I listened to an Advance Listening Copy of this book thanks to Libro.fm and the publisher. All opinions are my own.
This robot-focused novella is a little out of my normal book choices but the cover was appealing, it was a short listen, and it was available to me through Libro.fm so I thought I’d give it a shot. Overall, I enjoyed listening to this story but I didn’t love it.
The story is set in the future (I’ve honestly forgotten how far in the future) in a post-war California. California has become an independent nation from the rest of the United States (I think this is what the war was about) and as part of its new independence, it has granted certain rights to robots. Our story is set in San Francisco, some time after the war has ended. We begin with four robots walking up in an abandoned restaurant. They were all employees at the restaurant but were shot down and left when the shady human owners fled the country. For various reasons of their own the robots decide to start up their own restaurant and run it secretly. While robots were given independence in California, there are still strict boundaries around that freedom. They can rent but not own, have relationships but not marry. Since robots aren’t allowed to own and operate businesses, they set up secretly, finding loopholes in the system. They each have their own skill set that they bring to the restaurant and it is soon a success. But success brings attention and they need to find new ways to survive.
Where the story succeeds most is in the descriptions of place and characters. The robots are all unique but it was easy to picture them and how they were designed. This is cozy sci-fi and it fits that bill as the reader follows along with the robots creating a successful noodle restaurant and finding community along the way.
Where it failed for me was that it was all a bit too on the nose. It was too obvious that the author seemed to be trying to make a statement about the way humans treat each other. And while I’m all for that message, I just don’t have it in me to be sympathetic to robots, I guess. Reading stories like this I’m always left wondering, Why on earth would anyone ever give robots feelings? What possible purpose would that serve humanity? I know that with the rise of AI, it can feel like our systems have feelings but they don’t. Sure, I always say “please” and “thank you” to my google home device but I know it (I almost said she) doesn’t have feelings. I don’t want to see art created by robots. I don’t mind certain processes being automated but I don’t want that to be taking work from actual humans who need it. According to Automatic Noodle, this makes me robophobic and the clear correlation that is being made is that I must also hate immigrants but I really don’t.
There were other things too that had me rolling my eyes – a former army robot suffering because he’s carrying a large memory cache from the war. When he shares this memory file with a friend, he’s able to operate better. This is not a subtle story.
I recognize I’m probably not the target audience here and since the audiobook was only about 5 hours long, I didn’t commit a lot of my time here so I don’t feel annoyed. I probably won’t reach for a similar story any time soon but I do think it has its audience.
The audio narration was well done and I appreciated the different voices given to the robots to help distinguish them as I listened. One robot sounded perpetually like he had a stuffy nose which didn’t make sense to me but at least I always knew which character was speaking.
Karissa Reads Books 
When we feel disconnected from other humans, we often turn to non-humans as a source of comfort because they don’t let us down, be it a favorite blanket, a pet, a character (book, movie, superhero, whatever). Typically, stories with robots in them teach us what it means to be better humans without having to practice that behavior on other humans. Interestingly, what I just wrote reminds me of why I enjoy horror: I get to practice being afraid without being in danger. As we all know, the world can be a scary place, so I think it’s good for me.
This is very much a story that is actually about human nature and how we treat one another. I think I wanted it to work on that level AND as a futuristic story about robots and it didn’t do both. So instead it felt preachy because the lesson about human behaviour was too much to the forefront. I think what you say makes a lot of sense though. Fiction gives us a chance to practise emotions that we might avoid otherwise.
I see what you mean – I get what the author is trying to do in theory, but robots simply aren’t humans, and robots aren’t immigrants, etc. It almost feels a bit manipulative the way this author is trying to ‘teach us’ something. Also – this is the first time I’ve ever heard of cozy sci-fi, but makes sense! Maybe I would like sci-fi if it felt ‘cozier’ haha
Exactly! I could even take it further and say that comparing immigrants to robots de-humanizes immigrants but I don’t think this author was aiming to be malicious. It felt very much like, “Look at me making an Important and Correct Statement!” Way too heavy-handed. This sort of cozy sci-fi feels in line with some of the cozy Japanese fiction I’ve read recently. Kind of absurd but also so low stakes that it’s never stressful.
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