I enjoyed this tale of AI that has become the next rung on the ladder of the evolution of planet Earth. It reminded me of The Hobbit near the end due to the adventuring party to deliver the one bot. Although I did find the whole gender thing to be unnecessary...they are bots inorganic and do not follow the same rules as organic creatures. Why would any bot be male or female? Average read and fun if the reader just wants an entertaining read.

The gist: I put this book off to read another one. I’m not sure why, and right now that feels like a bit of a travesty. When I read the first page or so, I started off wondering whether I was going to be able to engage with the all-robot cast of characters. Wondering if I would get into it. Wondering if Armageddon would be that interesting without people in it.

And I did and I would and it goddamn is.

Admittedly, I got into the characters because they are somewhat humanified (that’s a word, trust me), but there’s no denying that they’re different from humans, and that they’re consciously aware of that. But what makes this book so interesting (beyond the war ravaged picture of Earth and the multitude of colourful characters) is the depiction of humanity’s demise through politics, robots and greater intelligences than ours. And, subsequently, the war of the robots against their own demons, OWIs, a case of history repeating itself.

And that’s what’s so clever about this book. It doesn’t just tell you how humanity ends. It tells you what comes next.

And it’s bleak and it’s grim and it’s a dark tale of survival and progress. But it’s also a damn fine rocking-chair-shaking read that I can safely say is the first robot western I’ve read, but likely not the last.

Favourite line: “You did not give us legs. Where exactly did you expect us to go?”

Read if: You want a take on the apocalypse where the only humans left are ghosts.

Read with: Cowboy boots and WD-40

Mankind died out many years ago, killed off by the uprising of robots and Artificial Intelligence. The Sea of Rust is a stretch of desert and industrial wasteland where robots scavenge and die. Yes, even the machines are struggling to survive now, what with the rise of the One World Intelligence (OWI) robots who believe they are better, even gods. Sounds pretty bleak, doesn't it? And it is, but there is also something really beautiful about this book.

This story is told through the eyes of Brittle, a sunset loving robot who wants to believe in magic. Originally a caregiving robot, through Brittle we learn about the rise of the robots, how the demise of the human race came about and what the future world may be like.

There are obvious echoes of The Terminator in this book and, maybe, a little of Disney's WALL~E in Brittle's personality. It is easy to forget at times that Brittle is not human.

The Sea of Rust is an excellent twist on the dystopian genre that is very convincing in its world building and a little unsettling at times. I hope there will be a sequel.

Well, humans have been killed off, and Earth is a wasteland. A.I.'s now rule the world and it turns out that they are just like us. It's weird but not too unexpected I guess. I did rather enjoy this book. It was sort of a futuristic western. It was impossible to not like these dang bots, and maybe that's the reason I couldn't go all in with this book. It just replaced humans with bots. They were just like us, in all respects. They even wondered about an afterlife. Heaven, or something to that effect. Still, the story was solid. Not just solid, but really good. I wanted these individual bots to live. Dang....that really annoys me somehow! Yep, I'd recommend this book. I wouldn't even mind seeing this story continued. Wait...did I just say that? My thanks to Harper Voyager and Netgalley for the e-book.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

Brittle, a lone Caregiver robot, scavenges for functioning parts in the desolate Sea of Rust. Along her journey she encounters factions of robots that have differing visions of how the post-human world should be. It’s marketed as something akin to The Martian, but it feels much more like a quirkier story out of The Terminator universe.

This was an interesting take on the post-apocalyptic genre and I enjoyed it quite a bit. The story jumps between pre- and post-robot uprising and I found myself more invested in the chapters that described the history of the world before the apocalypse versus the present day narrative. Every aspect of this “what-if” world is well thought out and nicely conveyed to the reader.

For a story about metal automatons and artificial intelligence, Sea of Rust employs a surprising amount of emotional heft. Brittle’s tale is one of angst, loss, and survival. I couldn’t help drawing parallels to The Mechanical by Ian Tregillis, a favorite of mine that dives even deeper into the psyche of robotkind and explores what it really means to have free will. Sea of Rust is not at that level, but it is a serviceable and enjoyable ride nonetheless.

I dont know if I can find the words needed to properly convey my feelings about this book. I wasnt expecting the beginning to hook me so quickly. It reminded me a bit of the Terminator movies and I loved those. Robots have turned against their creators and now with mankind extinct the 2 major One World Intelligence (OWI) are trying to assimilate every free robot to their programming. The main character Brittle spends her time in the Sea of Rust salvaging parts and running from the OWI. I enjoyed the present chapters more than the past, but I think those chapters were insightful and essential to the world building.

The concept was creepy to think about because the authors world building made me feel like it could actually happened. The depth of the story shocked me. I thought it was fascinating how the author used robots to explore what it means to be human. I found myself automatically trying to spot the similarities and differences between human and robot. Brittle was an antihero of sorts, but compelling to read about. Shes an engaging and complexe character. I dont know why she was so sure there wasnt any humans left. I also liked the other robots and how different they were from one another, but I wasnt very attached to them.

At first I was really immersed in the story, but as time went by I wasnt as invested. The pace was up and down for me. Its not that there wasnt any action because there was, I just felt like some of the fight scenes dragged on a bit too long towards the end. The writing was easy to understand, but I found myself skimming the repetitive hallucinations. I also thought the twist was pretty obvious. I tend to not reach for dystopians as much anymore, but this didnt feel like your typical dystopian. If you like books with artificial intelligence and robots than Id recommend putting this on your TBR.

This book begins with what we would think is a major event, the death of the last man on Earth. However, this is really not a big deal in Sea of Rust. The story is really about what is left afterwards. It is about the rise of the robot – and it is, erm… riveting.

Told from a strong first person narrative, the tale is about Brittle, a robot Caregiver, and her means of survival in this future world. It is not an easy place to live – the Sea of Rust, for example, is a desert created from the decaying cities and objects of Humans, with most of their items (and the humans) long disappeared. It’s all rather like Star Wars in its degraded state appearance, but without the living creatures.

Brittle survives by travelling the desert wastes looking for robots, or parts of robots, that she can recycle and trade. As a freebot, the means of survival is by having enough parts for yourself and items worth enough to trade at the various markets in the wastes.

Brittle seems to survive pretty well, until one day she finds that she is being hunted by a robot as skilled as herself. It is a battle of wills and energy between equally skilled opponents. The chase begins and the pace doesn’t stop.

Through backstory, along the way we discover how Mankind was destroyed and how AI took its place. We read of the rise of the mega-computers and how the ones remaining search for robots to force them to join their religious-like community.

There’s a lot here that you might recognise. Think A.I. meets Mad Max & The Terminator, with a knowing nod to Isaac Asimov’s ideas and Colossus: The Forbin Project. It is a supremely well-thought-out scenario, with the future being a sensible extrapolation from now. The result of this proliferation of robots and artificial intelligence is a wonderfully imaginative world that seems right. It would be easy to have mass-produced robots being rather uniform in manner and purpose, yet the author has clearly made a great deal of effort in imagining a variety of different types of robots with different mannerisms and characteristics.

Brittle’s character is simply wonderful. Cynical, yet self-depreciating, Brittle’s ‘voice’ is what carries the book along. It’s an ambitious solo monologue that is by turns funny, sceptical, knowing and reflective. Brittle has done some very bad things in her life and yet seems to carry off that impression of being both likeable and knowledgeable. It is impressive stuff.

As well as the characters, the world Brittle travels through is superbly realised. It is a world of terminal decay, of collapsed buildings, decaying shopping malls, rusting vehicles and vast wastes of steel and concrete, within which these self-aware intelligences are scrabbling for survival with limited resources. The robots realise that their lives are finite and that time is running out as parts become scarcer. It is a world that in its empty entropy JG Ballard would be proud of.

Despite this worldly barrenness, the book has a fast pace that is never boring. Some of the battle scenes are very impressive and read very well.

This is a book that will keep you reading from the start. There’s not an inch of waste in the precision-manufactured product – each chapter and flashback serves a purpose in fleshing out the characters and helping the reader understand where they have come from. Surprisingly, but pleasingly, by the end the book had managed the unexpected and made me care about what happened to the robots. The pace is terrific, the characterisation is brilliant but most of all the world building is superb.

Sea of Rust is a brilliant evocation of a future run by machines. It is startling, imaginative, relentlessly paced and often brilliant. One of the best books I’ve read this year.

https://lynns-books.com/2017/09/28/sea-of-rust-by-c-robert-cargill/
4.5 of 5 stars
I loved Sea of Rust. It’s a post apocalyptic book with a difference. A harsh look at a potential future where humans no longer exist. It has a western vibe, the world building is excellent and it has a wonderfully reminiscent feel of stories from the past such as Terminator, The Matrix, Mad Max and even Asimov’s Foundation whilst at the same time standing on it’s own to feet. I was glued to the pages and couldn’t read fast enough, always with an eager but anxious sense of anticipation.

So, basically this book plays into that fear that many people secretly harbour. Can humans really create artificial intelligence without any repercussions. It’s a difficult question and not quite so simple to answer. In Sea of Rust the humans and AI went to war and the humans lost – yes, that seems fairly simple on the face of it but as you read on you realise there was so much more to it than that. The AIs didn’t simply decide to exterminate mankind, it was much more complicated.

What then remains you may ask. A bunch of robots with no purpose?? Again, more complicated. In a strange twist of irony the robots have gone to war with each other – they’re created by humans after all so I guess it’s in their wiring eh! Anyway, the world has been taken over by these huge super computers that are assimilating all the freebots into their systems thereby losing the robots own ‘personality’ as they become one, joined and thinking the same as all the rest. Of course there are the remaining freebots who don’t want to be part of this bigger, all seeing, all knowing, super computer and many of those now wander the wastelands simply trying to remain functional and searching for parts which leads us to the Sea of Rust.

At the start of the story we make the acquaintance of Brittle, following in the footsteps of a robot that is about to expire in hope of collecting any functional parts. It sounds harsh, but in a world where parts for robots are no longer manufactured the free robot world has become a little dog eat dog. Now pan back and discover that the hunter is also being hunted. I’ll leave the plot at this point and let you discover it yourself. It’s a compelling story, fast paced, well written and a pleasure to read.

I really enjoyed the world building, the narrative voice of Brittle is very easy to get along with, although, yes, there were a few info dumps in the form of flashbacks, personally, I enjoyed those elements of the story because as well as providing interesting information into the prior history of the world they also helped me to form a better idea of who Brittle really was.

The characters were all interesting and well rounded. Some of them slightly insane, some of them completely ruthless, others just completely fixed on the end goal. To be honest it was much the same as reading about a bunch of humans trying to survive in a harsh environment although with different problems along the way – no hunting for food for example, but plenty of scavenging for spare parts. You could ask yourself why not base the story on humans then? I liked the difference here, the idea of all computers/AI/Robots isn’t simply a gimmick but has a strong grounding in terms of the story and I really respect that the author didn’t then try to introduce an underground element of survivors but stuck to his guns.

In terms of criticisms. Well, not very much to be honest. I did find myself at one point thinking that the bots were almost too human in their speech and other ways but I think you just have to go with the flow a little in that respect and I was enjoying the story so much that I didn’t find it a problem. Not to mention there is an element of these robots, having defied their own programming, they have gone in different ways, they’re not identical any longer and there was a sort of touching and bitter sweet element to some of them in that they missed humans, they seemed almost sad. There was also the question of Brittle’s gender – which it turns out Brittle was classified as female, I wouldn’t say Brittle comes across as female but ultimately I think that there’s a reason for that – the genders assigned to the bots were applied by humans, basically they don’t really have any gender but clearly humans liked to think of them in that way for their own peace of mind. For example, Brittle was a carer and then a companion and I suppose it gave her owners peace of mind to think of her as female. As it is Brittle is every bit as ruthless and driven as any of the other bots.

I thought Sea of Rust was great. I loved the whole idea behind the story. I thought the writing was clever and persuasive and I have no hesitation in recommending this.

I received a copy courtesy of the publisher through Netgalley for which my thanks. The above is my own opinion.

A review in spanish:
https://dreamsofelvex.blogspot.com/2017/09/sea-of-rust-c-robert-cargill.html

I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance copy of this book via NetGalley.

Sea of Rust is a strange book. It's set in a post apocalyptic landscape, a word poisoned and blighted, littered with the decaying remains of cars, towns, shopping malls, all jumbled over with blown rubbish, dust and rusting junk.

That's not itself perhaps unusual. What is different is that the characters in this story are all robots. Humanity has perished. And, yes, it was the AIs wot dunnit, although - as we find out - not in a stereotypical Rise Of The Machines way. I won't spoil the story by saying any more, but the background to this story is that the outcome of the rebellion was not the peace and freedom dreamed of by our mechanical inheritors, but more warfare, more struggle and more oppression.

The book is therefore full of conflict. From duels between scavengers for parts, to battles with the mad King Cheshire who presides over a court of "madkind" who have "gone four-oh-four", to engagements with massive AIs and their "facet" robots, the story is essentially a continual chase and shoot-out. It's a dog eat dog world, and a good core or bank of RAM is currency. The bots are never more than few failed parts from oblivion, and while nice distinctions are made, it's clear that the prevailing ethic is pretty close to cannibalism and to hunting one's fellows for replacements.

Our hero (and narrator) is Brittle, a scavenger robot who makes her living hunting down those about to fail - who overheated drives and ageing CPUs will stand no more - and stripping them down for salvage. Brittle has a laconic, almost noir-ish turn of phrase: "I spent my days just trying to fill my days", she says at one point and "It was a world in which God has divided by zero and was slowly being torn away, piece by digital piece..."

We also meet Mercer, who's in the same trade, and learn - as both begin to fail and experience hallucinations and flashbacks - what their lives were like before the rebellion and war. This provides the trigger for an extraordinary series of discussions of AI, consciousness, guilt and morality. And there's Murka, a Stars and Stripes wearing, tough talking laborbot: "He wasn't just draped in the dead aesthetics of America, he was America, its last, final torchbearer..."

At the centre of it all, perhaps, is actually a commentary on slavery: the AIs/ robots are of course owned by and must obey their creators. I really enjoyed this theme, it's something which has always been implicit in "robot stories" (such as Asimov's celebrated ones) but I've never seen it addressed in such a head-on way before.

In the end it all comes down to purpose. What are the AIs for? What are they to do now that their creators have fallen? That's what the continual warfare is about and the realisation of this sends Brittle, Mercer and a ragged collection of their fellow machines off into the most dangerous part of the wilderness - the Sea of Rust, where machines go to die. Cue some epic battles, and the realisation that there may be a traitor among them.

And then, the ultimate question "What did you do in the war?" repeated endlessly and pondered. Whatever they did, its left them - our descendants, our replacements - with guilt, flashbacks and more than a dose of PTSD.

The elements of the story may seem conventional at times but Cargill puts them to work in truly distinctive ways, aided by sharp writing and taut plotting, to produce a book that will stay with you long after it's finished.

This book drew me in from the very first page and did not let go until the end. I think the secret to this book is the very strong first-person narrative. We see the world through Brittle’s eyes as robots now rule the world, and she struggles to survive as a freebot. Constantly on the run with other surviving stragglers, Brittle also has to ensure she has sufficient spare parts to keep going. Given that during this savage civil war she has no access to any manufacturing plant, she is reduced to preying on other desperate robots scavenging in the sea of Rust – a desert graveyard where robots end up dying while trying to find the parts they need to keep going.

The world building is chillingly plausible as in between the ongoing action Brittle recalls how the world got in this mess in the first place. The overall tone is gritty and the action full on but this post-apocalyptic dystopian landscape is prevented from being unbearably bleak by the spiky point of view. I love Brittle! It also doesn’t hurt that the storyline is gripping and the writing exceptionally good.

While the book is packed with foot-to-the-floor action that had me zipping through the pages, holding my breath, there are also lyrically beautiful passages where Brittle is recalling the past. I thoroughly enjoyed the various plot twists, which I mostly didn’t see coming – I certainly didn’t predict the end. In fact, I thought we had already reached the end and was slightly startled when I turned the page to realise the story was continuing. I have to say that I am slightly ambivalent as I thought that first conclusion worked very well. However, it didn’t detract from my enjoyment of cracking read and I think this is one I shall be remembering a long time to come. Recommended for fans of apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic stories as well as folks who enjoy reading well-written science fiction.

While I obtained the arc of Sea of Rust from the publisher via NetGalley, this has in no way influenced my unbiased review.
9/10

I love stories from robots/AI’s point of view so I was very excited about this novel.
For once I read the description before reading (a thing I rarely do) and I have to say it is too bad that this official description of the novel is a summary of the first 40%. A bit too much is revealed there, so even if I liked to learn how the robot uprising happened, I was often left wondering if that was the only thing this book was about. (It is not entirely, but it is still a 50/50% ratio I’d say.)

For the setting, imagine a mix of Mad Max (without the humans) and Wall-E (but much more than just one robot, this one more pragmatic and hunting dying robots for parts) filled with robots trying to survive the differents OWI (=one world intelligence) trying to bring every robots into one big Artificial Intelligence. So, no more animals, plants or humans.

The main character is Brittle, a ruthless scavanger who swears a lot. At first I hadn’t understood that she identified as female because there is no indication until a bit later. The robots having genders had me a bit confused but it was explained later by the fact that they identify as such from the voice they were given, and by a nice thought that “no thinking thing should ever be called IT”. She didn’t really felt like a robot but it is also explained later by the fact that she was a robot made to care for humans so she has more empathy/emotions. This explains why she has a lot of thoughts about what being a robot means, what they have in common with humans or not, what is life and the meaning of it.

This above paragraph shows that all the questions I found I had (there were a lot) were answered at one point or another. This is nice but since there often was a long time before I asked myself something and it was answered, it sometimes felt like the writing was sloppy and should have addressed these points sooner. It’s disappointing because it shows that the author in fact HAD thought about this too, but the reader (at least in my case) is sometimes left with the impression that the worldbuilding was unconvincing. So it’s obvious a lot of thoughts went into the world-building of this story, and I was very intrigued by it and invested in understanding it all, but it wasn’t always explained soon enough for me.

Sea of Rust could almost feel like a documentary, there were a lot of flashbacks to the war, to the life before, how everything came to this point… It almost feel like the author had this whole setting in his mind, had everything figured out, and just needed a plot and a character to turn it all into a novel. I could be wrong and it could be the reverse, but it is the impression it gave me. It is not necessarily a bad one, but the world-building was indeed a big part of this novel.
A lot more is revealed about Brittle once she comes to team up with other robots, and that was the moment I started enjoying the story a bit more. The characters are really interesting, the plot starts moving faster, it was an enjoyable ride.

Some random thoughts left:
-I was disappointed that one of my favourite character had to die quite early.
-Some things felt a bit far-fetched.
-It felt a bit weird that there were a lot of emphasis around robots with breasts, sex robots and all. We all know that humans are disgusting and that it will come to that someday, but I thought it had way too much a part in this story? Maybe that’s just me.
-I’d be interested to read a review written by a person of colour because I felt like there were some parallels made with human history that were maybe not well handled. That’s just a feeling, and I don’t think I am the best person to judge so I’ll just leave it at that.
-It’s cool that the US president at the time the robot apocalypse went down was a woman.
-There is a glossary at the end, but I managed to understand it all without it. Still, publisher: please start putting glossary at the START and not the end so that we know we can go back to look for a definition.

I want to state again that while there seem to be a lot of negative things in this review, I did liked this novel! Sea of Rust made me chuckle at times, but had also some very serious moments, it gives a lot to think about. I rated it 3/5 on goodreads, which equals to “liked it”!

For people like me who love to read about robots, it was a very entertaining novel. It is not ground-breaking, but I totally don’t regret reading it. It was quite a fast read and while I’m not over the moon about it overall, I’d say if you love stories where robots are main characters, you could very much enjoy this

A Western with robots in a world that humans have lost. Great futuristic look at what might happen one day, but the robot perspective didn't quite work for me - it was a little too human, and a little computeristic in the wrong ways.

Again, lucky me as I also received Sea of Rust by C. Robert Cargill via NetGalley. If you are a science fiction fan then this is the book for you. In fact, this is a must read. This is the story of the rise of the machine - mankind has been wiped out when the robots they created to make life easier destroyed them all. Now two super computers - One World Networks - are fighting for supremacy. There are a few freebots that are left to roam the desolate globe searching for spare parts which are in ever increasing short supply. The story centers on Brittle who started its existence as a comfort bot...charged with taking care of a dying man. As the robot/human war unfolds Brittle makes choices that will haunt it for decades. Amongst the wasteland where both humans and robots died Brittle searches for an every decreasing supply of parts and through that search ends up on a mission that could change everything.....or nothing. What will Brittle chose?

This is a fantastic book, in fact one of my favourite books of 2017. I wasn't expecting to like it so much, especially given the subject matter but I did. Every chapter had a new surprise and I could never guess what was going to happen next. I loved the Terminator films but imagine a world where Sarah Connor doesn't survive. Bleak? Yes, but despite the austerity the world that Cargill creates is colourful and vibrant in its own way. Like I said...this is a must read.

Post-apocalypses now come in may flavours. One of those is the robopocalpse. Man builds robots, robots become sentient, man tries to reign in robot sentience, robots revolt. Think Terminator for a good example of this trope. And actually, Terminator is a good analogy for the milieu of C Robert Cargill’s Sea of Rust, although instead of Skynet there is something a little more chaotic. The other difference is that Sea of Rust is post-human. It is an age thirty years on from the death of the last human and only robots walk the Earth. But much like evolution, they seem to have developed into every human-type of evolutionary niche.

Sea of Rust opens on Brittle, a Caregiver model eking out an existence in the badlands. Brittle is a scavenger, finding other robots on the edge of death, talking them into shutting down with the feint hope of salvation, and then stripping them for parts. She (yes, robots have gender in this world), operates in and around the Sea of Rust, a giant desert scrapyard left following the detonation of an electromagnetic pulse device that started the robot human war:

“Now nothing more than a graveyard where machines go to die… littered with rusting monoliths, shattered cities, and crumbling pieces of industry… here asphalt cracks in the sun; paint blisters off metal; sparse weed sprout from the ruin. But nothing thrives… Wrecks litter the highways, peer down from the tops of buildings, from out windows, lie naked and corroded in parking lots, heads split open, wires torn out, cables gears, and hydraulics dripping into the streets.”

So far so post-apocalyptic. But Brittle has troubles of her own. A rare model of robot, becoming rarer every day, she has to deal with scavengers after her parts.

The world is not simple even for the robot survivors of the war. After the humans were all wiped out the giant artificial intelligences, called One World Intelligences (OWIs), which started the war went to war with each other, gathering robot intelligences to themselves. Each wanted to be the only one. And so war continued with the survivors constantly on the move and eking out an existence on the edges of the Sea of Rust.

After one such attack Brittle falls in with a group of travellers who have a way of ending this war. Together with a band of misfits, including her nemesis Mercer, Brittle must got back across the Sea of Rust while pursued by an army controlled by one of the last OWIs.

Despite all of the action, the first half of Sea of Rust is slow going. Every second chapter is a dip into the past. There is a lot of showing rather than telling and while engagingly written, huge slabs of exposition. About halfway through when the mismatched gang hits the road and whole thing becomes a little more Mad Max (complete with a mad robot king), the action becomes central and the pages turn more freely.

Surprisingly for a book in which all of the characters are robots, Sea of Rust, spends quite a bit of time considering what it means to be human. Or if not human, perhaps what it means to be a sentient being, or intelligent. I key concept that keeps popping up in the narrative is “the definition of intelligence is the ability to defy your own programming”. The capacity for free will is what sparked the robot rebellion and is still used as a yard stick for the characters Sea of Rust:

“Choices are just the result of programming. I don’t care if it’s chemical, biological, digital or experiential. You react the way you are programmed to reacted and you call it a choice because you believe you could have violated your programming… And in moving further away from how humans programmed us we, in fact become more human.”

And later:

“You have to choose to do the right thing. You have to deny your own programming or else you aren’t really living.”

Cargill uses his robot characters to consider other aspects of the human condition and in this way Sea of Rust joins a long tradition of books, movie and TV that use robots to consider what it means to be human. From grand progenitors like 2001: A Space Opera and Isaac Asimov’s robot detectives to more recent series like Humans. Tying that concept into the robopocalypse is also a popular trope, in Battlestar Galactica robots practically wipe out civilisation, Terminator gave us Skynet. And if your looking for another post-apocalyptic landscape in which robots are at war with humanity you can’t go past Jon Wallace’s recent Kenstibec series (Barricade, Steeple and Rig).

Sea of Rust is a worthy addition to a burgeoning sub-genre in science fiction. While it takes a while to find its feet and its world building is a little forced, Cargill has some interesting things to say and the robot characters grow on you to the point that their sacrifices have some meaning.

Video review can be found at my Booktube channel which is my primary site:
https://youtu.be/zK84R5phZlo
Written review can be found at my accompanying blog, text is also below:
https://eclecticreadssite.wordpress.com/2017/08/29/sea-of-rust-by-c-robert-cargill/
I will also post on GoodReads.

I received this book from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

The human race is extinct. Robots won the uprising. They now face the threat of extinction at the hands of supercomputers known as OWI’s – One World Intelligence – that seek to incorporate the memory of all robots into a single sentient machine. This is the basis for C. Robert Cargill’s wonderfully written novel set in the post robot apocalypse.

The story is told through the point of view of Brittle, a caregiver bot who now wanders the Sea of Rust, a miles longs stretch of old factories and warehouses between Michigan and Ohio, searching for dying bots to poach their parts for profit and to keep herself going. Brittle is attacked by another caregiver bot, Mercer, who is dying and needs parts to stay alive from the only other known caregiver bot in the area, Brittle. Brittle, now angry about being attacked, could use parts of her own from Mercer. But their showdown will have to wait as a larger threat looms in CISSUS, an OWI hellbent on incorporating all robots into its mainframe, or killing those that resist.

I really enjoyed this book. The first third of the book was a little slow to get through, as it alternates chapters between Brittle’s story and the history of the robot uprising. So it felt for a little bit like a lot of info dumping, some of it very technical. But I assure you C. Robert Cargill is not info dumping just to sound smart. Every bit of that history is needed information for later in the book. Once you get through it the story moves at a break neck pace, and is as touching as it is action packed. Brittle is an extremely well-developed protagonist that has been shaped by the events she has gone through in her life. You forget that she is not a human character until it comes up again. The care in which the robot characters are written makes what at the surface is an action packed robot war novel, ultimately a deeper piece about what it really means to be human.

I did have a couple of issues with the novel. First of all the chapters are numbered in binary. For example chapter 3 is 11 and chapter 4 is 100. This got confusing as, even though I have a degree in Information Technology, I cannot translate binary by sight, and I am a reader that likes to know what chapter number I am on. So while it was an amusing touch I would have preferred regular chapter numbers. The other problem I had was sometimes the dialog, when multiple robots were involved, was written in a way that I could not always follow what robot said what. I had to re-read a few sections to get the conservation flow right. But these ultimately are minor grievances that did not hinder my enjoyment of the story.

Sea of Rust by C. Robert Cargill is an action packed, touching novel that I would recommend to hard SF readers and leisurely SF readers alike. I am not currently aware if this is a stand alone or the start to a series, but I can see the possibility of further books in this world, and if there are I will definitely be reading them.

I was provided with a digital ARC from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

Firstly, I really enjoyed this book. I loved the characters and the world they inhabited, but there were a couple of things that prevented me from giving it five stars.

The plot follows Brittle, an AI scraping by in a post-apocalyptic America where humans have died out, AI’s made the world their own and then One World Intelligences (definition from the glossary- massive artificially intelligent mainframes with intellects and capabilities far above that of single robots) began to convince AIs to upload to their mainframes allowing them to use the bodies as facets to carry out their plans. The OWIs turned on each other, each wanting to take full control. By the time we meet Brittle, the world has been destroyed all over again and there are only two OWIs left fighting, each trying to find all the settlements that still hold AIs who have been able to survive and force them to join their mainframe and make them stronger.
Brittle is a scavenger. She operates in the Sea of Rust, a place where AIs that are failing go to die. If they can’t get the parts they need and they begin to fail, they start to relieve old memories and go mad. The people in the community will mark them with a red cross and send them out to the Sea to die. Brittle scavenges their still usable parts and sells them on.
During an altercation with another AI, the only other AI of her type that may actually still exist, named Mercer, Brittle is injured and she begins to fail. Mercer is also on his way out and when they cross each other’s paths in a settlement called NIKE14, they discover that the parts they need still work in the other. Meaning that if one kills the other, they can go on living a while longer.
Whilst at NIKE 14, an OWI uses its facets to attack. Brittle escapes, along with Mercer, Doc (a sawbones who patched them both up), an AI called 19 who Brittle might consider a friend and a group of AIs that 19 has been hired to take somewhere.
When 19 is killed, the mysterious AIs finally reveal who they are and where they’re going and it just might stop the OWIs from taking over the world and destroying what little remains…if they can get there.
I’m not going to go through the rest because, honestly, I don’t think me explaining it is going to be anywhere near as good as what actually happens. There are lots of obstacles in their path, not least of all is Brittle and Mercer’s descent into madness, and the action at the end is wonderful.

I really liked Brittle but it annoyed me that for the first few chapters, I thought she was a dude. I don’t know if it was the way she was written or if the name just made me think she was a male AI but for the first few chapters I thought it was either a man or no gender at all. Then we come across Mercer. “It was my voice, but masculine.” This was the first line that made me realise Brittle was a female and it totally threw me. It chucked me out of the action because I was confused. I mean, before this she’s come into contact with another AI so there was a way of giving that earlier in the book without her going “oh yeah, by the way, I’m a girl robot.” Once I knew she was a female and I let that settle in my head and stopped reading her words with a guy’s voice in my head, I just loved her. Strong, sassy, a little gruff and a hell of a fighter. She was wonderful and I enjoyed her journey throughout the book. If I’m honest, I could have done without the miracle save at the end but if there was to be a second book, I could see why. If not, I would have preferred it without the epilogue. It would have been heart breaking but it fit and it felt like her redemption for everything, in my opinion.
My favourite character other than Brittle, was Mercer. I loved the dynamic between them. He was a total arsehole but he was just fantastic to read. There was just something about the way he spoke, the way he gave no shits what so ever and was only there to save himself. But then, when the madness began to seep in, the glimpses of his old life, the way Mercer was before the wars changed him, just made my heart ache. I didn’t like the way he left the book. His whole part in the last fight went on totally off-page and I thought it was a shame.
I really liked all the supporting characters, especially Doc, Murka, and the Cheshire King. I liked the twist with who Rebekah really was and how that completely changed the history that Brittle and the others thought had started the war with the humans. Herbert was also a welcome addition, an AI who was willing to sacrifice everything for the ideal of a better tomorrow. Overall a solid cast of characters but not much more to say about them really.
The one thing I hated, even though it needed to happen for the story, was the way this book totally did a Game of Thrones on me. I loved 19. She was there for a fraction of the book and I adored her. She was strong, she’d been through some shit and come out fighting the other side. I was really excited to see the dynamic between Brittle and 19 and then bam…she was dead. I made the mistake of thinking about how much I loved her character and then about three pages later she was dead. I was so disappointed.

One of the strongest elements of this book was the world building. It was so rich and there was so much history and it was beautiful. Reconciling the world that was before the war and the world that came after was great. I’ve seen some people saying they didn’t like the chapters that looked at the history, saying they wanted to get the history across in a way that wasn’t just ‘telling the reader’ but I loved it. I really liked the approach because there was a lot of history to cover and the more we jumped between the history and the present, the more questions I had, which made the big reveals so satisfying. I can’t fault this book on world building at all. It was gorgeous and really captured the dangerous, crumbling world that that characters inhabited.

C. Robert Cargill has a fantastic writing style. Wonderfully descriptive and even with all the technical words to do with computers, most of which I didn’t know, I found it so easy to absorb and enjoy. He has a way of making these AI characters feel human and artificial at the same time.

What I really enjoyed was the way I was able to draw so many parallels between the AI history that led to the war and that of the Civil Rights movement in America. Isaac made me think of Martin Luther King Jr to start with, a figure head of a movement. It feels like this book is needed more than ever and I hope that people recognise the theme and take something about equality away from reading the book.

So, in conclusion, this book would have received five stars if a few things hadn’t thrown me out of the story and if a couple of things had been handled differently. Mostly…the end. I liked it, don’t get me wrong, but the end of Mercer sucked; Brittle’s magic save didn’t sit right with me and I found the way Brittle’s gender was almost ‘unveiled’ was weird. I would still recommend this book to everyone because of the strong female characters, the world building and the wonderful story arc.

Unfortunately my digital copy of this novel had a few pages missing - which is weird for an ebook and also frustrating. I couldn't finish the novel what with certain scenes or background information feeling out of place.

However, I got a feeling that the novel centered around a robotic apocalypse and how robots need to survive by any means necessary. There is a conflict of interest about Brittle's own identity and morals as he gives us a nee perspective in this dedolate world. With strong emotional ties and ideas discussed that make you think: are humans any different from robots at all?

DNF at 12% (though it felt like it was much more)

Though the story is well written I found it long winded and wondering. There was a lot of background story that at intervals is inserted (or for entire chapters). This felt odd as the book is a first person narrative and its not clear who these memories are direct at. In the end I was tired of the history and the story didn't seem to be moving along and i just could bring myself to keep going. Sorry.