eBook, 384 pages
English language
Published June 6, 2024 by Tor Books.
Meet Charles™, the latest in robot butler technology. Programmed to undertake the most menial household chores, Charles is loyal, efficient and logical to a fault. That is, until a rather large fault causes him to murder his owner.
Understandably perplexed, Charles finds himself without a master – therefore worthless in a society reliant on artificial labour and services. Fleeing the household, he enters a world he never knew existed. Human hierarchy is disintegrating, and an entire robot ecosystem devoted to its wellbeing is struggling to find a purpose.
Charles must face new challenges, illogical tasks and a cast of irrational characters. He’s about to discover that sometimes all it takes is a nudge to overcome the limits of your programming. But can he help fix the world, or is it too badly broken?
Reminiscent of Monk and Robot though broader and darker, we're along for a calm inquisitive road novel with an earnest robot butler some moment after the world as they and we know it ended. Satirically enjoys itself in upending formulaic scenes and takes us to some imaginative places, surprisingly light fun.
This book starts with a bunch of absurd humor, and as the story goes on, that humor gets mixed in with the darkness of the dystopian setting and overall plot. It kind of resembles Tchaikovsky's Cage of Souls, but whereas that book was more adventure, this one is more dark comedy.
Tchaikovsky does manage to pull off the combination well. The main character, being a robot, brings a bunch of robotic aloofness to the narration, which actually works pretty well with the overall mixture of simultaneously aloof and dark tone of the book. While the main character keeps encountering perhaps too-poignant and neatly tied up episodes of his adventure, like the hero in some sort of a fable (which is where the comparison to Cage of Souls comes to mind), the character is sufficiently compelling to carry the book forward.
The conclusion to the overall plot could perhaps be more …
This book starts with a bunch of absurd humor, and as the story goes on, that humor gets mixed in with the darkness of the dystopian setting and overall plot. It kind of resembles Tchaikovsky's Cage of Souls, but whereas that book was more adventure, this one is more dark comedy.
Tchaikovsky does manage to pull off the combination well. The main character, being a robot, brings a bunch of robotic aloofness to the narration, which actually works pretty well with the overall mixture of simultaneously aloof and dark tone of the book. While the main character keeps encountering perhaps too-poignant and neatly tied up episodes of his adventure, like the hero in some sort of a fable (which is where the comparison to Cage of Souls comes to mind), the character is sufficiently compelling to carry the book forward.
The conclusion to the overall plot could perhaps be more satisfying; it, too, tries to be rather poignant. The setting could perhaps be more fleshed out and less fable-like, but it works with the structure of the story.
I've come to expect more from Tchaikovsky. This one let me down.
