Inherited Voices
The second Aris Thorne novel
A widow visits a hospital's new AI assistant expecting help with appointments, medication schedules and follow-up care. Instead, it begins talking about her late husband.
Jean Wilson knows immediately that the machine is wrong. After fifty-three years of marriage, she understands the difference between remembering someone and merely sounding as though you do. Her quiet refusal to accept the system's comforting answers draws Aris Thorne into an investigation unlike any he has undertaken before.
The evidence leads not to hidden conspiracies or stolen archives, but to something far more ordinary. Modern lives leave behind immense collections of photographs, emails, recordings and messages. Without ever intending to, people are creating detailed records of themselves and those records are increasingly shaping the systems built around them.
As Aris explores the relationship between memory, grief and technology, he finds himself asking a question that reaches beyond artificial intelligence. Can a life ever be reconstructed from its traces or is something essential always beyond the reach of data?
Inherited Voices continues Aris Thorne's story through a thoughtful exploration of loss, remembrance and what it means to understand another human being.
What you'll find in this novel
- Artificial intelligence in everyday life.
- Memory, grief and human relationships.
- The digital traces ordinary people leave behind.
- Returning characters from Archives of Ash.
- Questions with no simple answers.
Read an extract
Read the opening chapter of Inherited Voices.
Release date: Tuesday, 13 October 2026
Inherited Voices will be available in paperback, hardback and ebook.
