I received this as an eArc and was drawn to it by a combination of the cover and the interesting description. I’ve been wanting to read more novels with sentient AI and this one was great.

This novel is really divided into two stories. One is the story of Brittle in the present day as she travels around, scavenging parts from robots that are about to die. She gets injured by a robot called Mercer who is the same model as her as he is dying and needs her parts to survive. Of course, this now means that she is also critically injured and he is the only source of parts for her. The other story is that of her past and the robot uprising. The novel alternates between these two which I really enjoyed as we slowly learnt more about the world as we progressed through the novel.

The characters are all excellent and I enjoyed reading about all the different types of robots and what their original purposes were. The worldbuilding is very strong and was slowly revealed throughout the novel. I got a very mad-max vibe from the “Sea of Rust” during the travelling parts which I thoroughly enjoyed and I feel a very good film could be made out of this novel – this might be partially due to the fact that the author is a film critic and I feel it has influenced him in a very positive manner.

I would highly recommend this novel and when it comes out, I plan on buying copies for some friends that I know would enjoy it.

Started off slow but was gripped by the end. Great story and fantastic world building.

This book is the latest interpretation of what the world would be like if machines took over the world. Imagine the Terminator on a grand scale and with much better characterization. Some interesting philosophical discussions as well. It does get a little confusing towards the end in terms of the various mainframes that are fighting each other for dominance.