book, but it's hard for me to see it as anything but YA (derogatory). It's mostly a story about childhood relationships and friendships. And, not to disparage young readers, but it just felt like there was so much heavy-handed moralizing here. even as I agreed with all of it.
And I should mention here that I myself am not autistic; and I would be deeply curious if this novel would resonate much more strongly with somebody who is. I think it just felt so much of Kelli's experience felt so over-told, even for me. I think the parts that landed the best for me were the "Prompt" chapters where Kelli is imagining herself as the character Orlando that she writes, and using that internalized script as a way to figure out how she wants to act. I also think the titular ending of the book works quite well too.
On the writing front, it struck me as weird that Kelli largely feels positive about the "turn-taking" (with the language model) writing process that she is accustomed to using. I was expecting more of a critique here. It's especially surprising reading this novel after reading this nonfiction piece from Sightless Scribbles about the effect of using "ai" on confidence and writing. In contrast, this piece hits SO much harder: sightlessscribbles.com/posts/the-colonization-of-confidence/
Large language models are clearly the villain of the story, but honestly they're just not villainous enough! Sorry, my hate knows no bounds but also objectively there's just not enough here. There's no face or name in the corporation to blame. Kelli's boss at the llm company is supportive of her even as he is a cog in the machine. If there's a heart of the novel, it's anger over the effects of somebody being forced to use an llm for therapy when they needed something much more than that.
It has to be tough to write something that's topical, but it feels like this is a case of science fiction not extrapolating far enough past our current dystopian reality.