Chris Lodwig – Author

HOST is coming soon!

The System is alive, but not well.

It’s been three centuries since the artificial intelligence that once ran the world was shut down. Now, the only thing keeping the System alive are the arcane passages that traveling professors recite from a book the AI left in its place.
It’s been three centuries since the artificial intelligence that once ran the world was shut down. Now, all that remains of the System are a book of arcane knowledge and the professors who control it.

Reyan is a scruffy thirteen-year-old who thinks too much, understands too little, and is overwhelmed by everything. She spends her time perched in a tree, observing a town that wants nothing to do with her. When Reyan’s benefactor dies, leaving her with no family or future, her fate becomes tied to a group of visiting professors.

Far removed from everything she’s ever known, Reyan struggles to master her unwieldy mind and understand the System’s power and potential. As she grows into her new life and works to expand the System, she is confronted by forces who aim to limit both.

Now, she must risk her new-found privilege and the safety of her first and only home if she hopes to save the System from those who would destroy it and corrupt centuries of knowledge and wisdom.

Host is the long-anticipated and beautifully conceived sequel to Chris Lodwig’s first novel, Systemic.

Feedback from Beta Readers:

A captivating and refreshing take on our not-so-implausible dystopian future. Reyan is a unique protagonist whom I was rooting for from page one! – Ashely Powell

A deft and engaging story. – N Pawar

A very human look at a traumatized society restructuring itself around entrenched traditions, tribalism, and faith in clerics who are a shadow of the old System. – Ashley Nathan Feniello

SYSTEMIC is available in

For generations, a sentient AI has watched over the world and solved all of humanity’s problems. It was an era of objectivity, social equality, and ecological recovery.

It should have been a golden age.

Now, three strangers are on a pilgrimage through the arid lonely sagelands and underpopulated cities of the Systemic era on their way to the seemingly innocuous town of Prower. There, they will uncover the secrets that lay buried beneath the town and learn the truth about their half-remembered pasts. In the end, they must choose between their sanity or solving humanity’s final and most intractable problem.