Member Review
Review by
Ian P, Reviewer
What do you get when you throw a whole bunch of pop culture and literature references into an irreverent buddy-movie story starring a vehemently non-self-aware robot and a plucky sidekick trying to find meaning in a dystopian wasteland?
You get a fun, fast paced adventure, with a bit of existential angst, and some robot librarians. You can also use it as a light-hearted vehicle to ponder the nature of self-awareness, and the duties and responsibilities we have around the use and nature of AI; it’s there if you want it, or you can just enjoy the ride.
Charles, the domestic service robot, is forced to find alternative employment after the untimely death of his Master. His quest takes him through the remains of a collapsing human civilisation, where the groups of surviving people and robots that he meets present an array of temptations and dangers that he must navigate in his search for meaningful employment.
The story is in five parts, and is almost episodic, in that each part roughly corresponds to our heroes getting into trouble, navigating the jeopardy (while moving the narrative forward), and then escaping to the next part of their quest. Each part also has a thematic or stylistic flavour, signposted by the loosely disguised part titles (the interpretation of which I’ll leave as an exercise for the reader), which was a nice touch, for those that I got.
Does it have flaws? Well… maybe. In the early parts of the book, I wasn’t convinced about the inflexibility of the AI to cope with novel situations. The robots are sophisticated enough to be able to cope with the ambiguity and assumptions involved in acting as a valet: organising their Master’s clothing, activities, and travel, for example. But those same robots are simultaneously incapable of dealing with the exact same levels of ambiguity in other contexts, or are debilitatingly literal - for example one robot had been waiting for *years* to greet some guests that it had been told would arrive, but had not been told how long to wait for them.
And there were a couple of pinch points in the plot when our heroes got themselves out of trouble in a way that made me say “Really?!” to myself.
But, for me at least, these are eminently forgivable. The inability of the robots to think outside the box is such an important thread that binds the plot together, that I was quite happy to put aside my mild incredulity (and, to be honest, if you can’t put this aside then you won’t enjoy the book). And the occasional opportunistic escape from trouble kept the plot moving, and contributed to the episodic nature of the story - which I found enjoyably reminiscent of old “Saturday morning cinema” sci-fi like Flash Gordon (but that might just be me).
The story is packed with popular culture references - and those that I spotted made me smile (”2001: A Space Odyssey”, “Star Wars” and “The Wizard of Oz” are all in there, for example). I’m sure there were many that I missed - in the same way that I didn’t get the references for all of the part titles - but that doesn’t matter. It annoys me when an author tries to show off with this kind of thing, but that wasn’t the case here - it was just a bit of extra fun.
I also really liked the tone. There is a witty irreverence that suits my preference, but in this case I also found it reminiscent of Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett in places, which I really enjoyed.
So, despite the flaws, a solid 5 starts. I can see myself revisiting this - for the humour, the story, the robot librarians, and the philosophical exploration of the nature of free will and self awareness.
Thank you #NetGalley and Pan MacMillan / Tor for the free review copy of #ServiceModel in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.
You get a fun, fast paced adventure, with a bit of existential angst, and some robot librarians. You can also use it as a light-hearted vehicle to ponder the nature of self-awareness, and the duties and responsibilities we have around the use and nature of AI; it’s there if you want it, or you can just enjoy the ride.
Charles, the domestic service robot, is forced to find alternative employment after the untimely death of his Master. His quest takes him through the remains of a collapsing human civilisation, where the groups of surviving people and robots that he meets present an array of temptations and dangers that he must navigate in his search for meaningful employment.
The story is in five parts, and is almost episodic, in that each part roughly corresponds to our heroes getting into trouble, navigating the jeopardy (while moving the narrative forward), and then escaping to the next part of their quest. Each part also has a thematic or stylistic flavour, signposted by the loosely disguised part titles (the interpretation of which I’ll leave as an exercise for the reader), which was a nice touch, for those that I got.
Does it have flaws? Well… maybe. In the early parts of the book, I wasn’t convinced about the inflexibility of the AI to cope with novel situations. The robots are sophisticated enough to be able to cope with the ambiguity and assumptions involved in acting as a valet: organising their Master’s clothing, activities, and travel, for example. But those same robots are simultaneously incapable of dealing with the exact same levels of ambiguity in other contexts, or are debilitatingly literal - for example one robot had been waiting for *years* to greet some guests that it had been told would arrive, but had not been told how long to wait for them.
And there were a couple of pinch points in the plot when our heroes got themselves out of trouble in a way that made me say “Really?!” to myself.
But, for me at least, these are eminently forgivable. The inability of the robots to think outside the box is such an important thread that binds the plot together, that I was quite happy to put aside my mild incredulity (and, to be honest, if you can’t put this aside then you won’t enjoy the book). And the occasional opportunistic escape from trouble kept the plot moving, and contributed to the episodic nature of the story - which I found enjoyably reminiscent of old “Saturday morning cinema” sci-fi like Flash Gordon (but that might just be me).
The story is packed with popular culture references - and those that I spotted made me smile (”2001: A Space Odyssey”, “Star Wars” and “The Wizard of Oz” are all in there, for example). I’m sure there were many that I missed - in the same way that I didn’t get the references for all of the part titles - but that doesn’t matter. It annoys me when an author tries to show off with this kind of thing, but that wasn’t the case here - it was just a bit of extra fun.
I also really liked the tone. There is a witty irreverence that suits my preference, but in this case I also found it reminiscent of Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett in places, which I really enjoyed.
So, despite the flaws, a solid 5 starts. I can see myself revisiting this - for the humour, the story, the robot librarians, and the philosophical exploration of the nature of free will and self awareness.
Thank you #NetGalley and Pan MacMillan / Tor for the free review copy of #ServiceModel in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.
*This page contains affiliate links, so we may earn a small commission when you make a purchase through links on our site at no additional cost to you.
