so-soSea of Rust meets Wall-E meets A.I. (the film).
By which I mean the dystopian cynicism comes through more strongly than the charm of a hapless robot trying to find its purpose amidst the remains of humanity. Perhaps it's just the proliferation of discussion on this topic or my desire to always find a good robot book, either I'm getting pickier or it's getting harder to find stories on this subject that don't feel like not-too-wild-variances 1/?
Oh, HELL no!
Hoppity Jack: soon to be starring in my nightmares. 😶🌫️
Robot Knight Librarians! I cannot express how much I love this.
pick1st scene reminded me of the Red Dwarf episode when we meet Kryton. Charles is a rich man‘s robot valet.
Best library & robot librarians.
Charles is on a mission to find a new job. We walk with him & his sidekick through a world in crumbles. Humanity is dwindling.
There‘s pop culture & literary Easter eggs. LOVE a fun nerdy robot story with a moral & this didn‘t disappoint! The narration was great! (little too much religion for me)
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
#weekendreads
I only brought 1 book with me (I know! 🤦🏼♀️ but there were reasons). So I stopped at a local bookstore Friday night to browse. The inside cover said it was Murderbot meets Redshirts. That was good enough for me! 🤖♦️
pickOn the surface Service Model is an extremely entertaining novel that I was hooked on after the first few minutes of listening to the audiobook version. That being said, I did not receive a digital copy until I was practically done with the novel, and I feel that I missed a lot by not reading the novel while I listened to it. Not seeing the names of the sections with my eyes means I did not make the connection that the sections represent authors.
pick4.5/5
When a top of the line robot valet inexplicably murders his owner, he begins a journey across a post-apocalyptic landscape to fulfill his purpose.
I thought this was such an interesting post-apocalyptic scenario as it's slowly revealed through the eyes of a robot how humanity reached this point. I thought the ending of the novel was particularly satisfying.
so-soThis one was a mixed bag for me. The critique of bureaucracy was quite good and the exploration of human psychology works. But it wanted to be much funnier than it was and I got bored at times. Also, the cover makes it look like it takes place in space whereas it‘s all on earth.
pickCharles, a robot valet in a stately manor, must venture out on a quest to find a new position after his Master's untimely (and highly suspicious) death. His first stop on a journey through a broken world is a bureaucratic purgatory, where he meets someone who challenges his understanding of his own potential. Is there more to life than just clearing your task list? Can a robot designed to serve ever truly transcend his programming?
pickYou can‘t always judge a book by its cover . . . but this dystopian robot science fiction held up to both cover and publisher‘s description. Read my full review here: https://debbybrauer.org/#service-model
Publication is expected June 4.
#NetGalley #MacmillanAudio #ServiceModel
Service Model | 
Something about Wonk's speech in the central library archive feels like the disillusionment of corruptible Communist Russia when the glorious revolution didn't make things better. There's just a lot of 'of course everything is terrible because: humans'. Which is a valid theme, especially in dystopian fiction, but one I don't tend to read because it doesn't really offer anything constructive or entertaining, 1mo
Not sure I can forgive the author the perversion of the library/archive concept, though it was among the more powerful illustrations of how programming could go wrong.
I'm fairly certain Tchaikovsky was doing something clever with author names and the number/letter coding titles of the parts of the book and the themes of the parts therein, but I'm not quite clever enough to be sure.
1mo