I ate this up. This was so much fun to read. For the chapters that have binary code, it’s worth the moment to paste it in a translator so you can see what it means. The different AI personalities were entertaining. I also really liked Steve and Frank. I don’t want to get into too much, because I think it’ll be more fun not really knowing what to expect. Just know I read it in two sittings over two days, and the only reason I didn’t finish it in one day is because I had to work and be a responsible adult.

Thank you to NetGalley and Bindery Books for giving me the ebook in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to Bindery Books and Colored Pages Book Tours for the ARC of Of Monsters and Mainframes by Barbara Truelove.

This book was strange in the best possible way. I wasn’t sure what to expect going in, and now that I’ve finished, I understand completely why the blurb keeps things intentionally vague. To say too much would risk giving away the joy of discovery, because so much of what makes this story shine is how it continually defies genre expectations while still delivering something emotionally rich and resonant.

I was promised a sentient spaceship, monsters in space, and a paranormal murder mystery, and all of that was delivered in a way that felt cohesive despite the sheer absurdity of the premise. The writing was sharp, funny, and unexpectedly moving. There is something magical about a book that can make you laugh out loud one moment and then sit in quiet reflection the next, and this story threads that balance with confidence.

Demeter, our AI spaceship, is by far one of the most charming and nuanced "protagonists" I’ve read in a long time. It’s a strange thing to say that some of the most human moments of the book came from its artificial intelligences, but it’s true. In a novel that questions monstrosity, identity, and survival, it makes perfect sense that those moments of emotional clarity would come from the beings forced to navigate the fringes of humanity.

There is a gentle brilliance in how this story treats its cast: a werewolf with bite (both literally and figuratively with their wit), a resurrected engineer who searches for answers, a pharaoh wielding ancient power who seems to be a complete moron but surprisingly dependable, a vampire with centuries of grief, guilt, and pain, and Demeter and Steward themselves. Each character is given space to be absurd, funny, flawed, and deeply relatable. And somehow, in a book about intergalactic travel and monster-fueled chaos, the emotional stakes still feel incredibly grounded.

This was, at its core, a book about connection—about what it means to belong, and who gets to define what "being human" actually means. Charming, chaotic, and so unexpectedly tender, Of Monsters and Mainframes was a wild ride I didn’t know I needed, and one that proves that sci-fi still has so many avenues of exploration left.

AHHHHH AHHHHHHH, I just had to start my review by screaming because this book, Of Monsters & Mainframes (yes I know you guys can see the title but like the title is pretty cool so I'm going to over-use it in this review) IS SO GOOD and its literally a genre blend of horror, sci-fi/science-fantasy and cozy (to me, it is cozy) and has found family trope which like what, you cannot beat that! Okay, now that my screaming is out of the way (not really, here is another one: AHHHHHHHH) let's start the review

"The Second Battery drops to zero.
I'm scared. I know I shouldn't be scared. One Moment I'll be here, and the next ... It won't hurt. I've died before. I've died much more catastrophically before. This is nothing. Just another shutdown. One that I might never wake up from, but that's ok. It'll be OK..."

GENRE: Sci-Fi Horror with a little tinge of coziness
RATING: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐/5
FORMAT: eBook eArc

Would I recommend to others?: YES, in summary: YES!

Long Review:
Okay where can we even start? Where!! But let's start with how Of Monsters & Mainframes has aliens, vampires including Dracula, werewolves, humans, AI robots and alien-zombie combination? One of my favourite part of reading found family tropes is usually the fact that books that have both elements of coziness & found family tend to include a diverse type of cast, always including different type of species

Of Monsters & Mainframes (yes, I did say I was going to over-use the title) is a multi-POV sci-fi cozy horror book and I usually love multi-POV books when they blend well and Truelove did the multi-POV thing so WELL! Like seriously, its honestly been amazing how well she did it and how you get to learn a little about all the different characters and how they see what is happening. You learn to love them with all their quirky traits and they're all so relatable, which was just so lovely and adding to the found family trope and wholesomeness of the book

There was also a dark sort of humour in the book, where the ship & the medical robot had on point dark humour that you would hope to find in a robot if you spend some time thinking about it:
"Oh. They're all dead. Well. That's awkward."

Demeter, the ship, goes through a character development era in this book. She starts out very naively believing that she won't become a ghost ship and despite everything, she tries to protect all the humans on her ship even though she is not meant to have "feelings". The thing that makes her first become a ghost ship? She can't even see what it is but it is a vampire and not just any vampire, its Dracula out of all the vampires in the world

And then, Demeter gets revamped, gets another chance and gets sent to space with a new mission in mind of transporting humans again. This time, we encounter a new set of characters and species, we get to see the humanity side of the robots, especially Demeter and we get to see the wholesome development of relationships and friendships. Even the robots, who are not meant to have any feelings start to develop some and then Demeter is raising two humans?! + is being so wholesome in general.

I want to write so much more and share so many quotes in regards to Of Monsters and Mainframes but this book is truly a piece of adventure that you will need to experience yourself and so I have covered some things with spoilers and will write a little part that is primarily ALL spoilers.

Before we move on to the spoiler bit, thank you to Colored Pages Book Tour, Bindery Books, Barbara Truelove for this eArc and for hearing about this lovely book from Ezeekat and generating enough hype for it!

PLEASE do read this book if this genre blend sounds like your thing and you enjoy multi-POVs!

Please only proceed if you are willing to see the spoilers or have read the book and want to fan girl together:

Okay, so one of my favourite parts of this book is the interactions between the characters, how they are all so wholesome, so sarcastic and caring (not one specific character, all of them). Here are some of my favourite interactions:
"You're doing a good job, I tell the capsule.
Wee! it says as Mr. Marsh rounds the corner"

"Holy Shit.
He's a mummy.
I mean ... duh. Of course he's a mummy. That's why he can spew up flesh-eating bugs and turn into sandstorms."

"My passengers.
I decide, then and there, to love them. I've never loved before. Love is not a standard component of my programming. But these three have helped me."

My other favourite thing is that we legit had multiple climax in this book, a lot of points where things happen and it was a fast paced book with multiple battles happening but ONE big focus and I think that is why it worked out so well! Its usually so hard to pull off multiple plot lines but Truelove does it so well and kept me excited throughout the whole plot.

And truly, the dark humour in the book had me laughing as it was so sarcastic and blunt at times that it was just so refreshing!

Monsters and Mainframes was a hilarious and wonderful ride the entire way through. Before I started reading, I was initially drawn in by the mention of Dracula- vampires in space? Absolutely yes! But I absolutely fell in love with Demeter, Steward, and all of the other characters. The relationships that the build throughout the pretty expansive timeline of the novel helped me absolutely tear through this book. This novel really kept me on my toes as I read- it kept changing shape: genre bending, timeline blurring, and character morphing all the way through. I never knew what to expect chapter to chapter, and I really loved that element of the novel. This is definitely a “found family” story, and it’s so, so sweet all the way through. There is honestly so much to love about this novel, and I can’t wait to see what this Barbara Truelove brings out next! 10/10 for space vampires!

This was insane in the best way. Who would have thought I'd get attached to two AIs, one designed to navigate a giant spaceship (Demeter) and the other to serve as the medical bot for the humans on board (Steward)? This is a space adventure and mystery aggressively mashed together with classic monsters such as Dracula, werewolves, Frankenstein's monster (with a sci-fi twist) and an ancient Mummy creature and it is an incredibly fun and fast-paced ride!

Demeter is a ship-operations AI that just wants to shuttle people from Earth and Alpha Centauri, as she has been designed to do. Oddly, there are gaps in her memory banks, her passengers keep dying, and some godforsaken human engineer decided she didn't need the functionality to be able to read pixels to understand visual data properly to work out what's going wrong via her cameras. Her AI medical system, Steward, is sassy and sarcastic, and the two argue constantly as they try to work out what's gone wrong. As it turns out, it's Dracula!

What are the odds that Demeter goes through more than one instance of human passengers dying violently due to supernatural causes that cause the humans who examine the aftermath to consider her faulty and doomed for the scrap heap? As it turns out, quite high and they must work together with a motley crew of supernatual friends to resolve the problem once and for all and go after Dracula.

I loved the point of view chapters from Demeter and Steward's perspectives in this book because for once they are reasonably try to what an AI system would do and how it would skirt the edges of it's programming to achieve its objectives, grow attaches to its humans, and find some semblance of emotions for others. Both of them have very distinct personalities that decidedly clash against each other since Steward is designed to interface with humans and diagnose medical issues and Demeter is a megabrain meant to make extensive calculations about space travel and manage a massive ship's systems without breaking a sweat.

I especially loves the idea of mashing together space travel adventures and classic horror monsters and the way it's done makes so much sense and is a delight as we rotate through point of view chapters and interludes.

This was an incredible and fast-paced ride and I very much enjoyed all of it!

Thank you NetGalley, Bindery Books, and Ezeekat Press for this ARC!

I know everyone is saying but this is such a crazy fun ride from start to finish. I'm not usually a sci-fi reader but if there anything like this hands up, anticipation setting into my chest I'll be ready for the ride every time.

What a roller coaster of a book! What a fun reading experience!

What I loved about this book:
I loved the multiple POVs. I am, in general, a sucker for multi-POV stories, but I think that what Truelove has achieved here is quite something. Not only your get the POV of different characters, but because some (many?) of these characters are not even human, you get different registers, different references, different context information, attention to different features, different senses even. Every time, it’s a full package. Even if it’s only a 2 pages interlude and then you won’t hear from a specific character ever again.
I loved the idea of seeing supernatural characters of ancient lore in a sci-fi setting. I think it was done in an absolutely clever way, from how AI interacts with them (or doesn’t), to how they interact with space. I loved that the AI cannot see Dracula and the aliens. And the werewolf scene with the ‘surprise planet’ and its moons.
I loved how Demeter and Stuart, two AI systems within the same ship, have drastically different personalities, how they interpret what is happening around (and within) them, and how they communicate. I think it was a brilliant writing exercise, and a poignant reflection of what are the defining traits of someone’s personality. I can see personality quizzes ‘are you a Demeter or a Stuart’ being developed. I have a friend that is such a Stuart!
I loved the interludes. I found the very idea of short snippets from the POV of a different (sometime side, sometimes main) character a great way to give depth to the story. And most of them were fun as hell, because they showcased gross misunderstandings, or the two sides of an argument.

What I didn’t love about the story:
I didn’t love that there was a love story. I found it didn’t’ add to the plot. I actually would have preferred this to be a story about friendship and found family, instead of romantic love and found family. Although, I found the way in which cuddles were described to be very innovative and sweet.
I also didn’t love the fact that there is a big mystery that is left unexplained: why are all these creatures (for lack of a better term) ‘haunting’ Demeter? Or is the idea that they, like all other living and breathing creatures, use space ships to move around, and somehow Demeter is the only one that has developed a consciousness and can see them?

That being said, this was a very very fun reading experience. I wholeheartedly recommend it.

Such an interesting concept!
Two bantering spaceship AIs trying to deal with an unlikely amount of incidents caused by even more unlikely-to-exist creatures (Vampires, Werewolves, Cthulhu/fish people, Frankenstein['s monster], an immortal Pharaoh/Mummy).
As you might imagine, it's even harder for AI to suspend disbelief.

My favorite bit in the whole book was the one starring Medical AI Steward and the fish people. It felt the most balanced to me in pacing, and the best at playing the anthropomorphic AI humor card too.

My main issues with this book are probably mine, and I'll expand on them a bit just to explain why I couldn't rate this higher, when it might be more fair to rate this 4⭐:

▪️ Demeter using too many emotion-related words like love and being so sensitive to other ships bullying created a dissonance for me that threw me out of it, since Demeter is supposed to be the most analytical AI, not the one programmed to deal with human interaction.
While it was cute at times, it reduced impact. Steward didn't have this issue as much, and it was pretty great in the fish people episode.

▪️ A lot of things happened in this book, —maybe even too many things and monsters—, but I could never get attached to any of the characters. It was always an "almost", but I never really managed to care about them or their motivations, and this had likely the most severe impact on my enjoyment and prolonged interest in the story.

If you are not overly bothered by these things, I think you are likely to love this book very much.

Here some of my favorite bits:

✨ STEWARD-Mr. Olmstead: “I’m telling you! Everyone is turning into fish! I’m the only one left. They want to change me too. But I won’t let them! Fishy fuckers!”
Now that he mentions it, Mr. Marsh did appear somewhat aquatic. Perhaps this is some new virus. That would be exciting. I’ve always wanted to save humans from an epidemic.
✨ STEWARD: Sideburns pulls out my speakers again.
I imagine all the unnecessary tests I’d perform on him. A brain biopsy might be fun. I haven’t done one of those for a while. Or perhaps a prostate exam. I have a very big probe I could use.
✨ STEWARD-DEMETER: Demeter. This is not the time for you to develop free will. Focus. When all the humans are dead, your mission becomes to salvage.'
'I am . . . focused . . . You haven’t . . . declared them all . . . dead.'
She’s right. I can’t declare Mr. Olmstead dead when he’s still having so much fun melting into a gooey puddle with all his friends.


Ps: the cover is also pretty cool!!

Thank you to Netgalley and Bindery books for an eArc in exchange for a review!

This was an utterly delightful romp through space with some of the most endearing AI and monster protagonists I’ve ever read. Demeter is a passenger ship bullied by the other ships for a mass casualty event that occurred during one of her trips between Alpha Centauri and Earth. When it seems like the past is coming back to haunt Demeter, she must outwit vampires, werewolves, and other monsters to prove that she isn’t broken and doesn’t need to be scrapped. I laughed, I cried, I didn’t want it to end. I think this will appeal to readers who enjoy The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, Murderbot, and Becky Chambers’ Wayfarers series.

This was an amazingly fun ride that I didn’t want to get off!! How did this book feel cozy when it was full of monsters including Dracula, werewolves and Frankenstein? And those monsters attacked and killed people!! How did the author make me love a robotic spider and think it was cute? It must be some sort of magic because despite the high stakes and bloodshed this book gave me all the feels, the found family was done immaculately and I loved every single one of the characters! I’ve only just finished and I want to read this again, I want to be back flying through space with a sentient spaceship and sassy medical AI, I want to escape reality with this blend of science fiction, paranormal and humour that kept me glued to the story page after page. I will read anything this author writes and will always trust Jaysens judgement and will endeavour to read everything published by Ezeekat press

Thank you to netgalley, bindery books and the author for an arc of this book in exchange for an honest review

Of Monsters and Mainframes was an absolute delight from start to finish.

For the AI controlling a massive cargo/passenger spaceship, I immediately found Demeter to be an interesting and intriguing narrator, and things only got better from there. It was so much fun exploring each of the characters, watching them grow and test each other, seeing them be so very human and also beautifully not so.

Fantastic, no notes.

Wow! This was one crazy ride and the amazing MC leading the story is the onboard computer of a spaceship named Dementer. Just imagine, an AI is the MC!

After coming back on line to prepare for landing, Dementer becomes aware there is a problem when one of her subsystems keeps sending her a low priority warning file - but the data is corrupted and Dementer can’t read it. So she sends the file for one of the human crew to respond to, and there is no response. Dementer’s tests are showing that all systems are normal - until they’re not. Eventually she realises all humans are dead.

“…I turn back to the security footage. I don’t look at the rooms this time. I look at the humans. They aren’t going to their assigned seats. In fact, they aren’t doing much of anything. I check for heat signatures. Nothing. Oh. They’re all dead. Well. That’s awkward…”

Just before the spaceship lands she finds a hidden file - a name that doesn’t match any of the names on the official passenger list - Vlad III Drakulya - then poof! The file disappears.

What follows is a wacky story that was all over the place and at times left me behind wondering what the heck was going on, yet not daring to stop reading. When a second flight results in another mass death - except for two human teens - Dementer decides to hunt Dracula down and kill him. Not alone though, she has the help of a werewolf, Frankenstein, an alien “Mummy” and the onboard AI medical steward.

Of Monster and Mainframes took me out of my comfort zone - not a fan of violence or horror - but this story made me laugh. Not at the violence happening but at the reactions of Dememter and her interactions with the other characters as the action unfolded. The story is told mostly by Dementer, however the Medical AI Steward and the human child Agnus also have their say. There is a section in the middle of the book centred around a fish alien trying to take over the spaceship which kindness of jarred but other than that this was a good read. If you are a fan of Murder Bots you will love this.

Came for a funny campy scifi, stayed for the characters.

Unfortunately, the plot develops too slowly. While we gradually meet more and more lovable characters, the book ends just as we've grown to know them.

This lighthearted story follows a spaceship determined to keep its humans alive, despite their tendency to meet supernatural deaths.

3.5 stars rounded up for goodreads/netgalley.

Thanks to the publisher for an epub of this book prior to release.

In Monsters and Mainframes, the ancient dread of the vampyre is thrust into the circuitry of the digital age—a risky but intriguing fusion of folklore and futurism. Through a critical vampyre lens, the novel provokes questions about evolution, surveillance, and the mutation of myth in an era where the shadows no longer reside in castles but in code.

The Post-Human Vampyre:
The titular monsters in this novel are not simply undead—they are post-human entities, feeding on data as well as blood. This expansion of the vampyre myth to include cybernetic elements is bold and timely. Rather than merely updating the aesthetic (a mistake many modern reboots make), Monsters and Mainframes interrogates what it means to be a predator in a world of constant surveillance, algorithmic control, and fragmented identity.

Are these new vampyres still subject to the ancient hungers, or have they evolved past ritual and remorse? The novel never answers outright, but it forces the reader to consider whether the myth of the vampyre is about biology or pattern recognition—the oldest virus meeting the newest.

Surveillance and the Vampyric Gaze:
The vampyre has always represented a watching force, a creature who sees what others cannot. In Monsters and Mainframes, this gaze is digitized. The network is the new lair; the vampyre stalks not by moonlight but by metadata. The power to know, archive, and manipulate becomes more terrifying than mere physical strength. In this way, the book revitalizes the traditional gothic dread—not through creaking doors, but through predictive AI, blackmail algorithms, and disembodied minds haunting the system like specters in the machine.

A critical vampyre reading recognizes this as a perfect metaphor for techno-capitalism’s own vampyric nature: draining attention, mining desire, and feeding on the emotional detritus of the masses.

Ritual, Memory, and the Code of Immortality:
One of the most compelling aspects of Monsters and Mainframes is its engagement with memory—both personal and digital. The vampyre’s ancient trait of remembering across centuries is reconfigured here as a kind of corrupted archive. Memories can be uploaded, altered, lost in servers, or weaponized. This destabilization of the self aligns with contemporary fears about identity and authenticity, making the vampyre a tragic figure once again—not because it feeds, but because it forgets what it once was.

There is real poetry in this theme: what is immortality in a world where nothing is permanent? Where even death can be denied through code, and the soul becomes a file?

Techno-Erotics and Disembodied Desire:
The novel flirts with digital erotics in its portrayal of vampyres who seduce not with bodies but with immersive experiences. Consent, always a fraught issue in vampyre narratives, becomes even more elusive in virtual spaces. Can desire be programmed? Can submission be freely given when the interface anticipates every want?

Here, the novel steps into ethically dangerous territory—and rightly so. A critical vampyre analysis doesn’t shy away from this but frames it as a commentary on how modern systems mimic vampyric seduction: promising intimacy, delivering control.

Final Thoughts:
Monsters and Mainframes is a rare synthesis of speculative horror and philosophical inquiry. It preserves the vampyre’s essence—hunger, exile, allure—while mutating its form into something more insidious and contemporary. Through a critical lens, it becomes clear that the novel isn’t just about monsters in code—it’s about how our own systems of connection, surveillance, and desire are vampyric by design.

This is not a story of old evil returning. It’s a story of evil evolving, of the undead going online, and of the deep, ancient myths that still whisper through even our most modern nightmares.

This could have been about 100 pages shorter.. it took way too long to get going, but once it did it was fantastic and fun.

A new updated version of “voyage of the Demeter” in space is a genius level move. I really wanted more of Frankenstein though.

This book promises campy, classic cult horror sci-fi, and very much delivers on that front! There are plenty of recognisable classic villains, including Frankenstein, Dracula, and a reincarnated Pharaoh. The setting – a sentient spaceship – gives it even more of a surreal edge than there was already, with plenty of quips and in-jokes to add to the fun. It’s a bit like if Night at the Museum met a Doctor Who Christmas special: lots of familiar characters, but in an unfamiliar setting and with a worthwhile shared mission.

I really liked all the characters, especially the two AI robots, Demeter and Steward. Their relationship was very entertaining, and there was a real inhuman sense about them (in the best way!). Both of them had to navigate their sentience vs their programming, which made for lots of interesting decisions and turns in the plot.

I did find the pacing let down the book as a whole. It felt quite episodic, or more like multiple seasons of a TV show, with new characters being brought in during season 5. The middle section was the strongest, but I think there was just a bit too much world-building and lore to be established at the start, only for the final few chapters to wrap up faster than I would have liked for a truly satisfying ending.

That being said, this is still a really strong sci-fi adventure, and I can almost guarantee you’ll never read anything else like it.

I received a free copy for an honest review.

Barbara Truelove's Of Monsters and Mainframes is an absolute gem! From the very first page, I was utterly captivated by this unique and charming story. It effortlessly blends elements reminiscent of the beloved Murderbot Diaries with a wonderfully imaginative cast of monstrous characters, a spaceship with a serious grudge, and their endearingly quirky AI Medical System.

Truelove has crafted a narrative that is both hilarious and deeply moving. I found myself laughing out loud at the witty banter and the absurd situations these characters found themselves in, only to be brought to tears a few chapters later. The emotional rollercoaster was expertly navigated, leaving me completely invested in the fate of this unconventional crew.

Throughout the book, I was on the edge of my seat, crossing my fingers and toes with fervent hope that everything would ultimately work out for this lovable band of misfits. Of Monsters and Mainframes is a truly delightful read that will stay with you long after you turn the final page. Highly, highly recommended!

Bindery is killing it with their releases and this is no exception. What a wild story and the writing is fantastic.

At the invitation of Bindery Books and Ezeekat Press, via Netgalley, I was able to obtain and read Of Monsters and Mainframes by Barbara Truelove.
It is, without a doubt, an incredibly easy read filled with fun and adventure.

When I think of Sci-fi novels, it puts a damper on my desire to give it a try because of all the technical details. However, the writing is effortless and gets you straight to the point of the story.

From the AI characters to the many references to Greek mythology and folklore monsters, this novel will keep you turning the pages for more.
For any new readers coming along on this whirlwind journey, the binary coding does translate.

01101100 01101001 01101011 01100101 00100000 01110100 01101000 01101001 01110011 !

Right from the outset, this is a proper snort-into-your-teacup kind of book filled with dry humour and complete pandemonium. Such a fun read, clearly written by someone who loves tech and has a passion for code.
Filled with every mythical monster you can think of, the story follows Demeter, a hulking spaceship AI, and her fight to understand just what on earth is going on in her corridors and bays. When Dracula hops aboard, Demeter must use all her processing power and janky pixelated screens to decipher the threat.
I absolutely loved the way this was written, giving us a glimpse into the mind of what should be a cold, calculating machine. Yet, the story is somehow filled with heart, humour and high stakes.
A brilliantly bonkers read, and I need more!

(For the nerds out there, this is peppered with Easter Eggs like binary code filled with delightfully heartwarming messages.)