Glass Houses

Glass Houses, by Madeline Ashby, blends a lot of elements I like into a thriller, set (mostly) on a deserted tropical island, cut off from everyone, with scifi elements. Plus, obnoxious tech bros die horrible deaths!

The story begins with a plane crash, stranding a group of tech employees on a deserted tropical island when their self-flying plane crashes. These survivors are the core employees of Wuv, an emotional-currency startup,  and the thriller at first seems to focus on their survival.  But the deserted island somehow also includes a high-tech smarthome, perfectly stocked with upscale wine and high-protein snacks, bedrooms and hot showers, and it starts to become clear that this wasn’t a random accident.

The main character in Glass Houses is Kristen, the chief emotional manager for the enigmatic and eccentric CEO, Sumter. Of course she has a feelings-and-admin job in the techbro world, with a goofy job title. While being overlooked, Kristen manages egos and manipulates her own outcomes perfectly.

Kristen notices almost immediately that the smart kitchen in their strange new home doesn’t work for women, but she knows that pointing it out will have negative consequences for her, so she manipulates the other survivors into noticing. It’s an oddly relatable moment in a bizarre setting — I mean, I haven’t personally been stranded on a deserted island with  shady survivors and mysterious future tech all around, but I’ve definitely had moments where I noticed a problem and also known that pointing it out makes me the problem. Whether it’s bringing an issue to an angry boss who shoots the messenger, or noting systemic discrimination that will make you the angry feminist, I think we’ve all had these moments. Adding these emotionally relatable moments makes the combination of specific survival thriller readable and relatable.

The narrative in Glass Houses blends small hints about the near-future setting and clues about the strange sequence of event that’s led to crashing on this island, which work well together. This sets up close reading for thriller clues and invites questions about the events between our world and this world.

There’s definitely a social message in Glass Houses, but it’s a theme as part of an engaging near-future narrative and a page-turning thriller. The theme doesn’t take over the narrative entirely, like in Wrong Way, which also created a believable near-future world in order to discuss tech worship and social class. Glass Houses is still page-turner, not just a thought experiment. As the story comments on the invisible rules for women and for PoC in bro-world careers, that thread can be ignored or overlooked, and readers can just focus on the thriller. I think that style is an intentional choice by the author, highlighting like how these characters manage to overlook information — whether that’s about gender, an app’s real capabilities, travel to Mars, how they got to the island…

There were some scenes in Glass Houses that were darker than I expected going in. Both with more blood that I was expecting and with darker themes. Family streamers are a believable kind of blend of mommy vloggers and Mr Beast-y challenges turning into a completely exploited childhood for clicks and cash.  A certain tech CEO is a little obsessed with spreading his genes and going to Mars, which makes for a darkly creepy villain, even without sounding disturbingly like Elon Musk.

Overall, this was an amazing blend of speculative fiction and suspense fiction.