GO IN BLIND. It's quirky and weird and entertaining, and yet it touches on some really difficult topics at the same time. Jaysen picked the perfect manuscript for this Bindery project!!

Of Monsters and Mainframes” started strong but faltered toward the end. I was hoping the storylines would converge more cohesively, but they ended up feeling somewhat disjointed. That said, I still really liked the concept—it had a lot of promise.

*I received an ARC via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Thanks for the free book.*

Classic horror meets space travel plus AI in one of the wildest mash-ups I have read in years! Frankenstein? Werewolves? Vampires? Mummies? Spaceship board computer having beef with the medbot? And soooo many references to tons of other things from literary history and more.

While I enjoyed this book I also found it a bit overwhelming and sometimes even annoying at parts. It escalated a bit too much to my liking and while I enjoyed the ending, it was really a bit hard to believe at some point. But this was fun!

Did you love WALL·E and the robot romance between WALL·E and EVE? Do you enjoy jokes about AI, computer code, and math? Do you also love Dracula, werewolves, Frankenstein, aliens, and Egyptian mythology?

Well then buckle up because this is the book for you. Full of humor, love, hope, and adventure, this book makes you root for the monsters and makes you ask yourself - if a supercomputer can rewrite their code for love then why can’t we?

This was a very ambitious debut for Barbara Truelove, but to me.. it fell a bit flat. The characters were a bit annoying, and the plot was the same thing over and over and over again with no deviation from the script. It just wasn't what I was looking for and that is ok. Not every book is for everyone

This book was like an abstract work of art. The more you looked into it the more abstract it got but the more you slowly began to understand.
Once everything clicked together for me it was a wild ride till the end!

This was so strange and wonderful.. full of interesting characters you'd never think would cross paths (vampires, werewolves, spaceship AI).. it was sweet and exciting with just a hint of romance. I loved every second of it.

Such a unique mix of a space adventure, old-time monster movie, and coming of age story. No words really describe it, but this story was suspenseful and heartwarming and difficult to put down.

this book absolutely ruled. it was such a fun, clever ride that i did not want to end. it was a tremendously thrilling blend of scf-fi, horror, and comedy. fans of monster movies, douglas adams, and tamsyn muir will eat this up. this author is immediately on my must-follow list now.

I can’t adequately express how much I adored this book! It’s almost like if you combined The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy with the Universal Monsters franchise - a combination that has no business working as well as it does but Truelove makes it work!

And how she makes it work! This book has it all: romance, action, suspense, found family, and quirky humor with just the right amount of horror. I couldn’t recommend this book enough. I am SO excited we are getting more books from Truelove and whether she is coming back to this world for more adventurous with these characters or whether she’s going to write something totally new - I am on board!

Thank you to NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
I am wildly offended that more people are not talking about this book. It has everything — space travel, mythical monsters, AIs falling in love!! Our MC is an AI who is just trying to get from point A to point B but somehow accidentally missed the vampire aboard their vessel that has now slaughtered the entire ship. Whoopsie. This book made me laugh, cry and scream in terror a bit and I haven’t stopped recommending it to people even before I finished it. It was 10/10 a good time.
5 stars.

I was not expecting this to be so fun!! I absolutely loved it and can't believe how different this was. A sci fi with old school monsters? Can't say I've ever read anything like this. I feel in love with Demeter and their sassiness. Agnus having a full storyline was great because I truly wanted to know what happened to her after she was off the ship. I cannot wait to see what Truelove comes out with next!

This was so fun and quirky! I wasn’t sure what to expect based on the summary but I wasn’t intrigued. It exceeded my expectations for sure. Loved every second of it, loved the characters, the banter, the play on words. Everything, Giving it 5 stars without even blinking.

I had high expectations for this book. It had everything I want to see in a book—genre bending SFF with found family elements? Space adventure? queer characters? Yes please! And while I did enjoy reading the book, I think it fell a little short for me.

Let's start with the good stuff:
- Queer characters
- a story that seems like a love letter to classic monsters
- a quirky storytelling full of shenanigans
- the sentient spaceship AIs

The downside for me?
- The "showdown" seems a little anticlimactic, especially when finding Dracula is a such a big point in the synopsis
- Lot of perspectives and it keeps jumping around from character to character
- Pacing seemed off, 80% of the book felt like a long prequel/backstory before we even got to the main plot
- Characterization for other characters seemed a bit lacking and the relationship dynamics feel weird sometimes, either this is because of the POVs jumping around or the weird pacing
- The Big Bad Villain didn't seem Big Bad enough (we know so little about the Dracula in this story??)

So yep. This was an entertaining read overall. This much is true. I just wish it had reached my expectations a little more 😅

This was so weird and so fun? The idea of this whole book alone had me hooked. I’m excited to see what Barbara Truelove writes next :)

3.5 stars
What a fun and bizarre little book

I definitely don’t think this will be for everyone, but I enjoyed it quite a bit! The plot and the synopsis don’t really pick up until over 60% of the way, and so even though the stories at the beginning are fun, they are mostly set up and I was kinda confused about the purpose until I got to that point. I kinda wish the synopsis was more vague because of how little it is actually in the book and that’s what I was most excited about. Overall though, a very fun read!

Thank you to NetGalley for allowing me to have an arc!

Fun and creative story if a little too on the nose for today. Reminiscent of an updated alien storyline with Ai as the not so benevolent protagonist.

Delightful. Delicious. Perhaps the most nakedly fun, wildly omnivorous, playful novel of mishmash lore I've read since Roger Zelazny's A Night in the Lonesome October. This chews through the scenery, and the scenery includes multiple load-bearing walls and most of the mainstays of the nerdy and the fantastic since a night in a cold lonesome 1816.

a fun weird and quirky plot but it felt like the author was trying to shove so much into one book that even the synopsis felt confusing. it's actually incredible how much happens in this book but it felt SO boring. Almost gave me the same vibes as the Murderbot diaries but none of the cast are remotely interesting enough to care about. (Except for one.) Severely lacking in anything that is memorable.

Of Monsters and Mainframes is a thoroughly charming and wildly inventive read! After all, who can resist a sci-fi saga featuring a sarcastic AI ship, Dracula wreaking havoc across the stars, and a supporting cast that includes a werewolf, a Frankenstein-like engineer, and a resurrected pharaoh? The fusion of classic monster mythology with futuristic tech is brilliantly executed and surprisingly fresh.

Told largely through the perspective of the AI ship, Demeter, the story manages to have an incredible amount of heart for something narrated by a computer. Demeter’s evolution from task-driven transport vessel to determined protector with real emotional depth is one of the book’s many triumphs. The crew dynamics are hilarious, chaotic, and deeply touching, especially as they confront what it means to be labeled a “monster” in a world that fears anything different.

While the first couple of chapters take their time establishing the world, once the story clicks into gear, it absolutely soars! The writing is sharp, the tone strikes a perfect balance between camp and sincerity. It’s hard not to fall in love with this misfit crew of supernatural oddballs as they face down the ultimate evil with wit, courage, and loyalty.

Easily one of my favorite sci-fi reads of the year. This book is absolutely worth the wild ride. I highly recommend it for fans of genre mashups, unique protagonists, and found families in space.