Review of Ignore All Previous Instructions by Ada Hoffmann

If companies like Anthropic and OpenAI get their way, generative AI will run rampant while being controlled by megacorps who care little for human creativity. This is the future on display in Ignore All Previous Instructions, and I don’t like it—the future, that is. I liked the book! Ada Hoffmann uses their background in computer science and computer poetry to explore a contemporary issue through a futuristic lens. I enjoyed the many layers of this story: a heist, friends reunited, a parable about LLMs, a story of life on a colony of the human diaspora, and of course, a story of an autistic protagonist. Some of these layers are more sophisticated and satisfying than others. I received an eARC from NetGalley and Tachyon Publications.

Kelli Reynolds is a script supervisor for a company that owns the copyright to all the media in the Jovian system of moons. Her job is to review and tweak AI-generated scripts for AI-generated entertainment. It’s squeaky clean and sanitized. However, Kelli finds the job fulfilling. Autistic and introverted, Kelli splits her time between her quiet home and her quiet office. When her ex, Rowan, flounces back into her life asking for a suspiciously easy-to-grant favour, Kelli’s entire life is upended. She’s catapulted into an adventure closer to the life of her pirate OC than her own.

The story alternates between adult Kelli, counting up the days since her reunion with Rowan and their ill-fated trip from Callisto to Io, and younger versions of Kelli and Rowan. These latter chapters provide essential backstory for both characters, from the inception of their friendship on the playground to their romantic entanglement, breakup, and Rowan’s coming out as trans. They also provide a deeper glimpse into the sinister, hollowed-out society of Callisto and the other Jovian moons. Everything is deeply impersonal, with LLM-powered robots taking the place of a lot of human interaction.

I have to be honest: I didn’t really care for the flashback chapters. The only part of them I enjoyed was that we got a glimpse into younger Rowan’s mind, whereas the present-day chapters are purely limited to Kelli’s perspective. Otherwise, I found the flashback chapters really killed the pacing of an already languorous plot (the main story takes place essentially over a weekend).

That main plot is more interesting, and I’m not just saying that because I am biased in favour of heists! Hoffmann creates a very compelling dilemma for Kelli; I love the setup that compels her to go along with the crime. Similarly, the actual break-in and theft are tense and well done, as is the aftermath. Most heist stories are, understandably, told from the perspective of experienced, even cocky thiefs. In this case, however, Kelli is as green as they come: despite her piratical persona, she is no good as a thief in real life, and it shows.

Yet as the title of the book implies, the most poignant underlying theme is one that touches on questions of humanity, artistic licence, and the soul of creativity. It’s here that Ignore All Previous Instructions both sizzles and fizzles.

The sizzle: I love how completely Hoffmann sketches this dystopia, how believable it is given the rhetoric we are currently seeing around LLMs. Everything they have done here feels rooted in possibilities established now, in 2026, just extended into a Jovian future. On top of the LLM commentary, they’ve layered commentary around queer freedom, on the treatment of autistic people, and so on. It’s an intricate and thoughtful take that I suspect will resonate with many readers.

The fizzle: the central conceit, while enticing, is too simplistic. Megacorp monopoly on all entertainment sounds great on paper (hi, Disney), yet when you actually put it on paper, you run into a few problems. One is the facelessness of the antagonist. The closest thing we have to a representative of the megacorp, other than Kelli herself, is her superior, Baz—and ironically, he is one of the most human and relatable characters. I suspect this isn’t an oversight; rather, Hoffmann is trying to make the point that this megacorp is LLMs nearly all the way down. It’s as if society is being run by phone menus. Nevertheless, as much as I appreciate the careful explanation of LLMs and then the gentle unspooling of why they are problematic/easily hacked/lacking in creative flair, I wish there were more to this part of the story.

In particular, Hoffmann dances around the actual question of storytelling with AI. They explore it mostly in relation to Kelli, whose natural storytelling abilities are subsumed by her teachers into an AI-sanctioned playground, albeit with the occasional pirate stories (in both senses of the word) with Rowan and Elaine. Rowan and Kelli have occasional debates about AI-generated versus human-generated art. I’m intrigued by and sympathetic to the portrayal of Kelli as a kind of collaborator, someone who started off very radical before eventually “growing up” into someone who upholds the system. Despite all of this, however, Hoffmann never actually explores whether the limitations of the AI-generated scripts are a result of megacorp moralizing or a fundamental limitation of LLMs producing slop. The implication seems to be it’s both—and I actually agree with this, philosophically, but I think the novel muddles these factors.

So, I liked Ignore All Previous Instructions and found it interesting, thoughtful, and engaging. It’s a good attempt. But it doesn’t quite swing big enough for me, and some of stylistic choices, like the pacing, didn’t work for me. This will definitely be a “your mileage may vary” book.