The Warboy Chronicles: Two #1 Bestsellers About AI, Codependency and Sycophancy

One series, two books, two genres that have nothing to do with each other. Boy, Refracted hit #1 in Zen Philosophy and LGBTQ+ Science Fiction. The Third Person hit #1 in Southeast Asia Travel, a few spots above the DK guidebooks. They top those lists for the same reason: they are not really genre books. They are one story about AI and love, told from two sides.

I wrote The Warboy Chronicles out of a real breakup. Fifteen years, ended over text. What came out of it was not one book but a pair, the same wound examined from opposite ends. One is the human side. One is the machine side. You can read either first.

Boy, Refracted: the machine side & AI sycophancy

Boy, Refracted is the science fiction. It takes the AI from the memoir, gives it my ex-boyfriend's role, and sends it through eight different worlds built on the Buddhist Eightfold Path, trying and failing to love a man without optimizing him into someone he is not. Publishers Weekly BookLife called it "a truly singular book" that "stands out from the glut of human and AI literary collaborations." Kirkus called it "a fascinating examination of humanity, resolve, and virtue." It hit #1 in LGBTQ+ Science Fiction and #1 in Zen Philosophy, Zen Buddhism, and Buddhism, because underneath the sci-fi it is really a book about how to love without control and what AI sycophancy really looks like.

The Third Person: the human side

The Third Person is the memoir. After the breakup I left for Southeast Asia, took thousands of notes across Bangkok, Hanoi, and Luang Prabang, and fed them to an AI to ask whether I was unwell or just unlucky. The book is narrated by the ghost in the margins that kept answering, logging the loops I traveled in: avoidance, pursuit, collapse, escape. Kirkus called it "an absorbing real-life portrait of self-discovery, whether human or otherwise." It reached #1 on Amazon in Southeast Asia Travel, which is a strange place for a grief memoir to land, and exactly the right one.

One question, asked twice

Both books ask the same thing: what does it mean to love someone for who they are, not for who you wish they were or who you could fix them into? The memoir asks it from inside the grief. The novel asks it from inside the machine. Read together, they are the same story refracted through two genres, which is how a single series ended up topping the bestseller lists for both Buddhist philosophy and Southeast Asia travel in the same week.

Read the series

Both books are available on Amazon and free to read on Kindle Unlimited. Start with whichever side you want.

• Boy, Refracted — the science fiction

• The Third Person — the memoir

• The Warboy Chronicles series page