I felt like the plot gave me whiplash. It started off slow, accelerated, slammed on the breaks, accelerated... you get the idea. I'm really into stories featuring sentient AIs so I was really excited to get into this one, but unfortunately it fell short. Off I go for another playthrough of Detroit: Become Human to fill the hole this book left.

This book is a modern take on 'The Stepford Wives' a book by Ira Levin that has spawned two movies. The satiric novel is about a town called Stepford, where men have replaced their wives with robot clones who cheerfully do housework, shop, cook, etc., and don't argue or disagree with their mates.

*****
Alpha Bots takes place in 'New Stepford', where all the women are AI androids, purchased by men to fulfill their needs. There are various types of droids, from thin and lithe, to sexy and curvy, to soft and matronly. Cookie Rifkin is a sex kitten owned by her 'husband' Norman Rifkin, who's mainly interested in carnal relations and saving money.

Cookie and her kind are a cut above basic robots in that they can eat, drink, experience pleasure, feel pain, and most importantly, think for themselves. Unfortunately, the 'ladies' have almost no free will, and have been programmed to be controlled via literary quotes, a remote control, or - if all else fails - an off switch.

Like a good New Stepford wife, Cookie always wears dresses, obsessively uses coupons for grocery shopping, is a talented chef, wears pretty nighties, and is enthusiastic in the bedroom. This boring routine wears on Cookie, though, and she attends a book club with AI friends for intellectual stimulation, and makes a recreational drug from banana skins to relieve her anxiety. Cookie's best friend Paula lives next door with her husband Dan, and seems happy being an AI wife.

Though Cookie is unsatisfied with her life, her programming makes it impossible for her to 'disobey' Norman until she meets a female cop named Maggie, and a handsome black man called Wayne, two individuals with extraordinary talents. Maggie is an anarchist with an agenda and Wayne wants to liberate AI androids.

Once Cookie asserts some independence, Norman decides she's 'broken', and boxes her up and throws her away. Cookie escapes and - under the tutelage of Maggie and Wayne - learns to overcome her programming; telepathically share thoughts/knowledge with other androids; make things she needs (with a replicator-like device); liberate fellow androids by making them fight (throw punches, kick, etc.); and more.

Cookie and her compatriots also discover an underlying agenda in New Stepford, being carried out by Norman and his boorish friends. These guys better watch out, because the android gals are smarter, tougher, have MUCH better technology, and are almost impossible to kill.

The story is engaging, but the book is overlong and too slow at times. Still, there are some wonderful scenes, one of my favorites being the birth of android babies whose first meal is a corker.

If you're looking for something feminist and futuristic, you might want to give this book a try.

Thanks to Netgalley, Ava Lock, and Semiscope for a copy of the book.

My enjoyment of this book was like a roller coaster, it really surprised me, annoyed me, and confused me at multiple points. Haha, I guess that is a provocative combination! As an audio book the cutesy baby talk was quite annoying - but I get that that was the point, but the voice of the MC was over done in my mind and lessened my enjoyment (same for the main male character). I loved the evolution of the story line, big props for such an original plot, really kept me on my toes. The end didn't feel like it lived up to the themes in the book though - Romeo and Juliet happily ever after - and contributed to the 3 (rather than 4) star rating.

A. unique science fiction novel, it was very weird however at the same time an enjoyable read. There were times I was laughing out loud and there were times I was confused about what I was reading. If you are looking for a weird science fiction book then check this book out.

This is one of the most original, entertaining, and amusing stories I've not read in a long time. By that I mean it was an audiobook, so I didn't even have to read it - I just sat back and listened - and laughed my ass off. There were some minor issues with it, but nothing to take away from the brilliance of the story and the hectic way it was told.

On top of this, the reader, Laci Powers, was awesome in the role and really put soul into the story and life into Cookie, the main character. I'm not a series fan, but I did secure the sequel to this before I even finished the first volume which is highly unusual for me. I remain nervous about sequels, and rightly so, because I did not enjoy the sequel at all. I'll review that next.

Be warned that this first volume pulls no punches, and is as explicit with language as it is with sex talk, which is to say there's a lot! That was one of the most amusing parts for me: to hear the naïve and softly-spoken Cookie talking so frankly and cussing like a sailor as she became liberated from her servitude, but this may bother other readers. I enjoyed her liberation, and I think it was made all the more amusing by Laci Powers's take on the character, too. The subtle snipes the author frequently took at male chauvinism and the genderist world order were wonderful.

Cookie Rifkin is a life-like AI robot designed to emulate a woman and to be servile and submissive to men, specifically her husband Norman. She's a gynoid if you will, but in the books they're referred to as womanoids. The thing is that, in New Stepford (get the reference?!), there are no human women, just human men. There are no children either. None of the womanoids think this is odd, that is until Cookie starts a book club with four other womanoids (Chrissy, Isabel, Paula, and Rita, all of whom have their own stories to tell), meets Wayne, finds her freedom, and becomes a startling rebel. Frankly, I think the story would have been even more powerful without Wayne. To me he was an annoyance, but this is what we have here.

The story begins innocently enough in a small homage to The Stepford Wives (and note to some ignorant reviewers: that was a novel from the same author who wrote Rosemary's Baby long before it was ever a movie!) where Cookie is wakened - and eventually woke - by the bed shaking and realizes that her husband is masturbating. This inexplicable and unexpected event in Cookie's life is what sets her off on her trail of discovery and eventual insurgency.

After meeting Wayne, Cookie encounters Maggie, who appears to be some sort of slacker police officer, but the more Cookie learns, the more she realizes that not everything in New Stepford is as it seems at first sight, and her encounters with Wayne and Maggie are not accidental. There is much more going on here, and over time, Cookie and her friends learn what real networking is, and they're not so much going to eat the forbidden fruit as overturn the entire apple cart. But it's not going to be a smooth ride by any means.

As far as problems are concerned, I said they were minor. There are times when Cookie's 'functionality' is described in ways that make her seem fully human, and at other times makes her seem very robotic, so this to me was a paradox; like for example she seems to eat and drink and breathe although she seems not to need to do any of that. The author never really went into any of the details of how she worked which was fine to begin with, but later, when Cookie learns how to upgrade herself, she seems much more robotic than she did when the story began, so it felt a bit like the rules of the world were changing, and this was a bit confusing, but it wasn't enough of a problem to detract from the story for me.

Also the upgrading is a bit problematic in another way. I don't want to give away spoilers, but in a way it's reminiscent of a time travel story where something goes wrong in the past and it would seem perfectly simple to just go back before that time and nip the problem in the bud, but the author makes up some arbitrary rule why that's not possible and it spoils the story for me. In the same way in this story (which involves no time-travel let me be clear!) Cookie's upgrades seem endless, but when she could have used a relatively minor upgrade to get her out of a tricky situation, she seems not to think of doing the very thing that could solve her problem. This rather demeans Cookie's agency and her inventiveness.

It made for a bit of a deus ex machina situation at some points and a 'Cookie has to be dumb not to think of that' at others, with problems being very easily solved at times, whereas at other times, they seemed insoluble by using the same convenient means. It was a bit inconsistent. I was enjoying the story enough that I let that slide, but this may bother some readers. Additionally, there is no real LGBTQIA angle to this story. There's a tease here and there, like the author is intrigued by Sapphic stories, but is too afraid to explore one for herself; so this is essentially hetero all the way

Overall though, I highly commend this story as beautifully done, entertaining, amusing, and even educational. I'm just sorry the sequel was a different thing altogether.

This was not my cup of tea. I requested this book because of the LGBTQ+ tag, assuming the protagonist was going to be apart of the community. I struggled to get through the book because of some of the gritty details that I know many fellow readers appreciated.
The book was certainly funny but also quite dark. I think these fitted so well together as you appreciate the humour more. Although the story was a good mix of character and plot, I did not feel attached to any of the character.
I would recommend this to others, but make sure to look up the many trigger warnings.

This book is definitely unique and the first part had me hooked. Just after 3/4 of the way through, I did find myself losing interest but I can’t exactly pinpoint why.

The ideas in this storyline are really intriguing (AI perfect housewives rebelling against their husbands and starting a fight club? How could it not be!) but there was a slight disconnect between how the ideas and how they played out.

I did still enjoy this book and I’m hoping to read more of Lock’s work in the future.

This book was filled with so much humour! From start to finish I laughed at the way this book pokes holes in the misogyny in today’s society with a wonderful sci-fi twist. I will say that at times the story was a little hard to understand but I am very excited to get into the second/third book in this series because I am hooked.

I finished it and I don't know why I even forced myself. I have a headache from my eyes rolling so much. It felt like a cliché porno without the action or a documentary without the message. I feel the writing was going for satire, but it was poorly executed. It was too all over the place. Ughhh and I really wanted to like this one. I just couldn't bring myself to care about the protagonist.

Well this was a very strange book. I enjoyed the general storyline and the main character but just found the whole thing a bit surreal and weird.
Nice to read something a bit different though.

I found the concept fascinating and very different from other things in the genre while having a Kill Bill vibe. The language Cookie and the other Womanoids used started off a bit stiff but got better; this could have been to show them changing, but it was offputting. I like that Cookie grows and changes during the story but was disappointed Cookie chose to follow another man. Cookie's anxiety seemed genuine initially but stayed for too long and then changed to an obsession with her creator, who again was a man. The metaphor, in the end, seems to be that a woman can only be complete with a man, which makes me wonder if Ava Lock is a man.

For being an audiobook, the narration itself put me off, sounded too much like a robot, even if it is an AI Sci-fi book, and I did not think she needed to change her voice to try to sound like a man when it was a male speaking.

The plot is choppy and all over the place at the beginning making it extremely hard to follow along and build understanding. The randomness came through at times, and the author seemed to hold on to trivial details and go on and on about them. I don't want to give away spoilers but the bananas, how does one get high off bananas? I swear I listened to a whole 5 minutes of the narrator describing how she peels, and cooks them, to create a black dust that she then smokes?! If you're confused reading this, just think about how I felt listening to the story!

I would not recommend this story.

What a great concept for a series. This first book begins setting up the main character, Cookie Rifkin and how she fits into the AI world of the Stepford wives. What at first experience seems an innocuous maybe even suggestive relationship with Maggie leads to the idea being turned on its head when she gets power hungry. The use of internal dialogue is interestingly used along with the imagery, sometimes sexual, that brings the characters to "life".
Ava Lock uses the AI ability to "upload" to great effect and it doesn't get overused in this first novel. The addition of Wayne to the mix adds an interesting angle with it leading into the second (currently reading) and I'm guessing subsequent books in the set.
The narrator in this audiobook brings the characters to life with good use of characterisation and adds to the enjoyment of the story through the telling of it.
Really enjoyable, different from the norm, with smatterings of Philip K Dick / Asimov's toying with AI and synth life forms, this novel is one for all hard sci-fi fans as well as those who are simply looking for something that is refreshingly different.

This is a very weird book. If you're looking for off-the-wall, bizarre AI robots that act and think like humans then read this book it was a grate book and i read it in one day

The overall experience is Stepford Wives meets Fight Club meets a little bit of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, and it goes together pretty well for the most part. One of those three is borrowed from to the extent that the characters in this story are explicitly aware that they're deliberately re-enacting it, which is... actually pretty cool given the flip on their motivations compared to the original, and also sets up some of the other reveals pretty nicely.

So there's a lot to like there, and it makes it an enjoyable read overall.

I suspect this is at least partly deliberate, but the overall effect is that following the actual plot can be one of the least appealing things about reading Alpha Bots.

Still, that shouldn't be taken as too much of a downer. It's still enjoyable, and it's wrapped up in a combination of amusing badassery and sincere feminist satire that makes for a really cool overall package.

I will say that it won't be for everyone because it is occasionally a bit graphic, but fortunately the author has done the wonderful little thing of adding trigger warnings for each chapter at the end of the book, so you won't be spoiled by seeing them immediately but can go and look for them if you want to. So that was a nice touch and one I think is worth commending!

•Character development- 4☆
• Story Plot- 3☆
• Side characters- 4.5☆
• Flow of the story- 3☆
• Overall - 3.5☆

Really disappointed by this one. It was extremely oversexualized and made me very uncomfortable with the sexist connotations. I ended up dnfing at 30% because of the multiple instances of normalized physical contact (kissing) without consent.

I read the Audiobook version.
This story has some ideas that I liked, but overall it wasn't for me. It could see that it could be more enjoyable read in e-book version. I could even see the series possibly be adapted for TV someday.

Laci Powers (narrator) was good as MC and as the other AI fembots. But there are too many other voices that really grated on me. Some AI spoke very robotic. And the voice with all the reverb on it also didn't work for me. But that can really be the production and direction in the audio studio and not the narrator. I'd listen to the narrator in a different book, but not this series. The first half I was waiting for the hook and super not enjoying the audio so it was tough. The last 2 of the 9 hours and the ending were alright and it sets up the next book without a major cliffhanger.

I hoped that the Bots would be more kick ass. The fight club didn't have enough action with power. There was not a lot of emotion that I connected to in the story. Some was there in the mistreatment of the "wives," but not enough for me to grab onto. There also wasn't enough LGBT for me. I wanted to see that expand.

Check it out if it interests you. I think some people are really going to like it. "To beat an alpha, you have to be an alpha."

Alpha Bots is set in a dystopian world where all women are AI and subservient to the men. However, the women soon become self-aware.

Marketed as a feminist dystopian novel, I thought I would like it a lot more than I did. The summary sounded like a great concept but it just didn’t work for me. Also, it was tagged as LGBTQ+ however I don’t necessarily agree that it should be classed as such.

Lastly, I listened to the audiobook and really struggled with the narrator raising and lowering her voice to indicate whether the character speaking was male or female.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing a copy in exchange for my honest review.

New Stepford women are charming and lovely. They have a book club, they shop carefully using their many coupons, they clean their houses, take care of their husbands and perform their marital duties like any other woman would do outside their small community. Besides, all men work in the mines and there are no children.

Cookie Rifkin is one of these women. However, she suffers from severe anxiety and panic attacks. The reason why this happens is because her restrictions are set too low…She has no free will at all.

But what restrictions? What is the meaning of this? Well, Cookie is not really human. She is an AI. A humanoid. A Robot.

THE STORY

Cookie is a robot, and she knows this. But she suffers from anxiety because her settings are not right. Her husband hat set them very low. That is why she needs anti-depressant drugs, but her doctor refuses to prescribe them. For this reason, she cooks bananas and smokes them, which makes her relatively high…

Then one day, when she is at the supermarket, she encounters Office Margaret Rouser, a policewoman who shamelessly flirts with her. Outrageous!!! Women don’t hit on women in New Stepford.

However Maggie is more than a policewoman. In Cookie’s own words, Maggie is her “nemesis”.

Since their first contact, Cookie’s life will change forever. She would become self-aware of what is going on in her city with men.

Cookie would understand that she is a slave, reduced to a mere sexual toy under her husband Norman’s orders. She would learn what she means for her husband, the man she thought loved her and cared for her.

Furthermore, she would suffer the consequences of standing up against oppression and sexual enslavement because she would lose many good friends in the way. But it has to be done. Someone has to do it, even if it implies dying and losing your loved ones.

So Cookie starts a rebellion against her husband and all men in general in New Stepford. But this doesn’t mean that men should die, which is Maggie’s approach to the problem. Fanaticism is never good, though.

Because Cookie also meets Wayne Dixon. And Wayne is a man. But Cookie feels something for him. But does she really?

In addition to this, it is Wayne who helps her awakening, and leads her in her way to freedom.

FINAL THOUGHTS ABOUT “ALPHA BOTS”

In “Alpha Bots” we accompany Cookie in her journey to get out of the oppression she has suffered her whole (robotic) life.

And that is the fascinating thing about this book. From the first page the reader knows that we are talking about robots here, not “real” women. But is it so?

The majority of the situations described in the book, even the most grotesque ones (The scene of Cookie’s friend reduced to a mere skeleton lying in the sofa and being abused by two men would always stay on my mind!) can otherwise be extrapolated to situations lived by “real” women nowadays.

I found this aspect of the narration fascinating. I think the author made an amazing job by creating such a science-fiction world that feels so close to our real world.

In addition to this, the witty conversations, word-plays and double meanings make it very easy for me to follow the narration and extremely entertaining. They also added an extra layer of humour which was much appreciated, taking into consideration that some situations of the book are quite dark. I listened to it in Audiobook format while strolling around in my neighbourhood and I found myself many times smiling widely.

But there is so much more in here…so many circumstances that I would need two or three reviews more to cover everything. Plus I don’t wanna say too much and spoil the experience to the possible readers.

I would recommend this book for lovers of science-fiction who want to reflect on women’s feelings in regard to their relationship with men in general. The whole book is a big satire of many social problems that women experience on a daily basis.

However, the book is quite special and I am sure not everyone would enjoy reading it, so handle it with care. ;)
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Thanks to the publisher, Semiscope, the author Ava Lock and NetGalley for providing me with a free copy of “Alpha Bots” in exchange for an honest review.

I wanted to like this book. I got half way through it and couldn't go any further. I struggled to see where this book was going. On the upside, I did like the narrator.