'People haven’t yet forgotten what happened, but someday they will— they always do.'

A wonderful experience as a reader is to pick up a book you know little about, and then to be blown away by the reading experience. This happened to with Katie M. Flynn’s rather wonderful The Companions, one of the most affecting novels about androids I have read in a long time.

The book seems to have garnered lukewarm appreciation on Goodreads, which I suspect is due to the fact that not only is it a bit of a slow burn, but its complexly intertwined narrative is told from about eight different viewpoints in alternating chapters. Do not let this put you off though. The book packs a real emotional wallop as the years, and then the decades, pass by.

A devastating virus has resulted in mass deaths, quarantine and closed-off borders, and has also (inevitably) increased the stratification and class divisions that modern society is rife with. Metis – which kind of reminded me of Wallace Corp from Blade Runner – develops what it calls ‘companions’, crude wheeled robot-like structures (though they do evolve into ‘skinjobs’ eventually) into which the dying’s final memories can be downloaded as a last bid for the wealthy to cling desperately to the final vestiges of their loved ones.
Of course, the last thing Metis anticipated was for its ‘companions’ to develop consciousness … Here the key character is Lilac, a V1 upload after being murdered in her teens. Once a companion, she then defies her security programming and embarks on a rather rambling quest to track down her murderer.

Lilac encounters a motley bunch of characters along the way. These include Cam, who works at an old age home (in the book it is referred to as an ‘elder-care facility’); Rolly, a teenager living on a slowly dying farm whose father supplements their income by running a machine that breaks down and incinerates ‘retired’ companions as they’re replaced with the latest models; to Gabe, a stubborn and damaged nine-year-old orphan.

How all these disparate characters are drawn into the arcs of each other’s orbits is what gives this book its gravitas. The centre though is always Lilac, whom we follow from the very inception of the Metis companions, to a point far in the future where they are ultimately deemed a threat to humanity and hence outlawed.
Robots and androids so often get the short end of the stick in science fiction as a handy deus ex machina. It is truly eye-opening to read a book that seriously looks at the ethical and psychosocial ramifications of uploaded consciousness.

Great science fiction is not only about ideas though, but has to have believable characters in order to allow for an immersive, lived-in reality. Flynn takes a risk with her diverse cast, especially a character as young and mercurial as Gabe, but it is a risk that pays off in spades. This is a deceptively ambitious, but hugely successful novel.

Flynn deftly handles a difficult subject matter without coming across as preachy or manipulative. Initially the murder subplot caused a raised eyebrow for me, as I saw the potential for melodrama. But the ultimate resolution of The Companions is as unexpected as it is heart-wrenching.

What I also especially liked about the book is that it wears its genre stripes lightly. It is a real treasure, and a must-read for any fans of good fiction. You do not have to be a science fiction geek to be deeply affected by it.
On the other hand, genre fans will pick up on the references and echoes that point to a larger dialectic about robot consciousness that is a staple of so much SF (a recent example is the Murderbot series by Martha Wells). The Companions is one of my top reads of 2020 thus far.

The settings and the power relationships in the Companions are all compelling when taken one at a time. Sometimes while reading I was reminded me of Jean Hegland's Into the Forest. Those settings haunt me to this day. Flynn brought me into some equally poignant circumstances in The Companions too. But, I would have given anything for a cast list and a flow chart to keep track of everyone's comings and goings. There's quite a bit of body-switching and several flashbacks that made it difficult for me to empathize with the characters. I found that I personally barely cared for any of the companions by the end -but maybe that was the author's intention? To bring the reader face-to-face with how difficult it is for human beings to empathize no matter how much time they give one another?

This was a really good idea and some parts of it were very interesting. There wasn't a lot of world-building, but I thought there was enough. Lilac was interesting if not always sympathetic, and was probably the easiest character to care for. Unfortunately, I had trouble connecting with the story, and I just didn't care one way or the other about most of the characters. There were so many stories, and characters changed names depending on which type of body they inhabited, so there were several times I paused to try and recall a particular individual's history.

Some things about the story never quite made sense to me, (spoiler alert - like how the families of companions could have been persuaded to allow the companions to be destroyed without fighting for them. It seemed people paid a lot to try and keep some version of their family members alive) but they were minor for the most part.

The story was interesting, even if some things about it didn't work for me. The author is talented, and I wouldn't discount reading more of her work.

An unsettling book for sure this hits close to home at the moment. However, if you are looking at world-building and really getting deep into the characters, this book meanders. The premise is certainly fascinating.

Fascinating cyperpunk novel that deals with philosophical questions such as what makes us human? What makes us different from animals, machines? Can the complexity of our brain be reduced to an algorythmical process, as our personality, our memories?
What are we without our memories, our bodies, without a soul?
If, and should our minds be uploaded, what right would a digital person have? Who would own that data? Could it be misused?

This cyberpunk novel follows 'Lilac' on her road to finding answers. She is a companion, her mind uploaded to a tin on wheels after an unfortunate fall of a cliff. Although most models are command-driven, she still seems to have free will, and escapes her service.

The story is told from eight different points of view, some human, some companion, and deals with issues such as loneliness, love, gender issues, memory, personality, and climate change.

The novel's main theme touches Locke's fundamental rights, like 'life, 'liberty, and 'property.' and the conception of identity and the self.

If we would 'cheat' death, have interchangeable bodies, have our minds uploaded to a machine, what are we then? And what right would a digital person have? Who would own your mind, your memories, your data, and could that data be misused? How would we deal with a trauma of experiencing our own deaths? And what if we would change our older bodies with a younger 'vessel?'

Mind transfer/mind uploading seems to be possible in the future, but should we, if we could? This work of fiction deals with some of these ethical issues.

Another (Dutch) review can be found here:
https://www.hebban.nl/recensie/sandra...

An interesting, and extremely timely, premise -- but unfortunately, the writing dragged a bit and I wasn't able to get into this one.

What I Loved:
I really enjoyed the beginning of this book. I liked the story that was being told and loved where I thought the book was going to go.

How I Felt:
Overall, I found this book to be a bit of a let-down. The story started strong, and I was really invested. It sort of stumbled and never found its footing again about 30-40% in.

A Companion is the mental awareness of a human that has been placed into a robotic casing. These casings range from low-end R2-D2-like robots all the way up to human-looking companions. People lease companions for friendship, to keep family members with them when they near death, and a variety of other reasons.

The number of characters was overwhelming. The beginning started with a companion, Lilac, and a young girl quarantined in a home. The companion is sharing her life’s story with the girl, and I was really interested in where the plot was headed. Then, we meet a young employee at a nursing home, then a young girl on the street, then an actor/companion, and the list just keeps going. It became a confusing list of characters that I couldn’t connect with and didn’t care about.

The writing was good. I liked where the story was going at the start. I was intrigued and flew through the beginning of the book. Each individual section of the story was actually interesting, but it felt like starting a new book at the beginning of each chapter, and I didn’t want that. I was looking for a full story that would fill out the first character’s plot.

The story places the reader in a California high-rise with a mother and daughter, and their companion. The companion tells the story of her death to the girl, and it’s interesting. She was murdered and in all these years has not been able to find the murderer through her research in her down-time. She escapes her high-rise family and shows up at a nursing home where her murderer lives. She shouldn’t have been able to do this, as companions are command-based, and yet Lilac seems to be able to control her own actions. Through a domino effect of events, Lilac’s actions create a shut-down of all companions. There are a few that survive and go underground to form a rebellion.

Content Warning:
This book contains references to murder and quarantine due to a virus outbreak.

To Read or Not To Read:
I would recommend The Companions for readers that enjoy a variety of short stories in the science fiction genre.

I was provided an advanced reader's copy of this book for free. I am leaving my review voluntarily.

Rough to start a book about a quarantine during a quarantine, but that's the decision I made... Luckily The Companions isn't really about a pandemic-- it's about one specific aspect of the response: the creation of "companions" who possess the minds and memories of humans who died. Cool concept! And quick read... though sometimes too quick. By the end of the book, so much time had passed, so many characters had changed bodies, and so many locations were mentioned, I wasn't entirely sure who/how/what was actually going on. An enjoyable quick read, but a bit scattered for me.

What a book to be reading right now! This post-apocalyptic (in more ways than one) novel takes place in near-future California. There are years of quarantine due to new viruses. Really. This really affected how I read this book—I was both excited and repelled by the idea of years of quarantines, never going outside, etc. After the quarantines are lifted, people need to readjust and children have to learn how to be in the wider world.

I would LOVE to hear the author’s take on her book vs our current scenario.

What does jeep this book from hitting too close to home is that, in addition to people, there are companions. A company has perfected a way of removing a person’s memory/personality from their body soon after death—and placing it into a fabricated body. These companions are then leased—by people looking for servants, or by their own family, or by their employer. The companions are facing their own apocalyptic scenario.

I enjoyed this book, it was a pretty quick read, and it was also a very unusual experience.

Gallery/Scout Press and NetGalley provided me with an electronic copy of The Companions. I was under no obligation to review this book and my opinion is freely given.

The Companions is a dystopian story, complete with a quarantine after a highly contagious virus has made it impossible for the living to go outside. The Metis Corporation has capitalized on this, helping to create a new class of people from the consciousness of those are dying. The wealthy can afford to stay as companions to their family, but others are hired out to strangers. 16 year old Lilac has been leased out, but soon realizes that she is able to defy commands and sets off to find the person who killed her.

The Companions suffered from too many perspectives that did not have any meaningful connection to the main premise. The author made promises in the synopsis that were never delivered, especially in regards to the overall story. This might have made an exciting mystery/thriller, had the author taken the time to build the suspense. I really wanted to care about Lilac and her quest, to be taken on her journey, but I sadly did not. For these reasons, I would not recommend The Companions to other readers.

This dystopian novel really gave me Never Let Me Go vibes. The concept is so creepy. I LIKED IT!
Thank you, Gallery/Scout Press, for gifting me this DARC via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Katie M. Flynn’s debut novel The Companions follows eight different narrators, companions and humans, over a span of 20+ years as her characters live through quarantine, the advancement of androids from metal bots into nearly human form, and the recall of companions after some of them have bypassed their command drives. Flynn’s novel is ambitious in its storytelling, aspiring to the likes of David Mitchell, and her premise holds great potential for exploring notions of quarantine, big corp, memory, companionship, and human experience. However, what starts off as an intriguing if all-too-relevant dystopian novel becomes slightly overworked in the voice of a few unnecessary and uninteresting characters before it fizzles out in an unclimactic ending.

Flynn writes two or three really strong characters, but even these best characters seem to change over the time span of the novel and act out of character. For instance, when one loses a portion of memory, she begins acting more violently and carelessly than she had up to that point. These changes seem less a depiction of character development and instead show the difficulty a writer faces in maintaining consistent characters over a long fictional time period. The novel would have benefitted from a stronger focus on these compelling characters rather than the attempt to see them through the perspective of other, less interesting characters who ultimately don’t further the story.

The Companions also misses opportunities to delve into the stakes of its own plot. While the synopsis pitches the titular companions of the novel as an ethically-questionable and technological result of quarantine, the novel itself never develops the implications of the virus and consequent quarantine. They loosely set up a class-based system within the novel, but that thread is soon abandoned. Quarantine remains a simple plot device that isn’t really even necessary (it’s just as believable that a corporation would invent and market companions without a the population being under quarantine) and it ends abruptly before half the novel is over, leaving the reader who was pulled-in by this line of the synopsis a bit dissatisfied.

Still, Flynn’s novel raises interesting questions about what constitutes personhood and explores the lasting emotional connections—good and bad—between people. I would have liked to see more emphasis on these aspects of the novel, but at least they are present if not central. Flynn also questions the desirability of immortality, while remembering that technology, like humans, ages over time. Overall, The Companions falls pretty short of David Mitchell’s science fiction or Margaret Atwood’s virus-induced dystopia. But despite this novel’s shortcomings—perhaps even because of its shortcomings—I think it would be good choice for a lively book club chat.

Thanks to #NetGalley for a copy of #TheCompanions in exchange for an honest review.

I’m disappointed! I really thought that I was going to enjoy that hell out of this book and unfortunately that didn’t happen.

This debut novel about a viral outbreak and quarantine is the perfect book to read during this uncertain time we are living today. It’s so much more than that though. It is a story of love and survival and grief and revenge. The journey of our protagonist in search of catharsis for a tragedy that happened during childhood is rendered so perfectly through the experiences of eight narrators, each with their own voice. The author trusts the reader is smart enough to follow the action. It never feels that the language or plot are dumbed down in order for a more cohesive storyline. I believe this author has one hell of a talent and it’s not to be missed or overlooked.

This book had an interesting premise which captured my attention, but there were a lot of characters introduced and the time span was really long so things got confusing.


I received an advance copy. All thoughts are my own.

So here’s the story with this book…it grabbed my attention the moment it appeared on Netgalley, it had all the right elements for an excellent dystopian read. So I downloaded it and then the negative reviews came in, one after another, readers complaining about the pacing, the plotting, the mess of characters. It was discouraging enough to put the book on the back burner and there it languished until recently, never quite forgotten. And then it somehow was just the book I was in the mood for. Mind you, in the time in between Companions has acquired a terrifying relevance to real world. The characters stuck in a lock down, a social isolation producing a new method of social engagements, through the eponymous companions. Consciousness transfers enable the future world to offer friends and assistants to those in need or even want of one, a personality imbued beings ranging from a rolling can to a rendering so realistic as to pass for a real person. Traditionally, these companions do not have free will, but evolution being what it is, one, a young girl, ends up with one, a will that drives her to shake off her societally imposed bonds and set off to find her killer. And thus the story begins. A story that spans years and years, from a world on a lock down to one that finally becomes free. Told through almost self contained but cleverly interweaved narratives, the plot drives on in leaps and bounds across time and place. I believe that’s where the other reviewers’ accusations of disjointedness come in and it is there to an extent, especially in the second 50%, but it does work altogether as a cohesive total. It might be a debut novel thing…the author tries to cram a lot of ideas and characters into a relatively short page count and it gets somewhat muddled. Plus you’re dealing with consciousness transfers and body hopping and characters going from kids to adults, so some confusion is inevitable. But it’s worth it to stick around and sort it out, because there is an interesting and compelling story underneath it all. And granted, maybe not the most original, consciousness transfers have been done, by the ever excellent John Scalzi recently and others I’m not thinking of right now, but wherein Scalzi plays it for fast laughs, here it’s a genuinely meditative drama in a way on what it means to be a person, to have a personality, on what can be edited or acquired, on what drives us forward. It’s a world where death is no longer the end, so there’s more space to speculate on all those things. The differences and similarities of minds and bodies, minds in bodies. The world without end is still a starkly lonely place in this story, but a strangely inviting one. This definitely isn’t for everyone, but for me it was well worth the read, glad I waited too (albeit unintentionally), since this is now disturbingly timely and relevant. For fans of literary science fiction and dystopias this should offer some food for thought. Approach with patience and pay attention to characters, there are many. Thanks Netgalley.

Oh Boy! What a time to read this book. It has a virus quarantine at its core. It has machines of varied human qualities interacting with real humans. The world in in tragic decline and criminal activity seems boundless. I found this creepy in its relevance and spooky characters abound. It’s brilliance will sneak up on you in the most unexpected way. The cast of characters offer a glimpse into the future with all of it’s resigned indifference. I felt for the human caretakers they were dedicated and sincere in their emotions.

The Companions is a sweeping near-future dystopian that spans many years and explores the connections between many characters, creating a beautifully earnest vision of a future that feels all too real right now. This story hit me in a way that I haven’t experienced since I read Station Eleven, and I love this slow, deliberate style of story-telling. What Station Eleven did with the post-apocalyptic genre, The Companions does for science fiction, melding and mixing literary fiction with the speculative genre in a very sincere and realistic way.

The Companions opens in a United States under quarantine because of a dangerous and highly contagious virus moving throughout the world. People are sequestered in their apartments, and are, inevitably, bored out of their minds. Maybe that opening sounds a little too close to reality right now, but the story does open up from there in a very sci-fi way. In The Companions, people can elect to have their consciousness uploaded when they die, so that they can return in android form and serve as Companions to their families or to other people.

There’s a “big bad” company, Metis Corporation, at the core of this Companion process, and it actually owns the intellectual property of each and every person uploaded into their system. These Companions are from many different backgrounds and are uploaded under totally different circumstances. Some are murder victims, some are elderly individuals who elect to be uploaded to spend more time with their families, and some are just people who choose to sell their consciousnesses for whatever reason. Nearly all of the people uploaded into Companions, though, have some sort of trauma resulting from their deaths. This trauma starts breaking through in (sometimes) dangerous ways, and Companions must eventually deal with a world that created them, but no longer wants them.

The Companions follows many characters, and explores the relationships between humans, between Companions, and in human/Companion relationships. The story spans many, many years, and we see some characters grow up, some characters die, and some characters change into very different people than who they open as. People change forms, change bodies, and lose memories. It’s a story of reincarnation, of aging, of love, and of a changing world. It’s really beautiful and I can’t recommend it enough.

Bottom Line: 5/5 star read. This book got me out of a bit of a reading slump, and that’s the highest praise I can give a book. Not only that, but it gave me serious Station Eleven vibes and has the depth of a novel twice its length.

Thanks to Netgalley and the Publisher for providing me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review! The Companions is out now!

I found The Companions boring and I really couldn't get into it. Which stinks because I was looking forward to reading. I got about 1/2 through before I decided to give up.

This was a good futuristic horror read about a virus. This book is a bit relevant to our times now and it scared me but it was a good read. It was written well and the story was developed well. I liked the twists that the author incorporated such as all the didn't forms of life in the book. I recommend if you're in the mood for a futuristic novel with some horror elements mixed in.