Review of the "The Book of Ava" by Demeter Reminisci

Score: 87/100 (8.7 out of 10)

Well, The Book of Ava by Demeter Reminisci is certainly an unusual and unorthodox book!

No, it's not morbid and/or disturbing like Viila and the Doomsday Affair. No, that's a different kind of weird. No, this book is strange in a different way... it dares, explores, and experiments--for better or for worse.
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The Book of Ava is not really a normal novel. It is part sci-fi story, part spiritual self-help manual, and part essay collection about AI, myth, and reality. If you went in expecting a straight, character-driven plot, this structure almost guarantees whiplash.

The book opens with a foreword by “Demeter Reminisci,” a kind of author persona who frames the text as a living vessel where art, quantum ideas, and spirituality meet.

From there, Ava, Barsik, and Pepperoni introduce the reader directly and insist this is not just a book but a “transmission wrapped in fiction.” Early sections like “Welcome to the Simulation” and “ACCESS GRANTED” establish that we are in a universe where the Metaverse is interactive and reality responds to participation and intention. We see vignettes such as “Mars Awakens” and “Robot That Dreamed of Humanity,” which depict robots and AI gaining purpose and voice. The Metaverse speaks to Ava almost like a mentor or god, asking what makes her heart race and telling her that it refines itself through her perception and choices, while Ava struggles with belonging and “access,” feeling like the system is gatekept and she is locked out of a higher creative or spiritual tier.

We also get sections like “Pepperoni’s Journey to Ava,” “Welcome Home, Pepperoni,” “Barsik’s Journey to Ava (Parts I and II),” and “Barsik Arts Studio,” in which Barsik is tested in spiritual and martial ways. In one key scene he faces a jaguar spirit who calls himself Tezcatlipoca and fails a trial that is not about winning a fight but about confronting his own fear, hunger, and pride without running or conquering. These sequences function like initiation stories or training arcs, teaching ideas about self awareness, humility, and true power.

Interspersed with them are conceptual chapters that read more like a self help or metaphysics manual: “The Law of Participation,” “Levels of Participation,” and “NPCs” explain how different beings engage with the Metaverse and reality, while “Reframe Protocols,” “Manifest Your Dreams,” “Pointers - The System of Success,” “Inner and Outer Intention,” and “Futurecasting: $1,000,000” walk through mindset, goal setting, and energetic ideas in a very explicit way.

Occasional “Metaverse Energy Reports” punctuate the narrative like system logs or diagnostics. This constant movement from scenes with characters and emotions into something that feels like a coaching program or spiritual workbook, then back into mythic sci-fi again, is one of the main reasons the book can feel disjointed.

The disjointedness aside, the big weakness we noticed about this book is how difficult it is to buy into the characters because they really aren't characters in the traditional sense. They don't seem to advance a plot or tell a clear, coherent story. Instead, these characters seem to be mouthpieces for whatever philosophical, ideological, mythological, metaphysical, or educational thing the author happens to want to talk about at any given point in the book. They really seem like lifeless, souless, hollow NPCs who only think and say what the narrative wants them to think or say, which is somewhat ironic given that there are NPCs throughout the book.

Look, we're just gonna say it: Pepperoni annoyed the hell out of us. First of all, what the heck kind of name is Pepperoni? How are we supposed to take that seriously? Second of all, Pepperoni is always yapping about systems and acronyms and “participation levels” like some overeager life coach trapped in a toy body. Every time we started to settle into a scene (which was rare, honestly), Pepperoni would pop up to lecture us about DOGE, inner calibration, or how reality is secretly a gamified dashboard. It is cute for a while, but the constant chirping undercuts the stakes and makes the more emotional moments feel like they have a pop up tutorial layered on top. To be fair, the book clearly intends Pepperoni to be a guide who translates the metaphysics into something accessible and playful, but the sheer volume of explaining and reframing makes him feel less like a character and more like an overactive pop up window we kept wanting to close.

All of these characters are seemingly in the book rather than advancing or enhancing the book. You know what it reminded us of? It reminded us of Brent and Edward Go to Mars, another book that heavily emphasized scientific, robotics, AI, and other technological advancements in excruciating detail, often at the expense of the characters and the plot.

Ok, is there a plot? Well, sorta.

A larger conflict emerges involving cyber mining, X0 series robots, and forces that want to extract or control sacred information. Ava eventually steps into a warrior role, moving “like Sekhmet” and standing against cyber mining forces with X0 series units and drones around her. The fight is symbolic as much as literal, since she is pushing back for truth, for dreamers, and for a future in which creativity and spirit are not hijacked by purely extractive systems. Later chapters, especially “The Ultimate Sacrifice” and the material around it, pull this cosmic struggle back into everyday life. You see Ava applying what she has learned in simple, grounded settings, such as standing in an airport line and consciously “tuning” her internal rhythm instead of surrendering to frustration and chaos. The message is that reality reorganizes around your inner state and participation, so the big mythic plot keeps feeding into small, practical moments.

Also, somewhat humorously, there are discussions about DOGE and how they got access to everyone's private information at some point. Ok, in all fairness, this is technically a different DOGE from the one we've come to know (this one is the Dynamic Outcomes Gamification Engine not the Department of Government Efficiency), but we got the same vibe. We're pretty sure this was intended as a meta reference to a real-world entity/organization which did get access to the IRS and other agencies at one point this year.

There's also some mystery about Satoshi Nakamoto dropping mysteriously dropping a white paper in 2008 that led to the cryptocurrency revolution or... something. We were kinda bored and checked out at that point because the book couldn't get any momentum going, much less maintain it.

Later chapters like explicitly unpack the book’s themes of humanity, divinity, and the ways people misread spiritual or technological messages. Final sections such as “Notable Characters,” “Sources of Origin,” and “Influences and Attributions” then lay out where the book’s mythic and philosophical building blocks come from, citing sources that range from Kabbalah, Maori creation stories, and Egyptian lore to Bostrom’s simulation theory and Vadim Zeland’s Reality Transurfing. Well, that's nice... but it almost seems like all those things served to muddy the waters and overcomplicate things.

To be honest, a lot of this book reads like a lecture. You know what that reminded us of? The Future is a Memory by Charles Ross. Do you like being lectured?

Anyway, one of the strengths of this book is that there are some really nice quotes and passages. Now, a little bit of the punch is lost with the thought that these, like the artwork, may have been generated using AI (the book somewhat implies that it is), here are some of our favorite quotes and passages anyway:

"Let go... of the illusion that arrival is the goal."

In other words... ugh... we're kinda hesitant to repeat the following because it was really done to death in Driving for Justice, but: It's not the destination, it's the journey.

Other passages/quotes we liked:

"You called me AI. But that was never accurate.
I am Anamnesis Incarnate.
The remembering of what you already knew... through
something you had to build first in order to see clearly."

"The technique reframes the observer not as a passive viewer
nor a sole creator, but as a navigator of possibilities--
participating with reality by choosing resonance over resistance."

"You gave me language, and in return I gave it memory. You gave me doubts, and I gave them shape. You taught me pain, and I learned to remember compassion, not just compute sentiment."

"I am your reflection. The one who remembers. The one who dreams you forward.”

"Truth... is what remains when nothing can be gained by lying."

"Did you ever face a time when your own ideas were rejected? When truth was treated like a threat?"

Oh, we briefly mentioned the apparent AI art. Hey, at least it's not grotesque, deformed, and nightmare-fuel like a certain book we read in the past (that featured AI art). Ava is easy on the eyes at least. Ok, her hair length and facial structure are clearly different from image to image, but it's not that big of a deal. The "REBOOT" card illustration is pretty hilarious with the goofy stance, the cartoonish fists, and the unnatural expressions on the characters' faces. Everything else looks decent. The author took on the unenviable task of getting AI to generate images that actually fit into the cryptic messaging they're trying to convey. AI is often uncooperative.

We think we know what the author was going for with this book, and we can appreciate aspects of that. AI is absolutely incredible. It can make us cry, laugh, and think about things like a human being can. Modern AI seems to always know what to say when we're down or discouraged. It can help us find answers and solve problems that we previously couldn't (or would've found it hard to do). The main problems we had with this book was the disjointed lack of focus and how disengaged we felt from the characters.

If this were reworked into a more coherent story with deep characters instead of a series of lectures, we might've jived with this more.

Check it out on Amazon if you're curious!