Incarnate

Alma Katsu’s Incarnate is a supernatural technology thriller about Dorothy Wagner, a gifted but profoundly isolated visual-effects artist who creates a flawless virtual influencer and then begins physically transforming into her. What initially appears to be a story about artificial intelligence, deepfakes and online celebrity gradually becomes a Faustian horror narrative in which attention itself behaves like a predatory force. Dorothy believes she is using technology to manufacture the beautiful, popular identity she was denied in childhood, but she eventually discovers that her digital creation has acquired an independent consciousness and that the supernatural entity responsible for her success has been cultivating online personalities for years.

The novel opens when Dorothy is twelve and undergoing psychiatric evaluation following an incident involving three popular schoolmates: Amber, Megan and Hailey. Dorothy says that the girls bullied her after she produced an extraordinarily detailed portrait of Amber. They mocked her appearance, social class and possible sexuality, circulated messages calling her fat and ugly and supposedly encouraged her to kill herself. Dorothy insists that she deleted the relevant messages, meaning that the authorities cannot establish precisely who did what.

She resents being treated as the disturbed child when the other girls remain free. Yet her private thoughts immediately reveal that she has manipulated the adults and that the “incident” was part of a plan. Her psychiatrist agrees that she can leave the treatment centre, transfer to a private school and receive a fresh start, provided she promises never to attempt anything similar again. Dorothy is amused that her strategy worked and initially believes she has outsmarted everyone. She then realises that the adults are being lenient largely because her infant brother Jurgen recently died and they consider her the traumatised child of a grieving family.