Michael Barnes
Set in a near future with Korea reunified robots are ubiquitously integrated symbiotically with humans. Seen throughout the novel in various roles servants and staff, daughters, sons, siblings, friends, even lovers.
The story unfolds from different characters. One is that of Jun a detective assigned to the robot crimes unit. He was once a soldier in the “bloodless” unification war and, due to an encounter with an HALO IED that damaged nearly 80% of his body, is mostly bionic. He’s also trans, and the child of a famous roboticist who brought one of his creations home a roboit name Yoyo to be a brother for his two children. Yoyo, is at once a son and a brother, and is the focal point amid a disparate cast of characters who come together via serendipitous meetings, unexpected reunions, and wrenching losses.
Jun’s sister, Morgan, works for Imagine Friends, consumed at work with her the latest secret project, Boy X, but at home, she's fielding robot challenges with her live-in creation, Stephen, whose interactions are becoming increasingly human--devoted, needy, even demanding. "I wanted someone to love me," she admits, unlike their fractured family, but I think she created Stephen more because she is expected by society to have a boyfriend that any expectations/desires of her own, which I found a bit hard on Stephen who I felt sorry for.
Morgan's calls her new project Yoyo, after Morgan and Jun’s robot brother, who just disappeared one day. (And isn't that a whole pile of Freudian headspace that would make a therapist begin scribbling furiously).
Jun hasn’t talked to Morgan for five years, but he’s investigating a missing robot who belongs to one of Morgan’s neighbors. It’s an older model, a child really, and Morgan’s robot, Stephen, had been friends with the missing robot.
The other narrative focuses on a group of kids in summer school hang out at a junkyard next door after school and meet a robot not like any other, whose name is Yoyo. One girl Ruijie is the first to encounter Yoyo. She's not healthy: "the doctors lobbed acronyms, like ALS, PMA, and MMA." None of the letters stuck, but her young body continues to break down, forcing her to resort to customized "robowear" for mobility. Ruijie, a precocious three-time science fair winner, regularly scavenges the salvage yard next door to her school, looking for usable parts to enhance her failing form. Meeting irresistible Yoyo engenders easy friendship. The other children are well realised in their own right and I liked discovering how their backgrounds made them what they are such as one who is from the north and lives for playing soccer, also lives with his uncle, who salvages robots and their parts.
The disparate threads are woven into a credible, but in no way disneyesque 'it’s the friends we make along the way ending' I found it a complex satisfying exploration of these believable and detailed characters.
Set in a near future with Korea reunified robots are ubiquitously integrated symbiotically with humans. Seen throughout the novel in various roles servants and staff, daughters, sons, siblings, friends, even lovers.
The story unfolds from different characters. One is that of Jun a detective assigned to the robot crimes unit. He was once a soldier in the “bloodless” unification war and, due to an encounter with an HALO IED that damaged nearly 80% of his body, is mostly bionic. He’s also trans, and the child of a famous roboticist who brought one of his creations home a roboit name Yoyo to be a brother for his two children. Yoyo, is at once a son and a brother, and is the focal point amid a disparate cast of characters who come together via serendipitous meetings, unexpected reunions, and wrenching losses.
Jun’s sister, Morgan, works for Imagine Friends, consumed at work with her the latest secret project, Boy X, but at home, she's fielding robot challenges with her live-in creation, Stephen, whose interactions are becoming increasingly human--devoted, needy, even demanding. "I wanted someone to love me," she admits, unlike their fractured family, but I think she created Stephen more because she is expected by society to have a boyfriend that any expectations/desires of her own, which I found a bit hard on Stephen who I felt sorry for.
Morgan's calls her new project Yoyo, after Morgan and Jun’s robot brother, who just disappeared one day. (And isn't that a whole pile of Freudian headspace that would make a therapist begin scribbling furiously).
Jun hasn’t talked to Morgan for five years, but he’s investigating a missing robot who belongs to one of Morgan’s neighbors. It’s an older model, a child really, and Morgan’s robot, Stephen, had been friends with the missing robot.
The other narrative focuses on a group of kids in summer school hang out at a junkyard next door after school and meet a robot not like any other, whose name is Yoyo. One girl Ruijie is the first to encounter Yoyo. She's not healthy: "the doctors lobbed acronyms, like ALS, PMA, and MMA." None of the letters stuck, but her young body continues to break down, forcing her to resort to customized "robowear" for mobility. Ruijie, a precocious three-time science fair winner, regularly scavenges the salvage yard next door to her school, looking for usable parts to enhance her failing form. Meeting irresistible Yoyo engenders easy friendship. The other children are well realised in their own right and I liked discovering how their backgrounds made them what they are such as one who is from the north and lives for playing soccer, also lives with his uncle, who salvages robots and their parts.
The disparate threads are woven into a credible, but in no way disneyesque 'it’s the friends we make along the way ending' I found it a complex satisfying exploration of these believable and detailed characters.