Sea of Rust | 
pickI was in the mood for this. Dystopian … western … rebel robots in midwestern wasteland after the last human dies. I love when human characteristics pop up. Fun book!
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
pickI love this book! Cracked it open within minutes of it falling through the letterbox and didn't look up from it until the last page was turned.
Made of awesome! Apocalypse by robot - bumped to the top of the TBR list every time!
Hooked from the get-go when Brittle's interaction with Jimmy got me right in the feels. Gah, my heart broke a little bit. Best introduction to a character I've read in a long time. Absolutely pitch perfect dialogue.
pickAn incredible journey through a post-apocalyptic war-torn landscape where the robots are both the protagonists and the antagonists in a scifi western action movie interwoven with philosophical/social/economical treatise. Loved all but the violence. Also includes: minor reflections on gender in robots, heavy themes of inhumanities originating in mankind, also inflicted on robotkind, then perpetrated by and on robots themselves.
When the book contains sentiment you've held close to your heart for years:
"AIN'T NO BETTER PLACE THAN THIS. Ain't no place in the world that can be better than being with that woman. HOW THE HELL IS IT SUPPOSED TO BE A BETTER GODDAMMED PLACE IF SHE AIN'T THERE?"
Come to think of it, vegans and artificial intelligence would have shared philosophy on this point. ?
"No thinking thing should be another thing's property..."
Not this AI outlining the greatest cockup of western civilization in two paragraphs. 🤦🏼♂️
Today on descriptions that scratched my brain just right:
"In its day, it must have gleamed like a diamond on the finger of an effervescent newlywed."
#BookMail and already wrapped up for Christmas Eve.
The German version of Sea of Rust (top right) has a cool cover. The thick paper feels like touching the surface of rusted iron.
pickHumanity is dead. Earth is inhabited by robots. A few large AIs want to incorporate every single robot soul into their core/hive mind/...
Told from the POV of a former caregiver robot, we see how the survivors struggle and fight to stay independent. Friends become foes. Enemies become allies.
#NovelNovember @Andrew65
#TBRPile 📚 Humankind is extinct, and earth is controlled by vast mainframes. After a near-deadly encounter with another AI, Brittle is forced to seek sanctuary in a city under siege. Critically damaged, Brittle must evade capture long enough to find the essential rare parts to make repairs - but as a robot's CPU gradually deteriorates, all their old memories resurface. For Brittle, that means one haunting memory in particular...
pickWhat a wild ride! I never thought a book about robots would create so many emotions in me as I read it.
This book is full of action, complex characters, and a lot of heart. Brittle, although she's a robot, is a character I fell in love with and will not forget.
If you enjoy dystopian novels or sci-fi, read this book! 😍
#BookSpinBingo @TheAromaofBooks
pickI was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed this book. It's a tale about a world in which AIs have destroyed the humanity that created them and the dystopian landscape they now live in. I really liked the narrator, Brittle, and the way she learned more about herself and her personhood as the story progressed. A good read all around.
#CalibreRoulette
#BuriedAliveChallenge
I‘m almost finished with Anna Karenina by reading one part per day so I‘ve decided to head into my first #CalibreRoulette pick of the month for some nighttime reading.
In all the new month new challenge picks excitement I forgot to post my two #CalibreRoulette picks. Both are from my SFFBC backlog shelf on goodreads. This month I filtered the choices to books that did not have series tags.
pickAn AI uprising in the not-so-distant future. Humanity is extinct.
Our protagonist is Brittle, a caregiver bot whose humans have died who spends her time roaming the sea of rust to kill dying bots for their parts. She gets caught up in a plot for world domination.
Themes of altruism, sentience, and love, and what makes a thing human. Recommend. Thanks again, @InBooksILive !
SPLEE! Thank you so much @InBooksILive ! Been wanting to read this for quite a while! Happy happy Jolabokaflod!
And thanks for organizing this, @MaleficentBookDragon #jolabokaflodswap
pickAs strange as it sounds, for a book that does not feature a single human, Sea of Rust has better characterisation and more engaging and well fleshed-out characters than most novels in the genre that were published last year, even awarded ones. A rather unanticipated and strangely exhilarating writing that comes from a completely unexpected direction.
pickFinished this Audiobook last night & YES YES YES! I loved every minute of this book! Brittle is so amazing & that twist at the end involving her was mind blowing. (yes she is a robot who uses female pronouns this is explained in the book) The flow of going back & forth between present & past was flawless! There was lots of info but it wasn‘t bogged down. Also the narrator for this audio book was AMAZING which is probably why I loved it even more.
I have been listening to this #audiobook for 3 hours non-stop now and it‘s amazing. I love how it switches back and forth between current timeline and past time line. It doesn‘t get messy at all, it‘s clean and seamless between the timelines. You learn about the present situation of the Robots and the Start of the Robots all at the same time but it never feels overwhelming! This is how you blend multiple timelines!
pickAn excellent book. Humans are dead and the robot apocalypse that killed them is trying to find meaning while hiding from the AIs that freed them. A surprisingly human tale with musings on what makes you a person, what defines us and the trauma that shapes us. Us being robots in this case. Also just a great spaghetti western-like post-ropacylypse adventure. A quite powerful ending...except it kept going. Squidapus really didn't need that epilogue.
Squidapus loved Shadows and Dreams but never knew Cargill wrote more books! So when he saw this one he just had to have it!
pick🌅SF, AI story about post-apocalyptic world where humans went extinct after massive war w/AI persons.
🌅Superb writing w/extraordinary world-building & atmosphere.
🌅1st person POV of an android puts sentience into brilliant perspective.
🌅Expounds upon Asimov‘s Three Laws of Robotics remarkably.
🌅Heavily inspired from Asimov, Herbert, & Wells.
🌅A bit plotless, but the point of the story is to contemplate & reflect on meaning of true sentience.
Started this book today & it‘s mind-fucking-blowing. It‘s such an intelligent & brilliantly written narrative that examines the irony of war amid societies & the hunger for power that is the eventual downfall of all civilisations, whether you‘re human or sentient AI. The settings & evocative intensity of loneliness is excellent. Hard sci-fi fans MUST READ this!!
#scifibooks #currentreads
#WinterWonderland For all the AI robots left who inhabited the world this probably seemed like #AFairyTaleOfNewYork.
so-soMeh, not really my genre but I did enjoy the ending more than I expected
I'm not normally all that interested in the kindle daily deals but how can you say no to something being sold as a robot western??
pickWhy did I just cry over robots? Because this book is freakin‘ awesome!!!! We follow Brittle, a free bot, a scavenger, in a future where humans no longer exist. All free bots live under the threat of OWI, One World Intelligences, who want to absorb all the remaining free bots to live as one. Even with all the action in here, the discussions on what it means to live, to have a soul, to have choice make this book a deep and poignant read. Pick!!!!
I heard about this book through the podcast, Recommended. Joe Hill was going on about how great this book was and he wasn‘t wrong. Sooo effin good!!!! There is no human life left. We were killed off by AI. And now, the bots are going through difficult times.
pickThis was a lot of fun... A robot novel that reads like any adventure book, but ROBOTS! Great world building too and a standalone novel, so no waiting for the next part! Thumbs Up!
Good so far but the robots seem to act fully human and I find that strange and unlikely? I know they were created by humans but other than being made of metal etc there is little difference. There are more differences between us and other mammals than what I'm seeing here. 🤷♀️ I'll see how I feel in the end.
I've been waiting for this book to come down in price for months. Today is the day! 😁😁😁😁
"Yeah, but it's the beginning of the end. And I'm part of that now. I lived so long for nothing, but I get to die for something. And that's really loving. Because that's who I really was after all. That's all that matters."
"Everything is math, Brittle. All of existence is binary. Ones and zeros. On and off. Existing or not. Believing anything beyond that is pretending...there is no good or bad here, Brittle. Ethics are worthless in a meaningless universe."
"I had him wrong. He didn't want to be human; he just wanted to have a soul. It's the kind of half measure that will drive you miserable. There was no such thing as the soul. No afterlife. No magic in this world. I've seen that with my own eyes. Mercer had seen the glint of green in the sun and decided to believe it was magic like the rest of them. Maybe he wasn't always like this. Maybe he was already frying out, brainsick enough to lose sight."
"No. Murka was something else. He had the kind of damage even Doc couldn't repair. It's an odd moment the first time you really understand someone, when all of their foibles, eccentricities, and ticks cease to be chaos, and coalesce into something wholly logical. That was the moment I was having, seeing Murka for the first time through new eyes. He wasn't just draped in the dead anesthetics of America; he WAS America, it's last, final torchbearer
pickLove this new sci-fi/dystopian book. Now I‘ve read it, I am forced to reconsider my definition of what it means to be human.
Recommended by Joe Hill on Book Riot‘s Recommended Podcast Episode 8. Sounds fascinating.
