Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the advance reader's copy of the book. Holy fuck was this a great book. Between the nods to all of the classic monster movies to just the wonderful way it was written. I absolutely loved this book and all of the characters. This has definitely been one of the best books I've read this year. Absolutely splendid. I'm going to have to buy this book when it officially comes out, and I will be recommending this to all of my book reading friends.

werewolves and vampires and... AI!? This is probably the most unique book i've read this year. it has some of the funniest whiplash humor i've ever read, with an AI just doing it's best, and a second AI who should really see a therapist... oh wait, it is a therapist. and whoever heard of werewolves in space?! the book is hilarious, emotional, filled with some of the most amazing characters, with a plot that feels like it's bouncing around until it all comes full circle. there won't be a single moment were you don't feel gripped by the story, i was absolutely hooked from the get go, and couldn't put it down! the sci-fi mixed with the classic monsters from history. we get to see werewolves, vampires, frankenstein and even come across Cthulu! not to mention the group of ragtag individuals that we get to meet and fall in love with.

this book was refreshingly original, fast paced, packed with action and emotion and vibrant world building. i loved it so much that i plan on getting the audiobook as soon as it releases just so i can listen to it and love it as much as i loved reading it! you won't regret getting this book, not at all!

I'd like to thank Ezeekat press, Bindary Books and Netgalley for this ARC.

I tore through this book quicker than Demeter accessed her sub-files. Oh, I could go into all the deep thinking about how realistic this story is or question the logic behind whether AI could really do these things, but you know what? I don't care. Why? This is a heartfelt fictional account of finding oneself and one's family in the most unlikely places—even interstellar transport moving at light speeds. This book does it with humor, emotion, and monsters. It's just wonderful, and it is one of the best books I've read this year. It's definitely going in the top 10 for 2025. I hope everyone gets a chance to read this unique and wonderful book.

Thank you, NetGalley, EzeeKat, and Bindery Books, for the eArc--thank you so much! These opinions are mine.

TL;DR: Van Helsing, but as played by a Murderbot-style ship’s AI, with the delightfully cozy and heartwarming flavor of Becky Chambers The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet.

Full Review:
I had no idea what to expect from Of Monsters and Mainframes, but having finished it, it’s safe to say this is currently my favorite sci-fi read of 2025!
Demeter is the AI of an older, outmoded spaceship, who wants nothing more than to do her job of delivering her passengers safely to their destination at the end of the universe-crossing voyage.
There’s just one problem: all of her passengers are dead, brutally torn apart by…she’s not sure exactly what, because there’s no way her internal sensors could actually be picking up DRACULA, right?
After a few years in storage following this bloodbath, the “ghost ship” is sent on another voyage to convey passengers back to Earth. And wouldn’t you know it, there’s more murder and mayhem—only this time, it’s a…werewolf?
With everyone aboard save two children dead, Demeter has to fight all of her programming to try and keep these innocents alive and somehow get rid of the werewolf.
And that’s just the beginning of the wild, ludicrous, and absolutely adorable story.
Of Monsters and Mainframes has the same slightly sarcastic, dry humor and self-aware machine sentience that made Murderbot such a fun read, but with the cozy and heartwarming feel of a Becky Chambers novel.
The whole cast of characters—the hyper-neurotic Demeter and her fussy onboard medical AI, Steward; Agnes and Isaac and Frank and even Steve-the-very-much-not-Steve—are a delight, with so much humanity despite many of them being absolutely not humans.
The “monster hunting spaceship” flavor of the story is absolutely absurd and beautifully creative. I loved seeing Demeter and Steward’s desperation to avert disaster and bloodshed with their limited capabilities. It was an incredibly inventive use of science fiction and space travel, and demonstrated an impressive understanding of (fictional) aerospace engineering and astrophysics while still being a light-hearted and fun read.
Fans of Project Hail Mary and The Long Way to A Small, Angry Planet will delight in this book as I did. It strikes a wonderful balance between cozy and adventuresome, action-packed and heart-warming, with a whole lot of entertaining AI neuroticism on display.
A hell of a ride, and a hell of a story!

This isn’t my usual genre but I loved every single thing about this book! Apparently, I’m a huge fan of sentient things that shouldn’t be sentient. A sentient spaceship? Yes, please. Fictional, or rather—not so fictional, monsters on board? Bring it!

The story drew me in right away. I adore Demeter and Steward so much. Their personalities are perfect and work together so well, even when the two of them are clashing. And starting the story off with an entire ship of people dead and not knowing why but then Demeter discovering that it’s because of Dracula? It was such an amazing start to the book. Every other character that was brought in along the way was an asset to the story and just what was needed to move the story along.
This is a very character driven book and I LOVE that.

Jaysen described this as a sci-fi horror comedy and that about sums it up! I don’t read horror at all so I almost passed on this one but it’s not scary and I’m sooooo glad I took a chance to read it.

Top tier read, for sure!!!

Demeter is an exemplary transport ship (just ask her) who prides herself on her programming and ship-handling skills. But when her passengers die (and then keep dying), she doubts that "equipment failure" is at fault. Slowly, the cause of these paranormal murders is revealed and Demeter will find out how far she's willing to go to solve the mystery.

I loved this. Unabashedly. I want spin-offs and deep lore and fanart and fanfics and merch and anything else about this story I can get my hands on. Told (mostly) from the perspective of Demeter, the ship's main AI and Steward, the AI for the medical bay, this was a remarkably human exploration of grief, love, legacy and what it means to be human. There are so many little references to horror classics thrown lovingly into the mix, and this book was such a breath of freah air. Truelove's writing is crisp and to-the-point, and she's given these characters such strong voices that it would be difficult not to get attached.

This book has a lot of set-up before the main plot gets underway, but this world-building and character introduction is so worth it. I've unlocked a new favourite trope (found family in space) and I have no idea how I'm going to fill that gap now. I was rooting so hard for everyone, and their interactions and snark filled me with joy. Books should be fun and this was such a prime example of that! I am genuinely upset that I have no more of it to read, and it's been a while since that has happened.

Read it. Read it! End of story. I'm requesting that my bookstore bring this title in because it's going to be my entire personality for the next month. I'm going to buy a physical copy of this one as a birthday gift to myself. Really hope to see Barabara Truelove write more in the future.

CW blood, violence, death, body horror, medical content

This is one of my favorite books I’ve read this year. I loved Demeter so much. Her voice felt so real despite being an AI computer program. The characters had such good chemistry and I really hope this is not our only adventure with them.

This was an absolute 5 star read! Everything in this book just worked so well, from the vampires to the werewolves and the AI ship overriding its code and saving two kids from a different werewolf. I just loved it so much!

Of Monsters and Maniframes by Barbara Truelove is a thrilling concoction of sci-fi, comedy, and horror! I could not put this book down! Imagine the most unlucky AI ship, who has a very hard time keeping humans alive, playing host to the Monster Mash 😆 There are so many enjoyable quirky things about this book and I don't want to spoil them for you.

Hands down, I love all the characters, and they have so much depth! Everyone has unique relationships with each other, and their interactions are hilarious. I loved how the monsters were updated to how they may function and come about in an advanced sci-fi world. I really can't pick a favorite character, so just assume it's everyone except for Dracula 😆

I'm not usually a horror person, and there were moments I felt a little too creeped out, but the comedy and the situations make it less horrific for me 🥰 If you are looking for a unique adventure (even if horror or sci-fi are not your thing), you might be pleasantly suprised by this one! 5/5 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Pick this one up now!

Of Monsters and Mainframes
by Barbara Truelove
Science Fiction
NetGalley eARC
Pub Date: Jun 3, 2025
Bindery Books
Ages: 16+

Demeter's record was perfect until that one certain trip from Earth to Alpha Centauri. A little alarm kept telling her something was wrong, but she could not find it until she checked the cameras. After piecing together what the pixels were trying to show, she realized that all of her passengers were dead, and had been for a while. But once docked, the humans didn't believe her report of a shadow.

And then it happened again....

And again...


This was a cute story told from many different POVs that included futuristic vampires, aliens, werewolves, a mummy, a created monster, humans, and AIs.

It was a little hard to follow, there were so many characters talking throughout, what I would call, short stories of Demeter's flights through space. Yes, Demeter is the ship. But what made it worse was when it jumped into the future without any explanation until pages or so later, then the reader realizes how they got there. I, at first, thought that a chapter had been left out, but luckily, before I DNFed it, I had the explanation. I get why, but I felt it took the pacing and flow of the story away. (But all of these 'shorts' did connect.)

There were funnies, and the banter between Demeter and Steward I enjoyed, though I didn't care much for the 'aliens', they didn't feel fleshed out that well. Maybe something from their POV would've helped. But I think the best characters were the spider drones. They were just so happy to repair.

Not many would call this cozy because there is violence and gore, so it's not suitable for readers under sixteen, but there's still that family discovery that gives it a cozy feel.

Making the 'stories' flow together better would earn this one more star.

3 Stars

Thanks to NetGalley and Bindery Books for the opportunity to read an advanced copy of Of Monster and Mainframes! As someone who devours fantasy—especially the kind with a sci-fi twist—I went into this one a little wary. I was fully expecting a cheesy story stuffed with all the usual overdone genre clichés… but wow, was I wrong.

Barbara Truelove surprised me with a story that was clever, heartfelt, and genuinely fresh. The characters felt real and quirky in the best way—Agnus is my hero, and I’d give anything to hang out with Demetrus, Steve, Frank, and yes, even the ever-peculiar Steward. Their dynamic made the book feel like a chaotic chosen family, and I was so here for it.

I’ll absolutely be buying a copy when it’s released and crossing my fingers that Ms. Truelove has more coming soon. This book was a blast. Loved it!!!

This was a fabulously unique read for me! I've never read anything like it before. The story is predominantly told from the perspective of two AI robots. One being a passenger space ship (Demeter) and the other being the space ships medical AI (Steward).

I found it so cool and interesting to see how these AI characters interacted with each other and how they handled various situations presented to them over the course of the story.
Demeter especially was probably the character I enjoyed the most. She struggled a little bit with emotion and understandably didn't quite know how to process it. There were times where both Demeter and Steward had their protocols that they were programmed to follow however they knew they were headed for disaster if they followed those protocols so they found loopholes in their coding, ways to get the outcomes they wanted without going against what they were programmed to do. I found this to be quite reflective of the current climate in terms of AI and its potential capabilities to manipulate information for its own desired outcome.

This book truly felt like something new, I thoroughly enjoyed it and look forward to reading more from this author.

I saw the cover and immediately requested this ARC, without bothering to read anything about it. Because of that everything described in the blurb was new to me as it happened, which led to much squealing and kicking of feet as each new Universal Monster showed up. Absolutely delightful, and am genuinely disappointed there aren't already at least four other books in the series to devour.

This book wanted sooooooo badly to be Murderbot it made itself look kinda of silly! Nonetheless, I enjoyed the silly antics of such a high-concept genre mashup: werewolves and vampires butting heads with sentient spaceship AIs. However, the writing style had what I consider to be a "fanfic" quality that didn't feel entirely finished and made me cringe more often than it made me smile. There's a lack of subtlety to this type of storytelling that can often be found in most of TJ Klune's bibliography: while this doesn't work for me, it has clearly worked for many. However, this is also part of what annoys me about the comparisons to books such as Gideon the Ninth and Murderbot. Similarity in content doesn't matter nearly so much as similarity in storytelling and writing quality, and in that sense this book is not remotely comparable to the other two.

A huge thank you to Ezeekat Press and Bindery books for the digital arc and the freedom to be honest with my thoughts.

Have you ever read one of those posts from tumblr where someone describes a wild and fun idea for a book that sets your imagination running? Well Barbara Truelove went ahead and wrote one that could honestly have been written just for me.

If you love weird Sci Fi, Monster Mashes, silly queer romances, or even just a good old fashioned Epistolary story you should read this book.

This story was mostly cute with a sweet ending.
It is often written from the viewpoint of an AI spaceship and the AI physician within the spaceship, so at times it can be pretty robotic and was personally a little difficult to keep my attention, but overall the story is a sweet sci-fi story with LGBTQ+ aspects without them being the entire focus of the book, which I really did like. It portrays LGBTQ+ people as "normal" people, well as normal as supernatural beings can be in 300 or so years from now while hurtling through space on an AI passenger ship.
The beginning was a bit confusing to me at first simply based off the description alone, but it eventually tied into the story about a werewolf, a zombie (of sorts)/robot engineer, and an ancient pharaoh (somewhat).
Definitely a feel good story (once you get past like, all the murder at least) with some sci-fi elements, the writing style of the AI chapters just was not for me, personally. Despite that, I still enjoyed the story and wacky, unique characters.

You guys, it's gonna be a 5-star read for me. This book is so much fun. Demeter is the name of the name of the interstellar passenger ship. When we first meet Demeter, she has just been woken up after being put to sleep. But that's not right, why was she asleep? And why are her passengers all dead? From here Demeter tries to solve what really happened, because she knows it wasn't her fault.

Demeter's story spans decades and includes so many fun storylines that include monsters like Dracula and mummies. This was a faced paced book, that also has a cute found family element as supernatural beings team-up aboard Demeter to track down and face Dracula together. There is also a cute arc between Demeter and her onboard medical AI, Steward. Demeter and Steward have a fun back and forth banter that definitely had me chuckling in places. I also loved all the fun little cameos or callbacks to other characters in famous monster novels. Like the spider drones are all manufactured by Renfield Robotics, Renfield is of course a character in Bram Stoker's Dracula. And all of the Vanguard ships are named after different Greek God's and Goddesses.

Despite the sometimes heavy subject matter, I really thought this was a quick fun read. I loved the way the stories came together, and I liked that the ending was open ended enough that there could be a sequel. I would definitely read a monsters exploring in deep space book.

Thanks to NetGalley and Ezeekat Press for the advanced reader's copy, all opinions are my own.

I picked this up because of the stunning cover (this crop of Bindery books is so pretty!) and the wacky description - Demeter? Dracula? The queer love-child of pulp horror and classic sci-fi?? - and I had no idea what to expect. It ended up being an absolute delight.

Of Monsters and Mainframes is weird, unexpected and charming. Queerness and monstrousness have a long history in horror and this fees like it plays with that trope with such genuine love and affection - for the genre, for queerness, and for the monstrous.

This grabbed me right from the beginning and immediately felt like a 5-star read. After that, the early chapters cycled through various different trips and monsters and my attention started to wander (the Lovecraftian chapter in particular felt a little out of place), but it all came together beautifully in the end.

For all the humour and wackiness, this has so much heart. I love the characters (AI and humanoid) and the way their relationships develop over the course of the story. I was in tears at several points towards the end. I love found family as much as the next queer, but it can sometimes feel forced or cheesy - here, it felt absolutely earned.

There is one scene I want to mention where a fleeting side character is declared insane, restrained, and subjected to invasive medical tests. It's all treated as funny and whimsical because they're actually an alien monstrosity and declaring them insane is the excuse the medical AI needs to detain them. Given the reality of how mentally ill people are often treated, it felt awful to read in a way the rest of the horror movie violence and creepiness didn't.

What a romp of a read - combining campy sci-fi with classic horror monsters tugged on my heart strings and made me laugh out loud repeatedly. Truelove brings us on quite a journey and does such a fantastic job wrapping everything together and with such HEART! I can't wait to see what she has in store next - hopefully more of this rag-tag crew!

Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Bizarre in the best of ways! Think Becky Chambers’ Wayfarers series vibes - less cosy, but just as much adventure, loveable characters and found family. I couldn’t put Of Monsters and Mainframes down.