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.