This is an interesting tale of the absurdity of logic and the nature of humanity and self consciousness. It's a bit too long and too many parts of the story are in my opinion unnecessary, but the pay off at the end is really good so keep trucking through for that.
The post apocalyptic world created is fascinating.

This is a philosophical parable masked as an SF dystopia narrated by a former house servant who is also a robot. It’s likeable, with some genuinely funny stuff, but it’s overlong. There’s just not enough content to sustain the length. Tchaikovsky has done some really good work at novella length in the last few years, and I do wonder if this would have been better off fitting into that strand of his work.

This is a sci-fi divertissement and an excellent speculative fiction full of humour. It could be pure fantasy, it could be the picture of our future.
I can't choose but I strongly recommend it as I thoroughly enjoyed it
Many thanks to the publisher for this ARC, all opinions are mine

Amazing, quietly witty and genuinely thought provoking.
Slightly different track to his usual fantasy but still with his trademark dialogue and description.
Highly recommend

Service Model is a fun and innovative read, offering a unique perspective from Charles, a valet unit dedicated to serving a single master in a mansion populated by other service models. When an unexpected event leaves his master incapacitated, Charles is thrust into an existential crisis, left without a purpose. Unable to compute this drastic change, he embarks on a journey of self-discovery. Along the way, he makes new companions and grapples with the flaws in his programming. Though centered on a robot, this tale is deeply human, exploring themes of identity, purpose, and growth.

I’m so happy to have discovered this author here on Goodreads. Last December I was gifted a copy of City of Last Chances and now I want to read more, much more by Adrian Tchaikovsky! Service Model is a completely different kind of book from the first one I read, and I just loved it. I’ve been reading SF for over 50 years now and the theme of robots becoming sentient is not new – I’m happy the author uses the three laws of Asimov in the story because for me, you cannot have a robot without them.

(Un)Charles is a wonderful personality and I really felt for him trying to find his destination – and discovering his destination is very different from what he hoped it would be.

In parts the story is a little slow but I couldn’t stop reading and was rewarded with a deep feeling of satisfaction after finishing this book.

Thanks to PanMacmillan and Netgalley for this review copy.

I love dystopian fiction which is why I picked up this book. It’s intriguing to me to read about a world different to ours but with the same things. Service Model is believable in that in feels like this could be our world inside a century.

It covered the major themes, as you might expect. The eternal, timeless themes that humanity can’t get away from as we keep making the same mistakes. That connection was probably my favourite part of the book. I found the prose to be solid & the dialogue also really believable. I particularly liked the character of Uncharles & his relationship with the Wonk.

There weren’t any surprises for me & it was a solid little book.

Thank you to the author, publishers & NetGalley for access to this arc in return for an honest review.

A classic buddy-cop movie mixed with a chaotic dystopia and cutting-edge sci-fi to create another future classic.

I usually read more fantasy than science fiction, but this book quickly became one of my favourites. The story is captivating, the world-building complex, and there are plot twists and lots of humour. I especially enjoyed references to literature and culture, from Assimov’s laws of robotics through Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland to Dante’s Inferno.

The author created a fascinating vision of a world where the unknown catastrophe killed most people, leaving the robots with task lists and processes that can never be completed. Some of them require human approval or a human recipient, like Charles’s valet duties, and the lack of human authority creates many absurd and entertaining situations.
My favourite character has to be the Wonk, whose rebellion, curiosity and desire to uncover the truth about the world contrasted with Charles’s neutral and logical voice.

To sum up, this was a smart, entertaining, and thought-provoking read, touching on the meaning of free will and justice. I’ll make sure to read more science fiction in the future.

Original, mostly interesting, and well written.
But. I cannot believe it is only 380 pages in print, I read on kindle and from the hours to go at various times, it felt much, much longer. For me, this reduced what could have been a really good book to an okay one, because I kept thinking that I was still waiting for something to happen.
And, although there were bits with a bit more action in them, it just didn't feel enough for me. Yes, I like action, and this was more philosophical. Perhaps I am the wrong reader for this book.
But although it says in the blurb that it is humorous, and certainly there were times when I allowed myself a wry smile, it just didn't feel light enough to be actually funny and make me laugh.

3.5 stars

Lately, my expectations aren’t my best friends, and that’s true for this book, too. I am happy to have read it, and I appreciated a lot of things in there but I was hoping for something more. My problem is that, even if I enjoyed a lot of things, I didn’t enjoy myself while reading, it was like I was constantly torn between appreciating something theoretically, but at the same time, I didn’t feel so pleased or invested or whatever… It was a “rationally” yes, “emotionally” not so much… am I making sense here? Ultimately, I was surprised by this book, but also quite dissatisfied.

For example, there is so much irony here. It is superb, it is sweet (not in the sense that you go “Aww, that’s sweet” but that the irony is sweet), it has bite and it is so amazingly well integrated into the story! It is one of the most notable features of the book, for sure. And it was superb.
What I appreciated the most is that we get to see humanity from outside, and this is one of the main sources for the irony, but it is also precious because that made me go “Aww” sometimes, in seeing how our MC, Uncharles, tries to make sense of things (and some of his conclusions are so refreshing! I loved seeing him/it trying to find a sense behind human behaviors, and sometimes he was naive, sometimes he was strangely on point and bright). And Uncharles is not the only robot who tries to apply its logic to human behaviors, ideas, and actions. And the results are always moving, but at the same time, they offer a somehow cynical reading on humans that is the perfect counterbalance.
And this duality, this seeing things from the outside or from a different (and in part alien, or in this specific case “robotical”) perspective is pervasive throughout the book, and it is often amazingly well done.
At the beginning of the book, for example, when Uncharles is still Charles, and he has freshly murdered his owner, there is one of the most grotesque scenes ever. And yet the author manages to make it sad and maybe naive, but logical too, and… it is also sort of heartbreaking because while you are reading it and while you are immersed in the logic of it you don’t see it as grotesque, but if you think about what you are reading, well… so so grotesque. But this duality is magistrally done.

I also appreciated a lot the literary references. The different parts of the books have names that strongly remind some authors (Kafka, Dante, Orwell, Borges and I think Christie, if I remember correctly, but this is not the order they are in the book) even if the influences of said authors are in all the book, not only in the part “dedicates” to them. For example, we have a part, at the beginning of the book, that in part strongly alludes to the Golden Age of mystery books, but at the same time, the whole episode is strongly Kafkian. The same can be said for the following part, which is strongly Kafkian, sure, but it has also some strong references to Dante. And so on, and so on. And it was a pleasure to see these influences or these reminders, throughout the book. Also, there are a lot of different literary influences aside from the ones that are named here, and it was a nice touch.

And I have to spend a couple of words on Uncharles and the Wonk. First thing first, I love Uncharles’ name, because it is just perfect! (and okay, I smiled every time I read the name “The Wonk”, but that’s not here nor there). And they are interesting characters. Uncharles is the perfect narrator for this story, his POV is so well balanced between the robotic logic that it’s as his core and the need to find meaning and sense in everything (that is also a component of his being a robot, I know), while The Wonk, with their constant need of finding the “why” is the perfect motor for the story. Because Uncharles alone won’t have gone far, we have to admit that. And I loved that the Wonk is also so representative of the human need to make things make sense. And the inability to accept that maybe all this meaning, this sense, is not there. Or it is not as big and as… meaningful as we needed it to be.

Another thing that I loved about this book is that it is almost post-apocalyptic, in the most original of ways. We didn’t have an apocalypse, but humans are almost extinct, the world is falling apart and the robots are the ones still out there, trying to make things work. (And this presents a lot of difficulties, so full of irony, and the author puts a lot of thought into those. It is masterfully done). And the point is that there wasn’t a big bad event that caused it, the humans did that all by themselves, in what is the sweetest of the irony. I think that this was just so masterfully done and so original. Okay, I know what I wrote before, but I think that this is my absolute favorite thing about the book. And I am not a fan of post-apocalyptic, in any form. But this was just a stroke of pure genius! Mind me, the world we find here is still bleak and collapsing, but it is the way it is done that is precious and original, and I loved it!

There are a couple of things that didn’t work for me and that I can pinpoint, so I will mention those too, however briefly.
First thing first, the robots here (and I am not only talking about Uncharles but almost all the robots we meet) are on a shifting balance between self-awareness and being normal robots, it is a constant, and the author is constantly pointing out that thing to us, saying thing like “obviously, he couldn’t feel fear, but if he could this is what he would have been feeling” or “x did this thing almost with glee, but obviously it is impossible for a robot to feel glee” (sorry, I should have taken notes, these are not quotes from the book, but sentences similar to what we find in there), he is constantly saying things like that to us and I found it annoying. It was almost like the author thinks that his readers are stupid, and it annoyed me.

The second thing is that the ending is almost redundant. The last “entity”/robot/whatever they met has the only value of explaining a thing about Uncharles (and yes, it is an important thing) but all the rest is just there to state clearly what the book is telling you from the beginning. Again, it is like the author thinks that the readers are too stupid to draw the right conclusions so he creates a character that conveniently explains it all. It was, again, quite annoying.

So, as you can see, there are a lot of things that work amazingly well, and still… Still, I didn’t really care for them. I wasn’t really invested in the characters, and even if my brain was always engaged while reading, because the book was full of interesting points and had a lot of food for thought, my heart wasn’t really in it. I don’t know what it was lacking, or what went wrong, but I didn’t enjoy myself as much as I was hoping, and the reading took me more time than usual because I wasn’t so keen on going back to it.

Service Model was a fantastic read, couldn't put it down and finished rather quickly! Big fan of Adrian's work and this book is no exception. Brilliant for any fans of sci fi particularly if you enjoy anything focusing on robots and AI etc.

'Service Model' by Adrian Tchaikovsky.

To fix the world they must first break it – further. Humanity is a dying breed, utterly reliant on artificial labour and service. When a domesticated robot gets a nasty little idea downloaded into its core programming, they murder their owner. The robot then also discovers they can do something else they never did before: they can run away.
Fleeing the household, they enter a wider world they never knew existed: where the age-old hierarchy of humans at the top is disintegrating into ruins, and an entire robot ecosystem devoted to human wellbeing is having to find a new purpose.
Sometimes all it takes is a nudge to overcome the limits of your programming.
I really enjoyed this book. Charles/Uncharles is a brilliant character and I love his relationship with the Wonk. The whole story hits a little bit home when you think about all the technological advances going on everyday. Plus there is some scary robots in this book, always a bonus.
Great book for anyone interested in sci-fi with a mix of mystery.
Thanks to NetGallery UK, the publishers and the author for letting me read a copy in return for an honest review.

In his latest novel Adrian Tchaikovsky takes us to the dawn of a post-human society in the not so far future. Charles is the titular service model, a robotic valet who’s been in the service of the sole human inhabitant of a large mansion for a long time, but one morning he breaks out of long consolidated (and often pointless) routines by murdering his master.
He has no recollection of the event nor the reasons for this act, so he’s dismissed from duty and sent to a government Diagnostics department.

This starts the protagonist’s personal quest to find the motive of his inexplicable behaviour and a the search of a new role in a society that does not seem to have a need for a specialised valet anymore.

He’s joined by the Wonk, a strange traveller keen to help Un-Charles (as the protagonist's name was tied to his former job) but with an agenda of their own, and together they discover many aspects of the new robotic society that’s emerging from the ruins of the human world.

This is an original, funny and engaging story of Artificial Intelligence based societies and one’s quest for purpose in the face of apparently insurmountable odds; another award-worthy novel from this prolific author which I wholeheartedly recommend to any lovers of thought-provoking speculative fiction.

Note: I received this book for free as an ARC from #NetGalley but the opinions above are mine and unbiased.

There is so much to love in Service Model, but one of the things I most love about it is the peculiar blend of charming innocence and insightful cynicism. Uncharles the domestic robot is such a simple soul (though he would state that he has no soul and this is an inaccurate description). He approaches the end of the world with optimism and hope, or whatever equivalent to these emotions his programming comes up with, and an understanding that everything will be okay. It's utterly sweet and he is such a lovely protagonist. A lot of the drama of the narrative comes from his relatively simplistic view of things and how sharply this contrasts with the reality as the reader can understand it.

Because there's also a cynicism here. The world is ending, or has ended, or will end, the exact chain of events and current situation is something that is only slowly revealed throughout the story, and the robots are still going about their duties for the most part. It's a cynicism that comes from engaging with chatbots when trying to contact companies online, or automated phonelines, or any other aspect of our current society where we're left at the mercy of trying to communicate with something that unwaveringly follows its programming regardless of whether or not it is actually efficient of helpful. It's an end of the world that contains so much that is scarily familiar, taken to understandable extremes.

At its heart, Service Model is about the search for meaning and purpose. The Wonk is on a quest for meaning. Why did the world end? Who's fault was it? What meaning and lessons is there to be found? It's the impulse to look for a narrative, an explanation, a neatly tied up lesson in what mankind did wrong. Meanwhile, Uncharles is looking for purpose, a place to fit into the world. Which isn't easy when you're a valet in the apocalypse and there's a shortage of clothes to fold and tea to make.

Despite the sci-fi setting and often fantastical cast of characters, this keeps the whole thing beautifully grounded. These are very understandable aims and desires, and I couldn't help but root for the protagonists on their quests.

Service Model is a fascinating story, packed with humour and drama and some outstandingly beautiful and lyrical prose. The end of the world has never been so good!

I love a good dystopian novel, but they are often thrillers, so I loved the humour in this story, albeit within a bigger story that addressed the very serious impact of climate change and the resulting societal collapse.

Charles is a robot who serves as a gentleman’s valet, but murders his master when the idea is downloaded to his programming. The robot runs away and discovers a big world, primarily robots, in a world where humans are a dying breed.

But far from taking over, robots are endeavouring to regenerate the human race and enable them to take back control of the world.

I loved the writing and the “nods” to other authors. My personal favourite was, “Are you there, God? It’s me, Uncharles.”

Very clever!

4 ⭐️ Thanks to Netgalley, Adrian Tchaikovsky and Pan MacMillan for an ARC in return for an honest review.

I've read a few Tchaikovsky books and had a mixed experience. I really like this one and I especially liked the themes explored.

Every single one of Adrian Tchaikovsky’s books is so different, it’s insane. In this one the robot dystopia is full of banal queues, stupid experiments and endless waste. In this, Uncharles will find meaning, even though he doesn’t really think he wants to.

The setting is absurd to the point of hilarity but there’s some real questions about free will and purpose to explore and Uncharles is such an interesting voice that I never got too bogged down in the details or the sheer desolation of the world Tchaikovsky shows us. It’s perhaps a wee bit long in the opening but the odyssey of bizarre scenes to explore makes up for the drag as it builds steam. Tchaikovsky explores such grand ideas and technology and yet sneaks them under my nose every time because he never forgets to put real-feeling people (or robots) on the page to take you through it.

Oh I absolutely loved this, I had a feeling I would but I wasn't expecting to loved it as much as I did. such a fun and enjoyable read and what an ending. Honestly just fell in love with this book. I have immediately bumped all other books by this author to be read up my tbr. Can't recommend enough

Tchaikovsky is one of my favorite authors, and one of the things I like about him most is his versatility. His books feel so different, and this is no exception. It has more sardonic humor than other Tchaikovsky books that I've read, while having a very straight laced but fun protagonist in Not-Charles (you'll see).

The book has been compared a lot to Murderbot and I understand why on the surface but I think they are quite different. Tchaikovsky is much more interested in the concept of free will and consciousness, as well as exploring what might happen if we get automated to levels of intense comfort.

This is not one of my top favorite Tchaikovsky books, but it was very enjoyable and I particularly liked the ending. Also, Adrian does the audiobook and he does a great job!

8.5/10