vN [Book Review]

vN is an interesting and completely original concept [sarcasm warning], robots constructed to serve humans while integrating into everyday life as servants and domestic partners.

The book opens in a world that reminds me of “I, Robot”… the Will Smith film version not the Asimov classic with it’s very chaste environmental setting and proper etiquette, though the androids are more human in appearance.

The book takes for granted that readers have read the Robot series as it makes the universal laws of Robotic Law its own cannon. This is fine, but I found myself confused at times wondering if I missed implications of explanation or was I too just accept what I knew from another literary franchise.

After a brief prologue period the world kicks into “Blade Runner” overdrive with a rogue android on the run and struggling with the concept of freedom whether you are human or biotic.

“Amy Peterson is a self-replicating humanoid robot known as a VonNeumann.

For the past five years, she has been grown slowly as part of a mixed organic/synthetic family. She knows very little about her android mother’s past, so when her grandmother arrives and attacks her mother, Amy wastes no time: she eats her alive.

Now she carries her malfunctioning granny as a partition on her memory drive, and she’s learning impossible things about her clade’s history – like the fact that she alone can kill humans without failsafing…” – Amazon Product Description

Even with the poached plot lines the book could have stood on its own, but the confused writing and poor layout. The most concerning error would be the continued use of mixed dialogue in one paragraph. I am not the perfect grammar student, I make errors, but I don’t have a professional editor reading my blog posts and Amazon product reviews. New paragraphs for every new speaker is 2nd grade level learning.

Since I am being negative I will just pile it on, the story was hard enough to get into without the grandmother in her head talking and contradicting like a split-personality.

With better editing the book may have been readable, but at best a three star review. The title implies this is a series, I won’t read the future additions I guarantee you this. But like in the recent history of “50 Shades of Poor Writing” and stolen stories this should sell like wild fire and have a movie optioned by Easter.

2/5 Stars