A solid read with some good character development. A nice palette cleanser of a read with some mystery elements and decent sci-fi. A good adventure with some fun elements.

The book was very encopasing, The author grabs you into the futurisic battles and keeps you engaged and wondering and caring for not only the future of the United States, but also for charactors you meet through out the journey. I would definitely recommend this book. I could not put it down and wanted more when it finished. Great work.

I don’t generally read too much science fiction but the buzz about this one was tremendous. Unlike many books with great buzz, this one lives up to all the advance raves. Funny , thought provoking, exciting, and with great near future concepts that are presented as part of the story and not dropped in as teachable moments. If you like a great adventure story or well written thoughtful science fiction, you should read this book.

The final book I have to tell you about is Todd McAulty's The Robots of Gotham. This has been sitting on my TBR for some time and I thought I needed to give it some space between it and the last book I read about robots taking over the world - Sea of Rust. These two books are nothing alike, luckily!

In McAulty's world sentient robots have taken over much of the world forming governments in some countries and as dictators in others. The US has been torn apart by the war of the machines with Manhattan annexed into a robot monarchy and other parts are under foreign rule. Barry Simcoe is in occupied Chicago when a rogue machine almost kills him and many others. This attack set of a chain of events that will change Barry forever. During the drama that unfolds following the robot attack Barry befriends a Russian medic in the Venezuelan military and a damaged robot 19 Black Winter. Barry unwittingly discovers a robot conspiracy to kill off the rest of humanity by releasing a deadly plague. Barry and his two new friends need to work together to stop this from happening and to try to uncover who is behind it all. It's an epic race against time for not just Barry but the rest of the humanity as well.

I am still a bit tired out from reading The Robots of Gotham as there is so much action and intrigue that I couldn't put it down. The chapters are rather long and filled with action and plot developments so it isn't an easy book to read while commuting. I would often find myself reading while walking down the street so I could get to a natural break in the plot....not easy especially when you are walking down busy London streets!

I loved Barry as a character and he is supported by a great cast of both human and robot companions. 19 Black Winter was hardly your typical robot so prepare yourself for his caustic sense of humor and witty responses to some of Barry's questions. Apart from Barry, I thought it was the non-human characters in this story that are the most interesting. Even though you know who the ultimate baddy is McAulty keeps you guessing until the very last pages to find out if Barry will save the day. It's tense! You have been warned. This was a great book and bit of a surprise how much I liked it. Looking forward reading more about Barry and hopefully 19 Black Winter.

Excellent world building, seamlessly woven into a plot packed with interesting characters. Recommended.

This, my friends, was a big-ass book. A big-ass book with a LOT going on, much of it fun and sleek or at least one of the two, depending on the scene. I alternated between delighting in the tedious, regular return to detailed descriptions of the mechanics behind securing communications in a post-singularity wasteland that happens to also be Chicago--and being very annoyed with these interludes. Overall, I think McAulty does the undoable by blurring the boundary between surrealist noirpunk cyberdystopia and (*here be breathy air-quotes*) "HARD" science fiction. It's the rare book that can infodump about facial recognition software hacks in the same scene as a robot cracking jokes about bodily fluids, but, well, McAulty goes there.

This book is daring. It's kind of strange. And it's jerkily episodic at times, with an uncanny knack for describing women--even the strong women in whom our hero, Barry Simcoe, is not sexually interested--as an assemblage of body parts. It has some of the same spirit as Peter Tieryas' "Mecha Samurai Empire," with lavish oversized "Real Steel"-meets-"Pacific Rim"-meets-"Man in the High Castle" fight scenes and rich American pseudohistories. Only, you know, this book is about four times as long and McAulty is fond of blogs. Oh! Here's a comparison! It's as if John Scalzi wrote a future sequel of a Robert Harris novel!

Look, I'm all for people saving sick puppies to impress girls and accidentally getting involved in robot conspiracies. I only wish Simcoe could have been a little less bro-ey about everything, and maybe been something other than a stereotypical wise-cracking "man caught up in a warzone" trope. The world is great! Just give us more world. More Black Winter taking care of the dog. And maybe throw us LGBTQIA+ folks a little love. (Here's a tip: Maybe don't "just decide" to use gendered pronouns on a robot because you feel like it, SimBro, as you do in your first real conversation with Black Winter. It's polite to assume that robots, just like humans, dislike it when you assume things based on appearance or personal inclination. Like gender. I'm not sure about robot ambassadors and attaches and so forth, but I almost never correct people in public when they misgender me, since that has literally never ended well for me. It's nice to be asked.)

This one had me at robots. So basically from the get go. But the prodigious length of 688 pages was a deterrent, so…audio it is. The longest audio book I’ve listened to thus far, great many walks and bike rides in the company of Barry Simcoe, amicable Canadian businessman, who finds himself in Chicago and gets embroiled in a global conspiracy set in a post apocalyptic world where robots rule. That’s right, the singularity took place and not even that far into the future, only some 60 years or so from now. But this is a new world, certainly, completely reshaped politically by the machine overlords who range (like their flesh and blood counterparts) from munificent to malicious. The USA hasn’t fared too well in the fallout and is now partially under foreign occupation. And then there is a plot to possibly end the world as we (well, as they) know it. So Barry’s got a lot going on. And through sheer power of inadvertent heroism he steps up to the plate as it were and delivers. With assistance of newly made friends, both flesh and metal. In fact, the latter, 19 Black Winter, a robotic ambassador whom Barry saves, totally steals the show. But in general, in this book robots do. Steal the show, that is. Because they and the world they remake is so well realized and rendered by the author. In fact world building in this book is off the charts awesome. And there’s a sort of guest narrator Paul the Pirate who explains the minutiae of machines’ functions and complexities of social lives, while throughout the book the complexity of mores and motivations make these robotic creations not only terrifically intricate and fascinating, but also completely personable and even relatable. This isn’t a Terminator style bleak slick one note annihilation and control situation, this is nuanced and clever and very elaborate. So that more or less justifies the bulk on the novel. What disappointed me was the lack of finality in the ending. Figure you get through such a behemoth and there’d be a satisfying resolution, but the author chose to go with a more…possibilities are a plenty sort of thing and thus in the end for every answered question there was at least one unanswered one, for each conspiracy a sublayer and Barry just waltzed off into a new adventure. So obviously there’ll be a sequel or at least more novels set in the same universe. And odds are I’d be interested in checking them out too, because of MacAulty’s writing and imagination alone. Even if this one does leave a reader slightly cheated. The book is structured via electronic data entries by Barry and this epistolary approach seems completely unnecessary for the narration, outside of the fun ads that precede every entry. At first it alternates with Paul the Pirate, but then it’s predominantly Barry with only minor asides from Paul. And Paul is awesome, you kinda wanna hear more from him. AI thinker and ponderer, he meditates of the very nature of artificial intelligence and complex AI made social structures. So yeah…a great adventure with great characters and great ideas. Lots of greatness and much fun to be had with it. The audio narrator did a terrific job, pleasure to listen to. And…robots. Very enjoyable read. Recommended for science fiction fans. Also, again…freaking robots. Robots of every kind. So very awesome.

Rating: 5/5 Stars

Tags: Dystopian, Action, Robots, Adventure, Military, Humor, Bromance, Romance

My Thoughts:

If you ask me why I love stories with robots I wouldn’t have a sure answer. I just do. Maybe it’s because I watched them in Terminator or I, Robot and loved the steely thrill of the rogue AIs, or it could be something else.

The Robots of Gotham doesn’t just have scary robots, it has the whole range! From good to bad, sentient to lifeless, sarcastic to loyal, it’s a world where robots have advanced so much they’re citizens. Presidents, even!

Narrated in a private blog format that our main character records and converts into text format(how cool is that? It’d make blogging so much easier!), we’re taken on a high-stakes, tense and exciting mission which our man, Barry Simcoe, is reluctantly sucked into. He’s a gallant and sarky Canadian who, appearance-wise, doesn’t look like your typical hero and would very much like to keep his life, thank you. Despite that, through brash courage, the help of a Russian workaholic and some highly intelligent robots, and sheer luck, he’s catapulted into a robot conspiracy that could spell the end of human life.

Several notable things I enjoyed and appreciated:

▪Mention of a country that’s rarely found in fiction: Sri Lanka! When I read that I couldn’t believe my eyes, I’m not even patriotic but that just made me ecstatic I had to stop and let it sink in. It was just one line but oh, is it enough!

▪The underground excursions. Man, was that spooky and thrilling!

▪The bits of humor sprinkled throughout caused me to let out small hoots of laughter.

▪Getting to know about Rajapakse’s Colony. I want to know what happened!

I think there will be a sequel but don’t worry, it doesn’t end with a cliffhanger, most things are tied up and you feel like this chapter of the story has reached its conclusion. I didn’t much enjoy the politics side to it mainly ’cause it zoned me out, but that’s a personal preference and I do acknowledge that it was mostly necessary.

You know sometimes when you read a book you don’t want to stop to take notes so you can write a great review later because there’s just TOO MUCH to jot down? That’s what it was like for Todd McAulty’s book. The Robots of Gotham is intelligent, diverse, wry, bromantic and dangerous. Also a thick book, it took me a bit of time to finish it. As long as there’s scary robot scenes and spooky places in the sequel, I’ll be up for it!

I had some reservations about reviewing The Robots Of Gotham. On the one hand, John Joseph Adams, who bought us the amazing apocalypse triptych anthologies The End Is Nigh,The End Is Now,and The End Has Come,has a keen sense of great story-telling. On the other hand, I couldn’t quite square this book as being a genuine apocalypse novel even given that most countries are ruled by machines at the book’s opening.

Still, the premise was intriguing. Plus, there are robots in it.

The Robots Of Gotham opens with a bang, introducing our hero in the middle of his hotel being evacuated, before he’s shot at and almost blown up. Shortly thereafter he meets 19 Black Winter a robot with the Manhattan consulate, and a Russian medic name Sergei, who gets the absolute best lines in the story. Then, when he decides to try to impress a woman, he unwittingly sets in motion a chain of events that lead to the discovery of a deadly contagion, a powerful machine conspiracy, an enigmatic resistance, and a mysterious robot colony hiding underground. The action is breathtaking (even more so considering the main character doesn’t carry a gun), the suspense is pulse-pounding, and the comic relief light enough that when the occasional laugh-out-loud moment comes it doesn’t ruin the experience.

The world of The Robots Of Gotham is well-realised and believable, and the occasional interludes that give us greater insight into our machine overlords add a depth and a richness to the storyline. From AI babies to robot sex (admit it, you were curious) and down to the differing kinds of robot intelligence, you get to learn just enough to keep the storyline going but never really enough to answer all your questions – particularly the new questions that pop up after one of these asides. It’s a measure of how much the story immerses you in this world that those questions largely become unimportant when compared with the self-assured writing that almost turns the pages for you.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading The Robots Of Gotham. It’s not balls-out, gung-ho action. It’s smarter than that and much more entertaining. The politics are nuanced and the robots aren’t some kind of hive mind – they’re all individuals and not (always) out to enslave or kill all humans. In fact, whether good or evil, the robots are just cool. A lot of the little touches peppered here and there in the narrative lend weight to the overall vision of a civilisation in its days of decline while doing its best to pretend it isn’t happening. The blog entry adverts never failed to make me smile (another of those little touches), and some of the quirkier characters are more endearing that you might expect. Not everything gets tied up neatly though, and the last few chapters have a rushed feel to them. I’m hoping that means there’s going to be a sequel. There just has to be.

The Robots of Gotham by Todd McAulty- This is a big book about mankind's future and the full-on arrival of Artificial Intelligence. The world of 2083 is quite different than anyone could predict, or is it? There is a lot of talk nowadays of the dangers of AI and what it will mean to humans once that singularity is reached. That world is almost entirely ruled by machine intelligence. Some are partners with their human counterparts, while others are harsh, omnipotent rulers, to whom people are at best insignificant. Here we are given a travelogue of an America divided into different camps, some with robot overseers and some where old and frail governments of humans struggle to stay alive. The action starts off right away, which is good, because at times things get a bit too talky. There are some interesting AI reveals, and some well developed characters. One of the most entertaining books I've read lately.

The year is 2083 and humankind's neural synapses are slow... much, much slower than the processing speed that computers and robots can accomplish. Good faith and independent thought have allowed them to become citizens and even be voted to head nations, but there have been takeovers. And fascist regimes led by robots with intelligences past our wildest imaginations now have plans to rid the earth of humanity.

Told through the blog posts of a unlikely rebel, The Robots of Gotham has a little bit of everything: mech battles, stealth reconnaissance, biowarfare, and an entertaining misfit crew of robots and humans. The book ultimately reads as a series of missions that are designed to infiltrate and disband the robot control. Barry Simcoe, our Canadian narrator, is looking to get a jump on some tech deals in the vaccuum that war has caused in occupied Chicago. But after stumbling through an attack in the opening scene, he’s pulled into the world-wide conspiracy. He uses what little military background he has and some newfound friends to try to piece together the evidence.

At almost seven hundred pages, the book provides great depth and many layers of thought.  From cautionary tales of machine control to the definition of truth in times of war, the narrative extrapolates many of the issues the world is facing today. But it also meanders a bit. A couple “missions” were started without a true and finite purpose, which I thought hindered the narrative’s direction, but the overall urban-military and post-apocalptical setting helped to continue the tension. The cast of characters is also a draw... A Russian virologist, a Venezuelan army sergeant, a robot diplomat from the Kingdom of Manhattan, and a host of expat businesspeople who are holed up in a Barry’s hotel. 

Overall, I enjoyed The Robots of Gotham. It presents a future that is definitely scary for humans to look at, one that we instinctively cover our eyes to, but end up anxiously peeking at between our fingers. The book had me guessing until the end: Who is the good guy? Who is the bad guy? Who is going to win in the end? It is definitely a worthy addition to the genre.

Thank you to NetGalley, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, John Joseph Adams, and Todd McAulty for the advanced copy for review.

A near future USA in a world where machine intelligences have taken over much of the United States as well as the rest of the world is the setting for Robots of Gotham by Todd McAulty. An outstanding debut novel with a well-realized and frighteningly believable world.

The story is told through the eyes of Canadian businessman Barry Simcoe who arrives in Chicago to conduct some business when he finds that the war in Chicago isn’t quite as over as he thought it was. Barry finds himself saving a wounded diplomat robot and befriending a Russian doctor, a Chicago realtor, a Venezuelan soldier and a near-starving dog. If that’s not enough, he stumbles upon a plot that could mean the end of humanity.

If this sounds like a lot going on, it is. But McAulty skillfully plays the story out so that it never feels overwhelming. Barry makes for a great protagonist as he is smart and uncommonly brave. McAulty has created a rich, complex world and he has filled it with compelling characters and a fascinating plot.

The robot and machine characters are painted with the same care as the human characters, giving them depth, wit and purpose -- on both sides of the conflict. The story picks you up from the opening chapter and carries you relentlessly forward until the very end. There are enough twists and surprises to keep you engaged all along the way.

I loved the characters in this book and the world it is set in. The action is exciting and believable. This deserves to be one of the biggest hits of the summer and it is going to make my list for one of the top books of the year. I can’t wait to see where McAulty goes next. One of my favorite reads. Any fan of science fiction, thrillers, or just good writing should pick this up. Highly recommended.

I received an advance copy of this book from the publisher.

Subjugation by the Robot overlords, as told through the blog of a Canadian businessman Barry Simcoe (who happens to be at or in all the places and events as they matter) and, interspersed with the news feeds of a Jamaican Thought Machine. Once the storyline premise has been set, it is a flat out joy to read. At many times Adamesque in humor; the cast of characters is diverse between occupants and occupiers, and the machine entities of both the malevolent and benevolent types. I may have to check out the Open Mic at Top Shelf Books to hear chapter readings of the follow-up to this story.

I received an Advance Reader Copy from NetGalley and John Joseph Adams/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in exchange for an honest review.

Months ago, when I first became aware of The Robots of Gotham I knew I had to read this book. Firstly, the cover caught my eye, so props to Chrissy Kurpeski for an excellent job with the cover art. Secondly, the synopsis grabbed my attention in a big way, I knew this was going to be one hell of an adventure. The Robots of Gotham was a bold, and disturbing glimpse into a future where machines had become self-aware. Imagine if the world of The Terminator and I Robot came true. What if Skynet wasn’t just a fun idea from a movie and machines ran our country?
Governments all over the world are now under robot rule, and only a few counties still have humans running the show. The Robots of Gotham will make your head spin. The robots were everywhere and not all of them were friendly. These robots came in a wide range of forms with an even greater range of intelligence. Many were created for the sole purpose of becoming a military war machine, while others had less sinister roles.
From the first chapter, The Robots of Gotham was action packed and the thrill ride never stopped. There were shady characters. There were alliances with characters you don’t know if you could trust. There were many sides working against each other, not just human vs. machine, and figuring out who was working with whom was tricky at best. When the main character Barry and his robot counterpart Black Winter teamed up, it made me wonder if this was the future, and when it would arrive.
There were multiple side stories in addition to the main storyline. If you love science fiction filled with robots, artificial intelligence, suspense, and excellent characters then this book will be right up your alley. Todd McAulty did a kick ass job with the details and his writing style was excellent. I was very impressed that this is his debut novel. This is the kind of book that reminds me why I love science fiction, and is now in my top 10 list for the year, and sitting high on that list. I highly recommend this book, and don’t let the 688 pages deter you, it is worth your time.

Really excellent, very well-plotted with just the right pacing of action and exposition. The setting in Chicago was good, putting a well-meaning and not-quite-entirely-hapless Canadian at the center of the story was a nice touch, and the whole cast of major characters was a really good mix. The robots, though... they were very well-written, with the right amount of personality and just a touch of humor. The backstory vignettes via blog post were interesting, fleshing out the history without heavy-handed world-building. Despite the rapid-fire wrap-up near the end, there are even a few loose ends for readers to speculate over after reading. Very well-done.

One of the best robopocalypse books ever written. Grabbed me from the start and kept things going all the way through! Can't wait for the next book!
For those that aren't aware, this book begins with the robots ( excuse me) Sentient machines) having taken over a large portion of the world. We soon learn there are different factions, though, just as humans...some against humans, others for humans.

The best AI characters going since Banks and the culture is no longer with us.
Hope there will be a second visit to this world.