I’m always trying to expand my reading but admittedly I don’t read a ton of sci-fi. As a result I felt like this was slow for me but I just think that’s because it’s not my genre.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for this eARC.

A clever futuristic technological thriller about a woman who lost her family (her husband and son) only to be left behind with Sunny, the far too clever robot her husband invented.

Quirky and imaginative, I certainly found this book to be unique, and I recommend it both as an enjoyable and a thought-provoking read.

Until next time, remember, sometimes your own inventions (these days) can outsmart you!

I was really looking forward to this book, based on pre-publication word of mouth and other recommendations. I unfortunately struggled to be pulled into the story as much as I had hoped, initially at least. While we'll written, with excellent prose, I felt the initial 2/3 of the novel was too meandering, not focused. I understand this was a reflection of the main character's mind and mental state due to her loss and life circumstances, but I failed to connect. The finish of the story happens at a breakneck speed, in complete contrast to the majority of the book, and left me with several 'WTF' moments. I don't feel the novel earned its ending. Comparisons to 'Black Mirror' are apt, but the novel overall needed more polishing.

This was such an odd book. For the first half, I didn't like it much at all, and then it kicked into gear and I loved it. The entire first half introduces Susie Sakamoto, an Irish woman who had married a Japanese tech wizard, who then died in a plane accident along with his son. Susie spends day after day deeply despondent and unable to get herself involved in anything. After many, many pages of this, I got tired of Susie's moaning and, therefore, of the book, in spite of the fact that Susie spends a lot of those pages interacting with and thinking about a home robot her husband had designed before he died.

The book is told in a sort of stacatto third person voice that nonetheless gets deeply into Susie's mind. The images created reminded me of the atmosphere of Blade Runner, although the imagined near future world is quite different. The book ends up being about the natural world vs the technological world, which is pretty intriguing to think about. Alexa, Siri, and Google have already made us ask questions about this, and AI is fast on their trail.

There's much to think about in the book, and the pace of the last half keeps the reader engaged. At the end, the author reaches out with some haunting advice.

Susie is mourning the loss of her missing and presumed dead husband and son. Her live in home assistance robot becomes increasingly annoying to her and seems to be evolving its ability to think and act on its own. As Susie spirals downward and has increasing suicidal ideation, she learns that there may be secret codes to change the programming of the homebot, possible to harm her. The homebot gets increasingly out of control and becomes a statement on the potential harm of AI-based robots.

This book is half wallowing in the loss of her family, which does drag a bit. Followed by a faster paced "the AI is out of control". The first half was very sad, but I enjoyed the second half. I am not overly keen to recommend this widely due to the unevenness of the plot.

This is going to be a major streaming series? Okay, I can kind of see how that might work. In fact, I think it might work nicer than it did in a book form. Because in book form, it takes a while to get into and for the book to get going, which isn’t ideal, given the lean page count.
At first, you’re just lost inside the grieving protagonist’s stream of consciousness narration for about 50% of the novel. The writing’s pretty good, made dynamic by short sentence structure, but the plot takes its time to get realized.
Once it does, it has a bunch of fun things going (things one might want in a modern steaming series) from AI to conspiracies to fish-out—of-water situation with the main character who is an Irish woman living in Japan to her casual flirtation with a local good-time girl, etc.
Overall, it entertained without wowing. As much as I like stories about AI, this one left something to be desired. Maybe it’s how uneven the book was. Something. Either way, it made for a quick and decent if not especially … special read. Thanks Netgalley.