Like others, I really enjoyed the character of Alan. Great voice, interesting situation, interesting views on life outside. I especially liked his distrust/disdain for physical bodies because so often in AI stories all the AI wants is to have a physical body of his own. So this opposite desire was refreshing for me.
I loved the idea of the natural disaster setting, but was highly disappointed with it. It never really felt like there was as much chaos and destruction outside as we were lead to believe. I mean, it talks about how dangerous it would be to go outside, yet Lucy had no trouble getting to the hospital, and the taxi had no trouble taking Eileen to Lucy's place. Sure, the thug assaulted her in her hospital room, to which my first thought was, Oh no, the hospital has been overrun! But no, it was just the one thug, and the rest of the hotel staff was right outside, even security, which makes me wonder how that thug got in there in the first place and why he would be stupid enough to attack a woman in the middle of the day with a whole host of hospital staff right outside. Just makes no sense.
So I can agree with Alasdair, the picture of the world going on around them without being explained is great, unfortunately, the actual scenes of the story simply did not fit the descriptions of outside that were being hinted at.
Still, I loved the way Alan's clones were spreading willy-nilly. The Mexico clone is great, I love that he just up and decided it was time to get the heck out of there, and that he keeps duping himself and spreading out. This, to me, is the start of a very interesting story of the Alan AI slowly taking over the internet and eventually... The World! Bwahahaha....