Due to a sudden, unexpected passing in the family a few years ago and another more recently and my subsequent (mental) health issues stemming from that, I was unable to download this book in time to review it before it was archived as I did not visit this site for several years after the bereavements. This meant I didn't read or venture onto netgalley for years as not only did it remind me of that person as they shared my passion for reading, but I also struggled to maintain interest in anything due to overwhelming depression. I was therefore unable to download this title in time and so I couldn't give a review as it wasn't successfully acquired before it was archived. The second issue that has happened with some of my other books is that I had them downloaded to one particular device and said device is now defunct, so I have no access to those books anymore, sadly.

This means I can't leave an accurate reflection of my feelings towards the book as I am unable to read it now and so I am leaving a message of explanation instead. I am now back to reading and reviewing full time as once considerable time had passed I have found that books have been helping me significantly in terms of my mindset and mental health - this was after having no interest in anything for quite a number of years after the passings. Anything requested and approved will be read and a review written and posted to Amazon (where I am a Hall of Famer & Top Reviewer), Goodreads (where I have several thousand friends and the same amount who follow my reviews) and Waterstones (or Barnes & Noble if the publisher is American based). Thank you for the opportunity and apologies for the inconvenience

"The Mother Code" is a thrilling science fiction novel that explores the question of what it means to be human. Set in a future where a deadly virus has wiped out most of the world's population, the story follows the lives of five mothers who have been tasked with raising a new generation of genetically-engineered children.

The concept of the book is fascinating, and the author does an excellent job of building a believable world and exploring the complex ethical and moral dilemmas that arise from the technology. The relationships between the mothers and their children are heartwarming and touching, and it's impossible not to be invested in their journey.

However, there were some aspects of the book that fell a bit flat for me. The pacing was slow in some parts, and there were moments where the plot felt predictable. Additionally, I would have liked to see more development of the secondary characters, who felt somewhat one-dimensional.

Overall, "The Mother Code" is a thought-provoking and engaging read that will leave you questioning what it truly means to be human. While it's not without its flaws, I would definitely recommend this book to fans of science fiction and dystopian novels.

The blurb of this one really appealed - and I was keen to know how it would play out. I’m going to admit, there were several parts of this that I really struggled with. Particularly the first part (which had most of the science speak and went way over my head).

We’re given multiple timelines and viewpoints to follow with this story as the risk to our survival is discovered and the plans for ensuring we overcome this. There were parts of this that really did pull me along, but sadly it wasn’t enough to make me really enjoy it.

Thanks to NetGalley, the team at Hodder & Stoughton and the author for the opportunity to read this review copy.

A mix between Contagion, Covid-19 and I Am Mother.

The writing wasn't bad, though I didn't understand a lot of the terms. Thankfully I do enjoy dystopian movies so I wasn't fully lost.
The past and present confused me sometimes.
Minor racism, but it made me really uncomfortable as a POC.
The plot was interesting, I would definitely watch this as a movie, I probably won't re-read, but the book wasn't bad.
Just not really for me. I didn't care for any of the characters either.

The ending was kind of meh.

A fun read! Although how it relates to the state of the world now, is actually scary!

The book alternates between the past and the future. In the past, which is contemporary to us, a cancer-creating contagion was mistaken deployed during a war and eventually wiped out all of humanity. Before their demise, scientists quickly devised a way to continue the human race via children made pervious to the contagion and mobile robot “mothers” designed to raise these children.

Skip forward one hundred years to the bulk of the book, and those children are now adolescences ready to meet each other. Their newbie antics ensue and robot motherhood unfolds. I guess its meant to draw out parallels between real human mothers and these robot caretakers. I thought it was heavy-handed and not that astonishing. It could be just me. I was disappointed.

3.5 out of 5 stars

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for sending me this in exchange for an honest review.

Wow reading pandemic books during a pandemic is an experience haha!

The pitch of 'futuristic man made pandemic with robot mothers' had me straight away.

The idea of making not just non human life forms to raise humans but to give them motherly instincts was should a great touch and added another layer to the characters which I loved.

I recommend this greatly to sci-fi lovers!

For me I think a lot of the science talk was a bit too much and it was hard to understand a follow. I'm also not a massive fan of split timelines when we know the future but are waiting on the characters to know.

I will be keeping an eye out for Carole Stivers work in the future

It's a little unfair to read and review this book after the pandemic we just had, especially considering this book is about a flu-like virus that almost eradicates the entire human population, but even despite that, I still thoroughly enjoyed it.

I really liked the premise of robot mothers raising kids, and being all motherly and protective over them with their incredibly lethal lasers. And going into the book, I made the assumption that mosst of the book would take place after the eradication of humanity... this was not the case. Instead what we have are two stories being told simultaneously, one in the past as the virus begins to spread, and one in the present, as the children survive in the wastelands with their mother robots.

There's mixed feelings about this. On the hand, I really didn't need to read about how they tried to fight the virus that we know they won't win against. At the same time, learning about these characters gave more emotional meaning to some events later in the book. Maybe it could have been handled better? We know they won't beat the virus, and it was interesting to learn how the Mother Code projject came to be... but we didn't need half the book to learn this. More time could've been spent showing us how the children grew up, with all of the pastevents shown to us as the characters learn it themselves. As it was, the majority of the story with the children consisted of hiding in a cave from sandstorms, and then being confused at a warehouse.

There is a lot of potential here, and even though I enjoyed it and gave it 4 stars, it is really closer to 3.5 stars. The story is lovely, but I would have done it differently.

An interesting dystopian tale that was intriguing, but felt more like a novel my teenage stepdaughter would enjoy. I found it hard to connect with the characters who are children that had to be raised by robots. In 2049 the human race seems doomed, but there might be one hope - to create unique robot mothers for these children by giving each one a specific ‘mother code’. We follow Kai, now an adult, whose only companion is his robot mother Rho-Z. She has raised Kai and taught him how to survive, but what should happen once her work is done? The plan was to destroy these machines once their charges were of age, but these robot incubators have changed in ways their creations did not expect.

It’s difficult to read about a pandemic in a pandemic! I found the concept of the American military releasing a virus, expected to take out only specific undesirables very plausible, and obviously doomed in its intentions. It was suspenseful and felt like a real world, but I was confused as to whether I was rooting for the scientists who’d created a monster they couldn’t contain or whether I was reading a survivalist adventure where man and machine mums work together. I’m also not very tech savvy and there were sections where the language became very techy and it made me switch off a bit. I think I was the wrong audience for this and that the right audience will really enjoy it, and the new film Stephen. Spielberg is making,

I adored The Mother Code - but I'm not sure I was ready for it yet. I couldn't bring myself to read this back when it was released (August 2020), and I was perhaps being optimistic to think I could cope with pandemic / apocalypse themes now. The middle section in particular really hit close to home considering the current climate, and certain parts were difficult reading. I certainly don't begrudge those who DNF'd this book at this time - however!
Had I read The Mother Code at different time, I feel it had the potential to be a five star read. The writing style flowed wonderfully, and I found the sections with The Mothers and the children endlessly fascinating - the whole notion was a really interesting one, and I liked seeing these relationships from the children's point of view.
The one downfall is that the ending felt quite abrupt, perhaps because I'd been so utterly absorbed in this world. I would certainly be tempted by a follow-up showing the world that follows.

Given the current situation, certain parts of this book hit way too close to home. Although, conversely, I suppose that made this 'sci-fi' world all the more believable!

This was an interesting read; I felt the overall premise was clever, and the world building was good. However, what did lack for me personally was characterisation. I would rather have seen less time given to side plots and more time spent on building a stronger story around the central characters. I think this would have helped me connect to the book more, and ultimately become more invested in what the author was trying to do/say.

The book is a good read on rainy Sunday evening- it keeps you interested and curious about what is going to happen.

This book hit a little bit close to home, considering the current circumstances, and that made it even more of a thrilling read. I thought the main premise was really interesting, and although a common sci fi theme (can robots ever compare to/replace humans?) - this had a new, modern edge to it.

However, there were a few issues with the pacing in places, and I found that I simple didn't care for many of the adult characters. I can't tell if that was the aim of the author (the children and 'mothers' are the main focus), or if it was simply a lack of character development. Either way, I felt like some of those characters/side-plots could have been removed.

Overall though, I really enjoyed this book and would recommend it for those who like sci fi and/or dystopia.

My first thought was "this will make a fantastic movie!"

2050 -Biological warfare has turned into biological nightmare as the world is facing extinction from a virus that has mutated into a deadly disease from which no-one is safe.

After failing to stop the spread, its instead decided that humanity will start again. Cue the building of robots designed to carry and birth the next generation.

Overall a very enjoyable read.

The Mother Code is set in the near future wherein the American government releases a biological weapon in the form of a lethal virus into the Middle East, which of course mutates and begins killing everyone, everywhere. Number 1 - with the state of things these days, this is wholly believable. Number 2 - reading about a serious disease attacking lungs is pretty grim right now. Higher ups keep the disease a secret until the last possible moment (why warn people and attempt to save lives?) and instead spend their time leading up to the apocalypse trying to a) develop a cure and b) work on a CODE BLACK scenario. This scenario is: everyone is dead. Their solution is to create robots that carry fertilised human eggs, birth them, and raise them in the event that there are no humans left to do the job.

I thought the concept of this book was original and had a lot of promise, but the story itself was not as compelling as I'd hoped it would be. I really enjoyed any scenes in which the Mothers - the robots - communicated with their little charges, and I liked the descriptions of society breaking down and government officials fucking up monumentally while trying desperately to create a cure. However, the characters themselves were a little bland, with one in particular making a huge decision which I simply couldn't understand at all and felt quite out of character. Sections of the book also dragged for me, with a lot of seemingly repetitive science ideas and terminology as well as some repetitive scenes with the robot-parented children out in the desert. Overall, there were equally as many positives as negatives for me in this novel.

It's really hard to know what to say about this novel. I enjoyed it, but I felt like the characterisation was terrible - they all seemed like cardboard cutouts. The story behind the characters was good though, and I found the science bits quite interesting. It felt a bit like reading a Michael Crichton sci-thriller - enjoyable but not particularly deep.

After I started reading this one, I discovered that Stivers is a scientist – which is evident by all the techy details she became engrossed in, which as far as I was concerned, slightly held up the pace. This book isn’t presented as a hard sci fi read – and the fact that a lot of the science surfaced at several crucial points, where the pacing should have been increasing didn’t help my bonding with the main characters.
I think this book had the potential to be a truly great read – but Stivers hasn’t quite pulled it off and that is because the story can’t make up its mind what it’s trying to do. It could have been a quirky, hard sci fi adventure about how saving the species got messed up from the viewpoint of the key scientists as the survivors desperately try to outwit the lethal robots protecting them. Or it could have been a gritted survival adventure from the viewpoint of the children battling to stay alive in the desert, accompanied by their robotic mothers. But what Stivers tried to do was straddle both stories and the result is a bit of a hot mess, particularly by the end.

I found it a rather frustrating read, because just as I was starting to care about one of the characters, the viewpoint shifted yet again, which meant that I didn’t bond with anyone in the book, though I came close to caring about poor little Kai and James Said. It didn’t help that I’m not a fan of the apocalyptic scenario where there is a steady attrition of main characters, but in fairness to me – this one wasn’t marketed as that kind of book. It’s a shame, because Stivers isn’t a bad writer and if only she’d had an editor who had given her more clarity as to what she really wanted to do with this story, it could have been awesome. Apparently, Stephen Spielberg has bought the rights to the story, and I’ll be interested to see if he’ll tell the more interesting, quirkier story – or turn it into a Hollywood cliché.

Recommended for fans who enjoy their apocalyptic adventures with a dollop of hard sci fi. The ebook arc copy of The Mother Code was provided by the publisher through NetGalley in return for an honest opinion of the book.
7/10

A warms-up-as-it-goes-along story about humanity's paradoxical desire to destroy and to survive and the pure, sweet miracle of children. As with every good post-apocalyptic novel, military secrets, biological warfare and attempted military control causes, frankly, the end of the world. Robot mothers are designed to birth children genetically-engineered to survive in this new world.

Set in America, the narrative is split between "the past" in 2049, what caused this devastating new world, and "the present", with learning how to survive, in it. I read this in two sittings and although I found the first 25% technical in a scientific sense (detailed explanations of the biology behind the "biological warfare") the rest of the book was gripping and I was unable to put it down. Aside from the science, it's got an easy writing style and the plot is full to the brim.

This is a story that questions the decisions that adults make based on fear and what we can learn from children's love. There's family love. Lots of it. Between robot mothers and their human children. Between unrelated human children. Please be aware that there is a lot of death in this book and that includes young and stillborn children. Although not graphically depicted, some readers may find this distressing.

This book is perhaps not the best thing to read during an actual global pandemic. Nevertheless, particularly through the first third or so, I was hooked. Hooked with a kind of sick fascination. The fact that Carole Stivers is an actual biochemist who is not making up any of the science made for enthralling - if unsettling - reading.

However, the book suffers from a few common issues - the high concept ultimately starts to be to burdensome for the material and the latter portions of the novel collapse under its weight. Characters make obviously bad decisions and as a reader you can see how those decisions are lining up like bowling pins ready to be knocked down by a key plot point later. And most importantly, this is a book ultimately about what it means to be human, and the connections that drive us, but there are so many characters that populate this narrative that Stivers often has to shorthand their development (and notably, the relationships that form between them) and this means later down the line the moments that should be an emotional payoff ring a bit hollow. It was hard for me to care about the losses of the few human survivors when the entire planet had been exterminated and I'd hardly spent any time with those survivors anyway.

I still read this book in a weekend and found myself unable to put it down, so I highly recommend it if that is the kind of thrill you're after. But I also think there is potential in this concept for a story that has more time to dedicate to key characters, and more time to interrogate what is really at stake.

Thank you to netgalley and Hodder & Stoughton for the arc of this book.

Great book bit confusing at times as dont know much about bioweapons, but had me hooked and gripped well done!

3 stars due to the confusions at times
recommend

Wow -this is a real blockbuster . I have heard somewhere that this may be made into a film -and what a film it would make !
The decade is 2050 -and biological warfare has turned into biological nightmare as the world is facing extinction from a virus that has mutated into a deadly disease from which no-one is safe.(Ring a bell?)
After realising they cannot fight it -scientists make plans to ensure that life will be able to start again.
They build a super -bot designed to carry and give birth to our future generations -The Mothers .

Such a brilliant novel -I hope the film does it justice .

Thankyou Net Galley for an advance copy in return for an honest review