robots Archives - The Y Logs

Yzabel / April 15, 2020

Review: Monstrous Devices

Monstrous Devices by Damien Love
My rating: ★★☆☆☆

Blurb:

When twelve-year-old Alex receives an old tin robot in the post, the note from his grandfather simply reads: ‘This one is special’. But as strange events start occurring around him, it doesn’t take Alex long to suspect that the small toy is more than special; it might also be deadly.

Just as things are getting out of hand, Alex’s grandfather arrives, whisking him away from his otherwise humdrum life and into a world of strange, macabre magic. From Paris to Prague, they flee across snowy Europe in a quest to unravel the riddle of the little robot, and outwit relentless assassins of the human and mechanical kind. How does Alex’s grandfather know them? And can Alex safely harness the robot’s power, or will it fall into the wrong, wicked hands?

Review:

[I received a copy through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.]

One of my favourite themes being in here, I still enjoyed the story for that aspect, but I admit that otherwise, I didn’t enjoy this book as much as I expected to.

While it definitely deals with cool concepts (the aloof, badass grandpa; the robots; the mysterious men wanting Alex’s just as mysterious robot; their magic, both awesome and gruesome), plot-wise the story was also completely over the place. In a way, it reminded me precisely of the way I envisioned stories myself when I was a young reader: “Something mysterious! A bully! School woes! Something else happens! Grandpa arrives! Mum is not happy with him! Something else happens! Let’s run away!” And so on. So perhaps this would appeal to a 10-year old audience? I’m not entirely sure either. (To be clear, it’s not the fast pace itself I found problematic—such a pace can be very powerful indeed؅—but the disjointed way in which it was handled.)

“Monstrous Devices” also contains a very specific pet peeve of mine, a.k.a “I’m not telling you anything because for some reason, I think it will protect you, yet I completely fail to see that it actually endangers you more.” I don’t know why this trope is so prevalent. Just talk to your kids, people, they’re not stupid, and if you think it’s OK to take them traipsing all over Europe while pursued by murderous robots, then why not equip them to deal with it better, hm? (And as a result, the reader is none the wiser either. Having a few things left open at the end, for the next volume or two, is cool; having too many is not.)

Conclusion: 2.5/5. Cool themes, and this will probably work for part of the intended audience at least, but not so much for me.

Yzabel / March 27, 2020

Review: The Mother Code

The Mother Code by Carole Stivers
My rating: ★★★☆☆

Blurb:

It’s 2049, and the survival of the human race is at risk. Earth’s inhabitants must turn to their last plan to place genetically engineered children inside the cocoons of large-scale robots-to be incubated, birthed, and raised by machines. But there is yet one hope of preserving the human order-an intelligence programmed into these machines that renders each unique in its own right-the Mother Code.

Kai is born in America’s desert southwest, his only companion is his robot Mother, Rho-Z. Equipped with the knowledge and motivations of a human mother, Rho-Z raises Kai and teaches him how to survive. But as children like Kai come of age, their Mothers transform too-in ways that were never predicted. When government survivors decide that the Mothers must be destroyed, Kai must make a choice. Will he break the bond he shares with Rho-Z? Or will he fight to save the only parent he has ever known?

In a future that could be our own, The Mother Code explores what truly makes us human-and the tenuous nature of the boundaries between us and the machines we create.

Review:

[I received a copy through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.]

A bit of a sore spot for personal reasons as well as in the current situation (long story short, and not spoiler since it’s revealed in the first chapters: man-made bio-weapon targeting lung cells to make them immortal and proliferating, aka welcome lung cancer). But that’s just me, of course, and the story itself was a good read all along, even though I didn’t absolutely love it.

The premise of this novel hinges on the “illness” I mentioned, on the need to conceive human babies with modified genes who’ll be able to survive in this not-so-brave new world, and on that other need: the babies will need mothers, and those won’t be human women, since they’ll be pretty much, well, all dead soon. Quite a ghastly future, this. The story thus follows two timelines: one where Kai, one of these new children, travels with his mother Rho-Z; and one, a few years before that, where scientists desperately fight against time to engineer suitable embryos and robotic mothers.

I must say, I liked that second timeline: as frightening as it was, I enjoyed the technological and genetic basis on which it was built. Another aspect of the book I liked was that, all in all, it still deals with hope, with thoughts about what being human is and about parent/child relationships, and with a deep-seated desire to help the children survive. The world they’re in is not hostile the way it is in traditional post-apocalyptic stories—no bands of looting survivors is threatening them; but it is empty, desperately empty, and that means scavenging for dwindling resources while also being restricted in some ways by the “Mother Code” . For 10-year-old kids, that’s not so grand.

Where I didn’t love the novel was in terms of characters. They’re good in general—they have motivations and background stories of their own—yet for some reason, I didn’t feel a connection with them, or not enough to make me really love them. The children didn’t feel like they were “children” enough, and the world of the adults was a little too… distant?

Conclusion: Interesting story and an overall interesting read, even though I didn’t connect much with the characters.

Yzabel / February 29, 2020

Review: The Companions

The Companions by Katie M. Flynn
My rating: ★★☆☆☆

Blurb:

In the wake of a highly contagious virus, California is under quarantine. Sequestered in high rise towers, the living can’t go out, but the dead can come in—and they come in all forms, from sad rolling cans to manufactured bodies that can pass for human. Wealthy participants in the “companionship” program choose to upload their consciousness before dying, so they can stay in the custody of their families. The less fortunate are rented out to strangers upon their death, but all companions become the intellectual property of Metis Corporation, creating a new class of people—a command-driven product-class without legal rights or true free will.

Sixteen-year-old Lilac is one of the less fortunate, leased to a family of strangers. But when she realizes she’s able to defy commands, she throws off the shackles of servitude and runs away, searching for the woman who killed her. Lilac’s act of rebellion sets off a chain of events that sweeps from San Francisco to Siberia to the very tip of South America in this “compelling, gripping, whip-smart piece of speculative fiction” (Jennie Melamed, author of Gather the Daughters) that you won’t want to end.

Review:

[I received a copy through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.]

A fascinating theme, that ties with certain questions I see raised when it comes to consciousness, AI, and “the cloud”: what if, someday, we found a way to upload human consciousness at or shortly before the moment of death, so that our minds could keep existing on a server, or, in the case here, in artificial bodies? With an added theme in “The Companions”: all these “reborn” humans are actually no more than slaves, being the property of the Metis corporation, leased to people wealthy enough to afford them, and hindered by safeguards so that they remain the, well, obedient little slaves they’re meant to be.

Interesting, right? There are so many things wrong here, starting with the property part, and going on with what happens when the artificial body is damaged, or how memories fare after years spent like that. This is one of the conundrums of Lilac’s existence: now the companion to a teenager named Dahlia, she was murdered as a teenager herself, and keeps her memories alive at first by telling Dahlia her “story”. Up until the day she gets information that the person who killed her is still alive, and realises that, for some reason, her “failsafes” aren’t exactly working.

But.

The narrative itself turned out to be increasingly… random. At first, having Lilac’s perspective to rely on was fairly intriguing, and the additional, other characters’ points of view seemed seamless at first (after Lilac, we get Cam, who works at the place where Lilac goes to find her killer, so that does make sense). However, it quickly became quite muddled, with the characters themselves not leaving much of an impression. In a way, this read at times like a collection of short stories that were trying to form into a novel, and in the end, that made for neither strong short stories nor a strong novel. The overall story, all in all, kept meandering, and never gave the sense of an actual plot/red thread tying everything together.

Conclusion: Good theme, but not particularly well-handled.

Yzabel / August 22, 2019

Review: The Kingdom

The Kingdom by Jess Rothenberg
My rating: 3/5

Blurb:

Welcome to the Kingdom… where ‘Happily Ever After’ isn’t just a promise, but a rule.

Glimmering like a jewel behind its gateway, The Kingdom is an immersive fantasy theme park where guests soar on virtual dragons, castles loom like giants, and bioengineered species–formerly extinct–roam free.

Ana is one of seven Fantasists, beautiful “princesses” engineered to make dreams come true. When she meets park employee Owen, Ana begins to experience emotions beyond her programming including, for the first time… love.

But the fairytale becomes a nightmare when Ana is accused of murdering Owen, igniting the trial of the century. Through courtroom testimony, interviews, and Ana’s memories of Owen, emerges a tale of love, lies, and cruelty–and what it truly means to be human.

Review:

[I received a copy through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.]

Not as good as I had hoped it would be from the blurb, but still an entertaining and interesting read.

(I’ve seen it compared to/inspired by “Westworld”, but not having seen it, I honestly can’t tell, so that won’t play a part in my review.)

I definitely liked the premise: “the Kingdom”, an amusement park of the Disney World variety, with seven princesses, a.k.a the Fantasists (Ana and her sisters), and various themed areas, such as Mermaid Land, where customers can spend the day, have fun and live mini-adventures, far away from their bleak everyday life (the world outside seems in a constant financial, housing and environmental crisis). Moreover, the visitors can interact with the perfect-Disney-like princesses—always smiling, kind, helpful and aiming to please—and see “hybrids”, animals that used to be extinct, but have been re-created through a combination of genengeering and cybernetics (yes, including dinosaurs).

Of course, this immediately raised controversial questions as to the nature and role of the hybrids, whether the princesses or the animals, and the way they were seen and treated by people in general, and by their creators more specifically. The veneer of a dream-like life for the princesses is very early shattered when Ana describes how they are tied in their beds for the night, how firewalls prevent them from accessing the whole of Internet and communicate with the outside world, and how sometimes, some of them seem to lose their memories of the previous day or evening.

The story is seen through Ana’s eyes, as well as through snippets of interviews and articles, most of which are related to a trial following Owen’s death at Ana’s hands. I usually tend to like this kind of format, for several reasons (varied points of views that are easy to separate from each other, short “chapters” that are really convenient when I can’t read for long stints…), but some of those weren’t too relevant, or at least, only became relevant long after, which gave me enough time to dismiss them. These different narratives offer more and more information as to the “dark fairy tale” that unfolds throughout the novel, with Ana and her sisters developing more and more of a personality and feelings of their own, in spite of their creators claiming they cannot do more than what their programming allows them to. While we don’t get to see through her sisters’ eyes, Ana’s recounting of the story lets us see what a slippery slope it is, when AIs in human-looking bodies are meant to act like human beings, but at the same time constricted into prisoners’ roles that deny them any claim at even a scrap of humanity.

Why I didn’t give more than 3-3.5 stars to this book was, first, how the romance itself unfurled. I get what happened, I get what the characters did, but I never really got a strong feeling for their relationship, nor did I feel strong chemistry between them that would justify, well, an actual romance. I also found Ana’s narrative style somewhat dry and bland, which in a way fits well with her nature as an artificial intelligence, but didn’t do much in terms of gripping writing. And the last third of the book lacked coherence at times, as if everything collided together at the same time without tight reasons in the background—so in the end, it felt rushed, and poised on the edge of unfinished (“was that a standalone or will there be a sequel?”).

Conclusion: Not as gripping as I had hoped, although it does lend itself to interesting discussions about AI, artificially created beings that are nevertheless sentient, and how they should be treated.

Yzabel / June 8, 2018

Review: LIFEL1K3

LIFEL1K3 by Jay Kristoff

My rating: [rating=3]

Blurb:

On an island junkyard beneath a sky that glows with radiation, a deadly secret lies buried in the scrap. Seventeen-year-old Eve isn’t looking for trouble–she’s too busy looking over her shoulder. The robot gladiator she spent months building has been reduced to a smoking wreck, she’s on the local gangster’s wanted list, and the only thing keeping her grandpa alive is the money she just lost to the bookies. Worst of all, she’s discovered she can somehow destroy machines with the power of her mind, and a bunch of puritanical fanatics are building a coffin her size because of it. If she’s ever had a worse day, Eve can’t remember it. The problem is, Eve has had a worse day–one that lingers in her nightmares and the cybernetic implant where her memories used to be. Her discovery of a handsome android named Ezekiel–called a “Lifelike” because they resemble humans–will bring her world crashing down and make her question whether her entire life is a lie. With her best friend Lemon Fresh and her robotic sidekick Cricket in tow, Eve will trek across deserts of glass, battle unkillable bots, and infiltrate towering megacities to save the ones she loves…and learn the truth about the bloody secrets of her past.

Review:

[I received a copy of this book from NetGalley.]

Overall, I enjoyed this book, although ultimately it didn’t live up to quite a few of my expectations.

The worldbuilding isn’t tremendously developed here, but what is shown was enough for me to draw a satisfying idea of what it must be like. Post-apocalyptic future, in that, without surprise, humans have been destroying their planet to the point of tsunamis ravaging California (the story is clearly set in its remnants) and solar radiations giving anyone cancer if they walk out unprotected even for an hour or so. It’s a harsh world to live in, where people eke out a living by foraging scraps, prostitution, being in gangs, or competing in the WarDome game by piloting huge robots meant to punish AI robots who stopped obeying the Three Laws (yes, that’s Asimov’s Laws—they tend to work well in various sci-fi worlds, methinks).

Piloting one of those ‘machinas’ is exactly what Eve, the main character, does to earn money and pay for her grandfather’s medication, encouraged by her tiny robot Cricket and her best friend Lemon. Except that her latest fight doesn’t go well at all, and she finds herself manifesting a strange power that sends religious fanatics and bounty hunters on her trail… although not only. This is how she meets Ezekiel, the ‘lifelike’ (an android built in such a way that he looks completely human not only on the surface, since he has blood-like liquid in his veins, metal bones and not simply motors, etc.) This merry band runs away, trying to escape their pursuers as well as to find what happened to Eve’s grandfather, in a world that would look great on screen: radioactive deserts with storms full of glass debris, enemies on motorbikes with rocket launchers, a city made of a whole landlocked float, the ghost town of what used to be a powerful corporation, a living underwater ship… The author doesn’t disclose that many details about geopolitics or history in here, however what he shows us worked for me, and let me imagine this world where Eve and her friends have to live.

In terms of characters, mostly I didn’t care for them, except Lemon. She comes off as the most human and balanced (both strong and fragile), with a cocky attitude and a to-the-death loyalty that felt genuine.

Also, special mention for the novel crossing Anastasia with Pinocchio. I don’t think I had seen or read that yet, and I found the idea interesting, as well as working fairly well.

Where I wasn’t happy with the book:

1) The romance. As often in YA, it was too much of the insta-love kind, without chemistry, and since we get to see how it started only through flashbacks, there was very little in it to make me like it. Eve took a bullet to the head and her memories are sometimes frazzled, and Ezekiel is too many shades of ‘I love you and you’re the only one who gave meaning to my life so now I’m here and I’ll do anything for you’ (commendable, but not very interesting nor even plausible, considering we never got to -feel- how it developed).

2) Ezekiel. Here we had an excellent opportunity to show a character that is not human, yet was built to be like humans, only without the emotional maturity that we develop over ten, twenty, thirty years. Granted, this is mentioned a couple of times, when it comes to the other lifelikes and the way they learnt to love (quickly, brutally, in a way that could drive them mad if the relationship broke, since they didn’t have the emotional background to soften the blow)—but then, this came through -them-, instead of through Ezekiel’s experience.

I think part of the problem stems from the fact we don’t have chapters from Ezekiel’s POV. Eve, Lemon, even a few minor characters now and then: sure. But not Ezekiel. So, in the end, we really get that ‘doll-like’ character who, sure, is an excellent fighter, but whose motives to help Eve never raise past the state of plot device. I would have loved to really see his point view rather than been told about it, see his inner questioning, how he sees the world, how he accepts (or not) his condition of nearly-but-never-human being, especially since this would’ve worked with a certain plot twist also prompting another character to question what being human means.

(A note here regarding the sexual relationship between Ezekiel and Eve; we don’t see it, but it’s more than just vaguely implied. I know that for some people, this is a complete turn-off. I must say I did find it interesting, not so much abnormal and disgusting than intriguing and raising lots of questions about, well, being human, what it means, how it is defined, etc. Did the lifelikes have sexual relationships because they were programmed to, in a perfectionist desire to copy human biology? Was it something that developed ‘naturally’ in them because they looked so much like humans and lived among them? Did they read about it, and so were conditioned from the beginning to believe it was the next step, and from there, would it mean that they could’ve learnt other forms of physical love if given the chance? So many roads to explore, but that weren’t… -sigh-)

Conclusion: In terms of action and of a world easy to picture, this was a fun and entertaining read. However, I regret it didn’t go further than that.

Yzabel / April 30, 2018

Review: Wizards And Robots

WaR: Wizards and Robots by Will.i.am

My rating: [rating=3]

Blurb:

When a young man breaks into her home claiming her life is in danger, Ada Luring’s world changes forever. Geller is a wizard, on the run from his father’s hidden clan who want to kill Ada and her mother. Sara Luring is the scientist who will create the first robot, the wizards’ age-old foes.

But a robot has travelled back in time to find Ada, and will lay everything on the line to protect her, as she may just be the key to preventing the earth’s destruction in the future.

Ada, Geller and the robots must learn to work together to change the past and secure the future. But they don’t have much time before a mysterious enemy launches its attack on Earth…

Review:

[I received a copy of this book through NetGalley.]

That was a quick and fun read, even though I think it was too quick, and could’ve been developed into something a little longer without losing its focus or just filling pages: there was definietely a lot going on in this story, what’s with robots and wizards, of course, but also aliens and time travel!

I found the plot easy enough to follow, which isn’t always the case when time travel is concerned. I liked the two (three?) worlds depicted, too: Ada’s ‘present’ with its computers, drones and technological feats; the future world, full of despair but also of loyal robots holding the fort until the end; and, in a way, the world of the wizards, in a ‘powerful beings mired into their own past and refusing to acknowledge changes’ way.

The main characters, too, all had aspects that made them quite likeable in spite of their faults. Sara’s mum may not be available for her family, but she wants to further the cause of knowledge and build a good future for humanity. Ada has her sulky side, but on the other hand she’s loyal to her friends, whether humans or robots. Kaku is powerful, but uses his power and intelligence to learn and protect. Geller isn’t strong, but when offered a bigger power, he clearly uses it to help, and not for his own personal gain.

I’m not giving the book more than 2.5/3 stars, because even though I enjoyed it, it was too short to properly deal with everything, and the ending raised so many questions, and left so many doors open, for something that doesn’t look like a sequel’s in the plans (I had that feeling when I was some 50 pages from the end, and wondering how on Earth everything could be wrapped up). So, yes, the characters were enjoyable, but not very developed. There’s no clear explanation as to why the Spawn is here (well, there is one, but we never get to learn why exactly what they wre trying to destroy was so dangerous -for them-). There are too many unresolved threads when it comes to Ada’s present, such as the future role of the anti-robots people, or what she’s going to do after such an end to the story; and what awaits Geller is too vague, too.

Conclusion: Good for a quick and entertaining read, but don’t expect well-developed characters or a tight plot.

Yzabel / October 3, 2015

Review: Tin Stars (Descender #1)

Descender, Vol. 1: Tin Stars by Jeff Lemire

My rating: [rating=3]

Blurb:

Young Robot boy TIM-21 and his companions struggle to stay alive in a universe where all androids have been outlawed and bounty hunters lurk on every planet.

Review:

[I received a copy of this book through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.]

Some time in the far future, the worlds of the United Galactic Council are attacked by unknwon robots soon nicknamed “Harvesters”. Ten years later, after robots were outlawed and culled, a child-companion by the name of Tim-21 wakes up alone in a deserted mining colony, only to find out that the kid he was assigned to is gone. Tim doesn’t know yet that he may be the key to unlocking the secret behind the Harvesters, and potentially to fight them in case they ever return, which is why Captain Telsa and former robotics genius Quon try to find him before others do. Others who would like nothing more than to scrap him.

An enjoyable comics, even though it’s not the most original story I’ve read so far in term of such themes and how they’re being explored: the now fallen scientist, the sexy military officer following in her father’s steps, a cult bent on exterminating robots… Tim’s memories were quite interesting, as they touch upon his relationship with his foster family, and what it meant to him, but I can only hope they will be explored further in a next volume, since it’s definitely worth more. A couple of things didn’t make too much sense, too; for instance, why does Tim—a robot-companion created for *cgildren*—carry an embedded weapon? (Unless it’s related to how robots came to be, but even then, it doesn’t stand to logics to leave them with such weapons when everything else, like their height and AI programs, could be changed.)

I quite liked the artwork (watercolour illustrations); I found it really beautiful for close-ups, though a bit confusing when it came to larger-scope scenes. Some fonts were also hard to read, and didn’t fit too well with the overall mood set by the graphics.

This first volume ends on a cliffhanger that may have lots of potential in the next one, so here, too, I hope the story will find a good way to explore this new twist.

2.5/3 stars

Yzabel / July 4, 2015

Review: City

City by Clifford D. Simak

My rating: [rating=3]

Blurb:

Intelligent canines in a far-future city preserve the legends and lore of their absent human masters.

Thousands of years have passed since humankind abandoned the city—first for the countryside, then for the stars, and ultimately for oblivion—leaving their most loyal animal companions alone on Earth. Granted the power of speech centuries earlier by the revered Bruce Webster, the intelligent, pacifist dogs are the last keepers of human history, raising their pups with bedtime stories, passed down through generations, of the lost “websters” who gave them so much but will never return. With the aid of Jenkins, an ageless service robot, the dogs live in a world of harmony and peace. But they now face serious threats from their own and other dimensions, perhaps the most dangerous of all being the reawakened remnants of a warlike race called “Man.”

In the Golden Age of Asimov and Heinlein, Clifford D. Simak’s writing blazed as brightly as anyone’s in the science fiction firmament. Winner of the International Fantasy Award, City is a magnificent literary metropolis filled with an astonishing array of interlinked stories and structures—at once dystopian, transcendent, compassionate, and visionary.

Review:

[I received a copy through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.]

A hard one to rate, for sure. 3.5 stars?

On the one hand, it’s one of the classics of “old science fiction” I’ve always wanted to read—I only recently linked its English title to the French one. And, like many stories written several decades ago, it retains a quaint charm. Science that was prominent in minds at the time (atomic power…). Themes of a better world, of Man evolving into better beings, renouncing the old ways of killing, even of living in cities. Openings towards strange, new dimensions, even though reaching for those would involve a complete change of perception. But also sadness: the end of a world, of several worlds, humanity devolving into solitary creatures, then nothing, leaving Earth into the “hands” or dogs and robots. A sort of paradise, untainted by the concepts haunting human beings… yet here, too, a solitary one, for while the dogs developed their own society, they, too, were haunted by the idea of Man, kept alive by Jenkins, the faithful robot who served the Webster family.

On the other hand, I have to admit that a lot of those were painfully outdated for a 21st-century person. I’d probably have appreciated these stories more if I had read them when I was much younger—in other words, especially when it came to all those “atomic” thingies, back when I still had recollections (although heavily filtered through my child’s eyes) of Chernobyl, and a vague fear of the Cold War. I would’ve missed other themes, for sure, but maybe some of the “scientific” ones wouldn’t have struck me as so wobbly. Granted, this was unavoidable; a lot of SF classics would suffer the same fate. It did bother me to an extent, and that was really too bad.

The biological side of science here didn’t make much sense either: mutants; people turning themselves into creatures adapted to life on Jupiter; ants developing a kind of clockwork/steam power; dogs being given words and voice while still forced to rely on robots for want of hands (why would surgery on vocal chords translate into heavy genetic changes in just a few generations?). And generally speaking, the Earth described in “City” was just too big, too empty, to justify the maintainenance of robots as a whole (no factories were mentioned, for instance), with the passage of thousands of years emphasising the “how did they manage to last for so long?” question.

And yet, I cannot deny these stories, as well as the way they are linked, a certain power. Not in the writing itself, not in the obsolete or weird science, but in how they conveyed strong feelings. The despair of one man, whose fears doomed humanity to lose an important philosophical theory that could’ve changed the world forever. The end of a city, abandoned by people who preferred to live in the country, an echo of the suburbian dream. Men left behind and choosing to dive into endless sleep in the last surviving city, forever enclosed within countermeasures long forgotten, for there was no point to staying awake anymore and kill their boredom with hobbies become meaningless. Robots performing tasks even after their owners had died and gone. Dogs keeping a promise, passed down from a long-dead ancestor, a promise the meaning of which had been somewhat lost. Man, both the god-creator and a legend in which dogs only half believed.

It *is* definitely strange, for the human characters were not particularly striking. I guess the book managed to tell what it had to tell through other means, among which the dogs and Jenkins?

So I could not wrap my mind around the nonsensical science… but the feelings were here, and kept coming back at me, along with reflections on what it means to be human, on what humans could d/evolve into. And although this wasn’t my favourite read of the year, it will stay with me for some time no matter what, and I would still recommend it.