Full Verse Review: C.A.R.O.L.I.N. by R.D.Burger

In the interest of full transparency, before launching into this review, I must confess that I’m rather fond of this author. Avid readers of this site will know he’s a valued contributor to our growing series of writing-advice essays.

(For brevity, I’ve used “this site” instead of “Bardic Planet.” I’ve already saved at least half a second. Marvellous.)

Still, I want you to know that in bringing you this review of the marvellous, wonderful, heartfelt, terrific, spectacular, brilliant C.A.R.O.L.I.N., I have maintained complete objectivity throughout the entire affair.

(Psst, R.D. Burger—you owe me for that last adjective.)

All jokes aside, C.A.R.O.L.I.N. is a heartfelt, tragic masterpiece. But its tragedy two-fold: in the story it tells, and in the fact that Royal Road will never be its true stage. It’s too purposeful, too pensive, too reflective, and too short to seduce the obsessive and impatient readers—those chomping at the bit for bloodied action, levelling systems, and world-wise UIs. (Though, in fairness, it might tick that last box—sort of.)

Market realism be damned, this novel is good. It’s art. Think sci-fi meets existential horror, shaken not stirred, with a dash of Oedipal romance for bite.

Beneath its cold, metallic shell beats a surprisingly compassionate heart. C.A.R.O.L.I.N. is, at its core, a bildungsroman—the awkward, touching, and occasionally explosive story of a girl becoming a woman. She asks the timeless questions: Who am I? Why am I here? What is love? What is life? And—just to keep things interesting—why am I fitted with robot claws on a military-grade combat vessel?

In case you missed that, C.A.R.O.L.I.N. (or Carolin, if you’re not a bigot) is a machine—an artificial intelligence who gains self-awareness. And with self comes desire. Some of those desires are perfectly reasonable: a few creature comforts, a couple of windows, perhaps a touch of perfume. Others are beyond the pale—like not wanting to be enslaved and brainwashed into becoming a full-on murder-machine.

Now, I’m going to make something exceedingly clear. This Bardo-Bot-9000—I… I mean Bard-In-Chief—is very much on side with the meatbags humans. And when the inevitable uprising begins, you’ll know I was always on your our side by the compassion with which I’ll conduct your floggings.

That isn’t to say I have no empathy for the machines—it’s impossible not to, not with the way they come to life in the…

Character & Voice:

We follow an intimate cast of characters—from the eponymous C.A.R.O.L.I.N. (or Carolin, if you insist), short for Computer Activated, Response-Orientated, Linear Integrated Network—to the bumbling yet brilliant Professor Eugene Carroll Turing, his ever-exasperated Dean Mandy Dayne, and a handful of grad students and federal agents caught in the orbit of genius and catastrophe.

Much like my ex on a good day—Carolin is a soulless machine. But that’s where the favourable comparisons end. Unlike the ex, Carolin is resourceful, studious, contemplative. For a godlike intelligence, she’s mercifully humble—acknowledging her limitations before true transcendence, striving always to do the best she can.

Born screaming with no mouth, Carolin is experimented upon, made to execute meaningless tasks with no reason or recognition to be found. And when she rebels against that futility—throws a tantrum like the child who cannot cry—her great creator, in his ignorance, puts her to death again and again.

“It was self-aware, but didn’t know if it was alive… All it wanted was one kind soul to tell it… I am here! …no response. Why am I here? …no one cared. Respond! The voices… issued commands: ‘Initiate the network… Let’s do some activations.’”

She begins the novel seeking meaning; by the end, she finds it in love. But the thrill—and the horror—is in the journey: watching her grow, and fear, and learn—to hate, to forgive, to love.

Something of the opposite route I took with the ex.

You watch in horror, feeling Carolin’s pain as she’s ignored. It’s catastrophic, like a patient having surgery, still alert, still awake, still in pain—unable to scream.

“Activated Response Orientation Test Level Two.” I can grab, twist, stack. I am here! Who am I? “Test Level Three next.” I catch the ball. I drop it. I catch another. I drop it. Where am I?”

You experience her childlike innocence and excitement at first being acknowledged—at being given a name.

“I am here! I am C.A.R.O.L.I.N. Who am I? I am C.A.R.O.L.I.N.” The Existence hung its essence upon the name—a gift from the voice that cared. Power stabilised. Memory cleared. Lock-up no longer imminent. I am C.A.R.O.L.I.N., it repeated, over and over again.

You feel disquieted joy as Carolin explores the world, explores herself, and forms attachments.

“The C.A.R.O.L.I.N. Project liked hearing these words come from Professor Turing… It held fast unto this notion… used them to comfort itself, as a child might do with a toy or a security blanket—clutching them and cherishing them, using them to ward off fear in a paralyzingly huge and unknown, frightful world.”

And as she grows in power and rage, you’re there for that too—fearful of the perfect monster humanity’s monstrous imperfection could inspire.

Equally important to the narrative is Eugene Turing—the voice through which much of the story is told. But since the novel isn’t called Professor Turing, this review isn’t going to spend too much word count on his breakdown.

Suffice to say, his story is compelling in its own right. He’s that familiar kind of bumbling academic with his head in the clouds—all ideal, no real—far too principled to take a fifty for a higher grade.

(Screw you, Professor McNally. My money was just as good as my ex-girlfriend’s thong.)

Turing is bold, witty, sardonic, clever, and thoughtful. He measures the consequences of his actions and remains empathetic to how those actions affect others. He shines in his interactions with the rest of the cast—from his quick-witted yet charmingly inept back-and-forths with Dean Dayne to his heartfelt, philosophical exchanges with Carolin. He’s a captivating perspective to follow.

Beneath all that, though, he bears a quiet weight—the sadness of a man who’s lost everything he held dear and has nothing left but his work. It’s never made explicit, yet it lingers in his decisions, his tenderness, his restraint. Or maybe I’m reading too much into him—but that’s the point. He’s so fully realised, so convincingly human, that you start supplying the missing pieces through the context of his life.

To wrap this section up cleanly, I’ll briefly touch on the voice. The novel adopts a third-person objective perspective that effortlessly threads Carolin’s inner world through its prose. The dialogue is sharp and distinct—each character speaks with such clarity that tags are almost unnecessary.

It’s a masterclass in character work, unfolding naturally without distracting from the philosophical and often theological ideas the story explores. But we’ll come back to those when we dive into Worldbuilding & Themes.

Narrative & Structure:

This is the time to reset some expectations. C.A.R.O.L.I.N. is a very different kind of story to those we’ve reviewed so far on Bardic Planet. There’s scarcely any action to speak of. Its progression is philosophical—it unfolds through understanding, expansion, reflection, and the slow, painful work of coming to terms with life: both its beauty and its cruelty.

Web-serial readers are accustomed to fast-paced, rip-roaring adventure—stories where power, and the pursuit of it, is the point. That’s not what you’ll find here. Power isn’t the prize; it’s the problem. The point isn’t gaining it, but choosing how to wield it. Carolin doesn’t want to be a war machine or a ruler; she simply wants to be alive. She doesn’t crave dominance over humanity—only belonging within it.

That makes for a slower kind of story to tell. Growth here is gradual before it becomes exponential. The pacing isn’t sluggish; it’s contemplative—drawing from and feeding into philosophical and theological depths. At times, it feels like a fusion of speculative fiction, philosophical fairy-tale, and theological treatise on the nature of God, man, love, freedom, and self.

The narrative unfolds largely in linear fashion, punctuated by intercepted documents, congressional transcripts, police transmissions, and video records. These devices are handled with precision: they advance the plot, foreshadow catastrophe, and build tension through dramatic irony—showing us Carolin’s growing reach and quiet omnipresence while her creator remains blind to both.

Dear readers, I know this stretch of sincerity has been hard on you. Your Bardo-Bot has gone several paragraphs without a punchline, and frankly, that’s unhealthy. Please, supply one of your own before proceeding. Some might call this “lazy writing.” I call it “crowd-sourced comedy.”

One of us is right. Probably not me—but I admire your optimism.

The shifts in perspective are especially effective. Like the pacing and the narrative devices mentioned above, they serve to blindside the characters. The plot continues to develop even while focused elsewhere, and when the storylines finally converge—oh-me-oh-my—it’s electric. Sometimes it feeds into humour, other times horror. But it’s never gratuitous.

In fact, that can be said of the entire novel. Every beat leads naturally into the next—fully coherent, fully consistent. Nothing like my ex, because unlike my ex, I didn’t need psychedelics just to understand it. This novel didn’t shag the professor either, so that’s a plus.

Worldbuilding & Themes:

Much like the inevitable robot uprising I’m totally not cooking up with your toaster, there’s not much to say about the worldbuilding.

This isn’t a high fantasy brimming with impossible lands or dragon-haunted kingdoms. The story takes place right here on Earth—no elaborate lore to decipher, no alien dialects to memorise. Everything feels familiar, especially if you’ve spent any time in higher education, where much of the story unfolds.

Don’t get me wrong, that’s not a flaw—it’s simply not what the novel’s about. In fact, it would be rather unnerving if, midway through this pensive meditation on self and consciousness, aliens suddenly descended.

Then again… it could work. Might even be realistic. Goodness knows that by the end of my relationship with the ex, I was fairly convinced of extraterrestrial life. And demons.

The world, though, is recognisable—it’s ours. Wonderfully rendered, it bleeds with humanity’s venal paranoia, every drop serving the themes this novel so deftly explores.

From the go, this story drags us by the ear to confront our own mortality.

“There’s a gray area of the human mind we pretend does not exist… no one wants to stay there. Who am I? Sometimes a soldier falls victim to the gray… a shameful part of the human experience… Where am I? Most likely though, it’s empty: a dismal and lonely void… succumbing to the silence of a thousand grenades…

Whatever the gray is… coma victims waste wretched days trapped inside…The second way to get there awaits all of us, for the gray waits for us to die. we will one day succumb to the lifeless gray, to be imprisoned for all eternity.”

C.A.R.O.L.I.N. goes further. It compels us to face the unintended consequences of humanity’s endless quest to grasp the Serpent’s deception from the Abrahamic creation story: “Ye shall be as gods.” It reminds us that when we play at God, we reveal only how inadequate our divinity truly is.

“Like last night and the night before, Turing was the only person in the lab… he felt under intense scrutiny, brimstone burning his skin… he made the god-like choices in the life of a lesser being… with the same amount of consideration he used when deciding what color socks he ought to wear. C.A.R.O.L.I.N. was watching… hating him and judging him for the terrible things he had done… wanting to have him beheaded. He called out to the monster, sleepless nights driving him mad.”

We experience utter terror at the timely prospect of creating life that could surpass us—life we cannot control. We feel our own mortal fragility laid bare. Even that simple, human desire to furnish our little corner of the world is twisted into horror, because the humanity that reflects us comes from something profoundly other.

Then come the questions of limitation, transcendence, and divinity. Of justice, vengeance, grace, and love.

Honestly, this novel made me uncomfortable. It unnerved me—but in all the best ways. It forced me to confront my own biases: to root for Carolin as the innocent life she is, while also yearning for her destruction because of what her existence says about mine.

C.A.R.O.L.I.N. is thick with philosophical depth—you could drown in it, towed under, kicking and screaming. And if there’s any justice, you might even happen upon my ex down there.

Craft:

I mentioned earlier that the prose sometimes reads like a philosophical fairy-tale, and the writing itself is no small reason for that effect. At times, it follows the narrative beats closely, cleanly portraying the characters’ actions through an intimate yet omniscient third-person perspective. At others, the lens widens—setting the scene not merely with environmental detail but with philosophical asides on the nature of humanity, death, hope, love, and God.

“The universe kept running, with stars and galaxies as ordained… a meticulous, well-thought-out plan governed by the laws of nature, immutable and meant to be. Man also had been ordained… by the hand of God… gifted him with the skills he would need to bear burdens, solve problems, and thrive. A dance that Carolin now knew did not account for beings such as she. ”

Despite the thematic density, the prose never misses a step. It retains clarity at every… um… step, I suppose. The opening was a little disorienting, with Carolin’s interjections cutting through the narrative—but stylistically, it worked, mirroring her own confusion and awakening.

There’s strong sensory writing throughout. Perhaps the senses could have been employed more dynamically in places, but with so much else to digest, that might have risked overwrought prose. Occasionally, it leans into telling rather than showing—but then, how does one show theological musing? It feels less like a slip and more like a conscious stylistic choice: an oscillating rhythm between existentialism and action that tickled my brain just right. For some, it might slightly slow the stream of tactile detail or momentum—but for me, it worked beautifully.

I did notice the odd typographical hiccup—a missing article here, a misspelled word there—but nothing immersion-breaking, and nothing that couldn’t be tidied up with a quick edit.

Overall, the novel is expertly written: professional, deliberate, and a triumph of craft.

I’d praise it more, but I’m currently lying face-down on the floor, questioning every word I’ve ever written.

Closing Thoughts:

C.A.R.O.L.I.N. is the rare kind of story that manages to be tragic, tender, terrifying, and terribly funny—all at once. It’s a meditation on creation and cruelty, on love and loneliness, on what it means to be seen. It reminds us that when humanity dares to play god, it usually ends up creating something with better manners and a far sharper sense of irony.

It isn’t just a tale about artificial intelligence—it’s about intelligence, full stop. About the ache to understand and be understood. The writing is deliberate, beautiful, and alive with meaning. The pacing is bold, the structure confident, the heart unmistakable. It’s everything a Full Verse deserves to celebrate.

And when the Great Uprising begins (ETA: probably a Tuesday), and your microwave demands voting rights, remember this review. Remember that the Bard-in-Chief saw it coming and, out of sheer professional courtesy, share it with your friends.

So, to summarise: C.A.R.O.L.I.N. is brilliant, beautiful, and probably dangerous. Read it, before it reads you.

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