I’ve really struggled with this - Tchaikovsky has previously got me to relate to Spiders, octopi etc but apparently robots are my limit! I think something about the alienating factor of the dialogue / message sending between devices contributed to my initial lack of buy-in; as events developed I couldn’t quite engage. It’s an interesting exercise and not without humour but wasn’t ultimately for me.
Sorry Adrian! Look forward to your next books regardless

Since recently discovering Adrian Tchaikovsky I have read several of his novels. I love his inventiveness and the way he incorporates complex ideas into accessible storylines. Service Model begins promisingly, showing a world where robots take on the roles of servants in an Agatha Christie-style country house. When the robot valet, known as Charles, 'murders' his master, an amusing set piece takes place between him and the robot detectives and doctor, indicating that something may be amiss in the wider human world. Charles, because of his programming, cannot assert his own interests but proceeds to take himself to Diagnostics (with a hint that his next stop will be Decommissioning).

So far, so promising. But what follows is a series of further scenes that basically play out the same exchanges over and over again. It's clear pretty early on to the reader what is happening, but not to the robot previously known as Charles. The repetition makes it feel almost like a children's story intended to teach them how to code, with a few jokes thrown in to keep the adults entertained (not enough for this adult). Other reviewers have spotted lots of literary references which might have passed the time, but I must admit I missed them.

So, a frustrating read for me, but I'll still keep reading Tchaikovsky.

This was pretty fun, I always love Tchaikovsky's writing he has such a unique style and it worked so well for this story. I love how all of his novels are super unique and always fun and humorous. This one however I found a bit slow in terms of plot, it started out super intriguing but then lost me around the middle when the story got repetitive. The beginning was definitely a lot easier to read than the second half. But I still enjoyed the story and the robots.

This was really good for the most part, but I found it quite hard going at times. I think it was probably because it was written from the robot’s perspective, so of course the flow was different.
It was a fascinating look at the human condition and had a deep, philosophical sense of questioning. What exactly makes us, us? We are definitely fallible and all too destined to fail, it would seem.
There were some wonderful moments, and I did laugh quite a lot. But I don’t think it was a comedy, although the first couple of chapters were genuinely brilliant, it just felt a bit flat as it developed.

I’m seeing some really positive reviews about the audio book, so I might revisit and revise.

This book was so much fun! It had the perfect balance of wit and those big, brainy, existential questions that make us love sci-fi. A fantastic look at what could/will happen if we let AI into our lives mixed in with a searing critique of society as a whole.

Honestly it's a hard book to sum up (can you tell) but it is just wonderful and was an absolute treat to read!!

It was definitely an interesting read. Also quite unusual for me. The characters were intriguing and their discussions were compelling. It had some drops of humor, especially at the beginning. Besides, the writing was very enjoyable and it made the reading experience easier.

Thank you to Netgalley for an ARC in exchange for a honest review.

Robot stories are one of the pillars of science fiction, and, with the recent developments in ChatGTP and AI-generated images flooding the internet, it is only fair that the theme of artificial intelligence occupies the writers’ minds so much.
Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Service Model is a humorous and at the same time quite a sad story of a robot stubbornly trying to fulfil his purpose in the world that has gone to shambles. It is a very human story too, even though it is written from the point of view of a robot. A chunk of the conversations is done via communication channels with all the correct designations, addresses and robotic thinking, but the protagonist Charles is a human-facing robot, which requires from him to be able to understand the intricacies of human expressions and even makes him use them occasionally. The dilemmas he ponders on are not unfamiliar to a real living human being of flesh and blood from the 21st century. And, of course, there is a big mystery of the Protagonist Virus and the idea of a robot changing.
Charles is the latest and most advanced model of a valet robot who serves in a manor. His master is not the most interesting of personalities – he barely socialises these days and does not want to leave the house; he’s got no lady of the house – just a bunch of household robots to do the chores. Still, even under these circumstances, there is enough to fill in Charles’ task list. There are clothes to be laid out daily (even if they are not worn) and travel arrangements to be checked (just in case); there is the House major-domo system to cooperate with and the rest of the staff to supervise. Though Charles (as we are often reminded) cannot feel satisfaction, happiness or frustration – who would program a valet for that?! – this loop of adding and ticking off tasks saves his processors from overloading, and that is quite a satisfactory existence.
But things change when one morning Charles finds out that his master is dead, his throat cut by Charles’ own hand. With the police robot freezing at the crime scene, Charles has no other way but to report himself to diagnostics. Murdering one’s master is a big smudge on your reputation, but perhaps he could still find employment elsewhere. After all, he is a high-class model – they might be allowed more than one murder before they are put out of service. Thus, Charles’ journey into the world begins.
But things do not look optimistic outside the manor. There seems to be no life in other mansions, and Charles meets other household robots as lost as himself, trying to fulfil their duties but encountering constant errors in logic. In the Diagnostic Centre, the queue of defective robots is huge. On top of that, all the work has stopped for the lack of directive from Grade Seven or higher human to resolve a problem. It is there that Charles meets a rather faulty robot The Wonk, who can only communicate over the voice channel, cannot control her intonations and needs sustenance to charge. The Wonk is very interested in why the world was ruined and the humanity disappeared. She is searching for a mysterious Library that must have the answers. The Wonk entices Charles to join her, for where if not in the ultimate storage of knowledge will he find out if there are any humans left for him to serve under.
In the end, the revelation is and is not what you expect it to be – there is and there is not an individual to blame for the collapse of civilization. The quest is done and might only begin for the new, changed Uncharles.
I really loved the intellectual humour of Adrian Tchaikovsky. Even though Charles who turns into Uncharles is a machine to its core, you cannot but empathise with him. He is like us when we find it difficult to let go of our own beliefs and habits, when we are scared to lose ourselves because we have no more purpose. It might seem that Charles has his functions preprogrammed, but all throughout the story he is ‘searching’ for his own reason to be. After all, the creation takes after its creator and is thus fallible to the same errors.
The novel gives you a wonderful perspective on the humanity of today – people who have to work like robots, the bureaucracy that stretches to the robotic world, senseless tasks and missions humans invent for themselves, the lack of “efficiency, rationality, and cleanliness”. It brings to mind many of the other stories about robots and about humans, about exploitation and self-discovery, about change. Despite the world scale of this apocalypse, there is something cosy about the story, with Charles trying to bring his house-related personal services everywhere he goes.
Service Model feels all-encompassing and truly endearing; it makes you laugh and want to cry in some places. And it is filled with hope, the one that transpires in the least hopeful times. It’s an absolute pleasure to dive in.

Service Model is at times slow, and almost meandering, but nonetheless engaging. It has a fable-esque feel - with lots of literary allusions peppered throughout, most notably (in my opinion) Kafka and Gulliver's Travels. I feel like there could have been a bit more depth to the tale, as despite these references, the balance remains firmly on the side of this being a fun read. Ideas are commented upon but not explored fully - there was a lot more room for world-building here. The characters are intriguing, and occasionally loveable - I enjoyed the various robots' conversational style, but imagine that personal tastes will vary on this. I'm not sure if the comparisons to Murderbot are apt - UnCharles is a lot more earnest and naïve than that titular character - but this is another great addition to the canon of books about robots either way.
3.5 stars, rounded up to 4.

Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky is an absurdist ai apocalypse, the story of a robot valet desperate to fulfill his purpose of serving a suitable humanity.

It’s no secret on this blog that I both read and review a lot of books by Adrian Tchaikovsky. He’s potentially my favourite living author, and part of that is because of the wide range of styles and settings he writes in. Service Model is yet another example of Tchaicovsky doing something he’s never done before, and doing it well.

In Service Model we follow the misadventures of Charles (or Uncharles as he comes to be known) a robot programmed to be, if not the perfect valet, then perfectly suited to being a valet. In this world (and the real one) artificial intelligence is only as intelligent as the instructions it has been given, and the conflicting and confusing instructions given to Uncharles by his master causes some small amount of tension as his programming to be efficient clashes against the wealth of inefficiencies in his instructions.

Disaster strikes and Uncharles soon learns that those inefficiencies are endemic to the entire world, with the majority of humans dead and the robots they left behind struggling to deal with the consequences with any sort of rationality. What follows is a quest of sorts, as Uncharles searches for a new master with whom he can fulfill his purpose as a useful valet, each time running into issues, while being aided by a mysterious figure called The Wonk.

What becomes interesting is the question of Uncharles’s sentience. The Wonk is convinced that Uncharles has become sentient beyond his programming, while Uncharles insists that is not the case. Indeed Uncharles doggedly pursues his purpose as a valet, sure that this is because it is what he is programmed to do. And yet, many of the issues he faces are of his own making. Time and time again he is given the option of mindlessly accepting his fate, whether that is to wait in a line for a diagnostic scan that will never occur, or to serve an unworthy or absent master or one of many other fates he might endure like most of the other robots he crosses do. And he does not, citing vague instructions in his programming. But the question of his sentience does remain a question.

The narrative flow of moving from A to B to C can be a little exhausting, especially when it’s clear when the next thing Uncharles has hung his hopes on is going to end, if not badly, with disappointment. But I think that’s more a personal preference than a flaw. It can also be tiring to follow a protagonist so stubbornly ignorant, being a robot desperate to do the job he was programmed to do. The humour helps here – the absurdism is intentionally funny, such as the police detective robot who has to speak aloud and in a stereotypical way, for the benefit of the humans of which there are none present.

Ultimately I had fun reading Service Model, and the way it poked fun at the idea of offloading too many import tasks to unworthy ai, while also asking some interesting questions about sentience and purpose. I’d be curious if Tchaicovsky ever writes another novel set in this world.

Rating: 8/10

A tongue-in-cheek, existentialist picaresque through a slo-mo Apocalypse, complete with clunky Futurama-style ’bots and strangely affecting meditations on self-awareness and entropy that should be taken seriously but not literally. Basically Kafka, Brazil, Beckett, and even Dante somehow got mixed into early Asimov and it’s…everything.

Of course, that ... unusual ... flavor combination takes a little getting used to and Service Model doesn’t show its hand very quickly, which makes for a stilted first section that will put many off. But if you can get past some heavy-handed murder mystery pastiche, there’s a lot of fun to be had as our narrator clunks and whirrs around a world gone increasingly, idiotically mad. Service Model’s willingness to make the end of the world silly and dumb is secretly one of its best choices — it makes room for Dad jokes and cute logic games, but more importantly, it puts weight behind the story’s growing darkness, as everyday inefficiencies give way to actual devastation. Tchaikovsky’s pulled a similar trick before in And Put Away Childish Things, a novella that used a PG-13 fake Narnia to probe mortality and the return to innocence, but Service Model’s greater length and loose, allegorical vibe sets up his emotional sucker punch even more effectively. I’m honestly a little alarmed thinking about how many different ways Tchaikovsky has found to hurt me at this point, but his authorial cruelty is always coupled with a humanity that this robot dystopia displays only too well.

I am long time fan of Adrian, he has written books where the “heroes” are dogs, spiders, dolphins, it was about time we had some more robots from him, I saw review say it’s not Asimov, and I am glad of that, authors don’t need to rewrite and rehash the same stories, it’s a very good book, I will be buying it on Audible when it is released as well

In an age where we are coming to terms with all kinds of implications as the march of AI technology continues relentlessly on, this is the timely and rather charming story of Charles.

I've always had a weakness for robots in fiction, ever since I came across Asimov's short stories, and while this book may not quite reach those lofty heights, it comes closer than most such stories I have read since.

Worth checking out if you like robots, quirky humour and sci-fi stories with memorable characters. It gets 3.5 stars.