I love a cozy robot book. This was sweet and quirky and suxh a quick read to brighten up someone's day.

In the not too distant future, where California is an independent country, robots have fought hard for their rights of liberation. They can't marry or have a bank account, but they can work independently and choose their jobs. It's something. And the robot Hands dreams of not just working in a food shop but opening one that serves hand pulled noodles. But first, they need to work with their friends to secure the lease on the building their former owners have defaulted on, learn how to pull noodles, and create a restaurant that will thrive in an algorithmic world.

I normally stay away from anything labeled "cozy," but Annalee Newitz tackles complicated topics which makes the lower stakes of this one feel appropriate. The team of robots, Hands, Staysbehind, Sweetie, and Cayenne, and their human (on hand to hard reboot/power on if needed) Robles, is a found family working to the goal of creating, feeding, and placemaking. They use their cleverness and leverage the parameters of a digital world to function independently of the humans who once owned their contract and carve our true community where bots and humans can coexist meaningfully. It's funny, a little scary, and a lot wholesome.

At novella length, this is essentially perfect. The narrative arc is short, the characters are well-fleshed out, and the speculative fiction worldbuilding drives the plot. Much longer, and it could fall into the trap of many cozy books where the story stalls out. And you may have heard me say this before, but I think that writers should break away from the idea that cozy means opening a shop, but I ate up every moment of this one. It crosses some uncomfortable lines for people worried about the accelerated growth of AI, but for robot lovers, this book is a joy.

The audiobook is excellent, narrated by Em Grosland, but the print book has some lovely formatting as well. I recommend taking your favorite format approach to reading this one.

Cozy, sci-fi novella featuring found family and delicious noodles in a futuristic San Francisco where HEEI - sentient robots - have been freed to choose their own work at the end of a war that resulted in the separation of California from America. Our little band of robots - Staybehind, Hands, Cayenne, and Sweetie - take over the little restaurant they were abandoned in and find purpose and family along the way.

Underlying themes of race, belonging, immigration - but the story itself is cozy and hopeful and might make you hungry for biang biang noodles.

While not really my favorite, I could see this being well liked by many who love cozy sci-fi, cozy fantasy, or found family stories.

Thank you Netgalley and Tor for the digital arc!

4.5 stars rounded up

A cozy sci-fi novella about found family and sentient robots opening a noodle shop in San Francisco! This was charming on its surface, but it's also using the othering of robots in this futuristic world as a metaphor for the treatment of people based on gender, sexuality, and immigration status. It feels like a hopeful and timely story about noodles that sound absolutely delicious! I really enjoyed it and I think it's smartly done. The audio narration is great as well. I received an audio review copy via NetGalley, all opinions are my own.

"Automatic Noodle" serves up exactly what you'd expect from a title that quirky: a warm, oddball tale of robots finding their way in a futuristic post-war San Francisco where robots are "free" yet still discriminated against. Rather than delivering a sterile exploration of artificial intelligence, this story surprises with genuinely human moments as these mechanical beings stumble through friendship and the messy business of building community. The emotions these robots experience feel startlingly real, making you wonder if we're all just sophisticated machines learning to connect.

This cozy little gem won't revolutionize your reading life, but it doesn't need to. Watching these robots navigate their new world with all the awkwardness of teenagers at their first dance is genuinely endearing, even if the plot occasionally feels as predictable as a well-programmed algorithm. A solid 3.5 out of 5 stars for a book that proves sometimes the best stories are about finding your people, even if your people happen to run on batteries.

Annalee Newitz’s Automatic Noodle is a cosy found-family-for-bots story set in the aftermath of California seceding from the US. That cosiness sits oddly against what inevitably reads as an allegory of racism in the anti-robot sentiment that the characters face, and against the capitalist nightmare Uber Eats etc etc.

I feel like there was a lot of stuff that was touched on, like Staybehind’s trauma, that could’ve been expanded on in a way that would’ve made it less of a feel-good cosy story, but for me would’ve made it a bit more satisfying. For me, the themes sat oddly with the wrap-up, which gives us a quick triumph against the anti-bot review-bombers and a warm snuggly feeling of community.

I couldn’t help but still be left wondering, could it really be that easy? The bots haven’t exactly escaped t the capitalist hellscape… community and good food don’t really answer the problems it raises. And it’s okay that Newitz didn’t want to write that kind of story, but I couldn’t believe in uncomplicated cosiness and a triumphant happy ending here — it was only a “happy for now”, all too clearly, and all the other stuff just hovers unaddressed.

So I think this one fizzled for me, ultimately, which is a bit of a shame as there was much to like, especially Cayenne and Hands.

DNF at 33%

Thanks to the publisher for the opportunity to read this novella. The premise sounded charming, but I just didn't connect with the writing, which I found to be dry. None of the robots stood out to me either and while I'm sure there is a meaningful, underlying message to this story... I didn't want to stick around for it.

The robot crew of a “ghost kitchen” in California wake up to find they have been powered down for months and the restaurant they work at is quickly going under… literally, it’s flooding! With no work and mounting debt, the bots are desperate to make money fast.

Hands, the cylindrical mixer, has always dreamed of making noodles. Cayenne, the octobot, is always game for the next scheme. Sweetie, the half-humanoid customer service robot, longs to create a space where she and others like her can belong. With their individual dreams, and the human restaurant owners nowhere to be found, it seems like the perfect plan to try running it themselves.

The reopening is a hit. It looks like they might actually pull this off: pay off their contracts, make rent, maybe even claim the tiny legal freedoms robots are allowed in this post-war era. Though initially skeptical of the plan, Staybehind, the fourth member of their original kitchen crew, is determined to protect these new friends from any threat. So when a wave of one-star reviews starts threatening everything they’ve built, he steps in, determined to uncover the source of the campaign and shut it down.

Told through multiple perspectives, Newitz crafts distinct voices and intimate portraits of each character. We get to know not only about their past but their hopes and dreams for the not-so-distant future.

It’s a low-stakes, cozy story without being shallow. I love when a robot can to teach us a little more about what it means to be human. Trying to define what a person is always leads to the more dangerous question: who isn’t? As is often the case with robot stories, robots are used as an allegory and lens to examine the “otherness”. It allows for sharp yet accessible social critique on racism, body autonomy, propaganda, PTSD, immigration, social media anonymity and more.

Now that we’ve talked about the robots, let’s talk about the food. Warning you WILL be hungry for more after this book, and not just for the noodles. What does a robot know about food? The joy of making food for the making of it, for one! Each character has their own reason for being in the restaurant business, but I feel the beating heart of the story is Hands. I never expected to feel such a strong connection to food and kinship with a cook who doesn’t eat. Hands’s passion, research, and clear joy in learning new techniques is a powerful reminder of what we often lose sight of. We tend to focus on the end product, the result, the consumable (literally in this case), forget the importance of everything that comes before. There is skill, collaboration, and purpose in the doing. Food isn’t just about consumption; it’s about learning, sharing, creating and working together.

The prose is well edited and tight. I did want a little more lyricism and worldbuilding to deepen the contrast between the restaurant’s warmth and the rough post-war world outside. That feels more like personal preference than a flaw in the story’s execution. I also think it could have been longer and not just because I never want to leave these characters (especially Hands, I would die for Hands). For instance, Staybehind’s search for the culprit doesn’t have time to build up the tension I would expect before it’s resolved.

The cozy feel with meaningful and reflective commentary make it a great recommendation for fans of Psalm for the Wild-Built while the ensemble characters and the food focus should also appeal to fans of the Legends & Lattes series.

At its heart, this is a story about finding family, creating community, and remembering the most important rule of the internet: NEVER READ THE COMMENTS.

Thank you NetGalley and Tor Publishing Group for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I was really excited when I first saw that I have been approved for this ARC. The cover is gorgeous and the concept sounded like a perfect cozy read. I want to really emphasize here that while my rating was a bit lower, I genuinely believe it is due to taste and not at the fault of the book itself.

So let's get into it. This book is about a world where California has split from the USA and there are a lot of HEEI (A type of sentient robots). A group of robots previously managed by a human, are awoken months after shut down to find that their 'boss' has fled for crimes. The robots decide to take matters into their own hands and open a noodle shop to pay the bills.

All in all, this sounds exactly like the type of book I would pick up. Its a short book but packed full of commentary on the government, immigrants, and community. However, it fell a little too much on the sci-fi side for me. I found the descriptions had simultaneously dragged on and not given enough. I couldn't picture this world or its characters very well and because of that I felt a disconnect to it. On top of that, I felt that the 'commentary' being made was incomplete. Obviously there is a message in this book, and I think its an important one. Maybe it's due to the fact that as much as I value the message here, it doesn't resonate with my life; however, I felt that I just needed a little more wrap up to the message. That goes with the plot as I feel like the ending was not very satisfying. I was expecting more from it, some sort of larger picture being summed up. It almost feels incomplete as a book in general.

I loved the sense of community created and the way the robots worked through their problems together. It was a very creative book and I enjoyed the concept of it a lot. I just felt like if this book had about 200 more pages to it, this book could've been monumentally life-changing but instead it fell a little flat.

I would still recommend this read if you're interested as, like I said before, I think most of this was personal preference. I feel like when I sum this book up, it still feels like a good novel, it just didn't live up to my expectations of it.

Again, thank you to NetGalley and Tor Publishing Group for the ARC.

Post on IG (@seas.libary) will be posted and added to NetGalley Review Links by 8/1.

After a war that separated California from the United States, society begins to rebuild itself--a society that includes robots that were designed to fight the war. In an attempt to stay together after the sub-par restaurant where they were working goes dark, this band of robots devises a way to open a shop serving delicious hand pulled noodles for their human clientele. Unfortunately, anti-robot bias leads to a campaign to destroy the restaurant through a series of one-star reviews. "Automatic Noodles" by Annalee Newitz combines sci-fi, humor, and amazing descriptions of food in this charming novella that explores the bonds of friendship and survival.

My first 5-star review of 2025! This book hit many of my niche interests: food, robots, queerness, vague dystopia. I loved it! And usually novellas always seem too short or paced incorrectly, but this one was perfect!

2.5 stars. Meh, this didn't fulfill on the promising premise. The pacing was off, so when the eBook ended I was surprised. The worldbuilding introduced more questions than it answered-- and not in an existential, thought-experiment-y way. The characters also had a lot of potential, but they came off as shallow to me, with the writing taking the easy, more obvious, or quickest option over developing depth. Frustratingly, this work is salvageable with a not-horrendous rewrite. It may be worth checking anything new from the author in a few years, but probably not sooner.

eARC from NetGalley.

This is a lovely slice of life story that I really enjoyed. Annalee Newitz, like a lot of authors currently, has a lot to say over how we define personhood and has many ideas over how people will interact with artificial intelligence as we continue to develop it. I really liked the story and it was a great and short read.

I haven't read a lot of cozy sci-fi, but I need to read more. This was delightful. Survivors of a war running a restaurant together? Oh yes, this was lovely.

Newitz gives every character a point of view and it adds layers to the story because they each gain something from the restaurant: some fall in love, some learn to trust others, and they all build community together. The characters support each other through these struggles and try to fill any gaps. This book is all about community building and creating a space where beings are comfortable spending time together.

Newitz addresses serious issues like discrimination and homelessness amd PTSD with such care. Newitz also raises issues about artificial intelligence. What does it mean? Who should be granted personhood? Who gets to decide?

This is a fascinating book worthy of any library's science fiction collection and any sci-fi reader's bookshelf.

5 out of 5 stars

This novella might be short, but it packs in so much heart. Imagine if your favorite cozy found-family story starred four quirky, lovable robots trying to reopen their beloved noodle shop in post-secession California, all while dealing with systemic prejudice, existential uncertainty, and the occasional bureaucratic nightmare. And somehow, it’s still warm, hopeful, and deeply funny in the most unexpected ways.

I fell hard for Staybehind, Cayenne, Sweetie, and Hands—each of them felt like real people with fears, dreams, and memories that stuck with me. The way they cared for each other and found meaning in community (and good food!) was just… tender. I want to hang out in their noodle shop. I want to eat biang biang noodles with them. I want to hug the octopus-shaped bot who can renegotiate a contract by talking directly to it.

There’s some thoughtful, sharp commentary under the cozy surface—on capitalism, racism, identity—but it’s never heavy-handed. It’s just smart, compassionate sci-fi with a ton of heart and a side of chili oil.

Highly recommend this if you love robots, comfort reads, or stories about underdogs (or underbots?) standing up for each other and carving out a space where they belong.

This novella was cozy, thought-provoking, and timely. Set in a near-future California that has seceded from the United States, a gaggle of robots works to open and operate their own noodle shop. I enjoyed this quick read.

A cute and cozy little novella!

In post-war Independent California, four bots find themselves in risk of being shutdown and sold off after the restaurant they work at went out of business. Determined to stay where they are, they decide to open the restaurant back up and run the business themselves.

Automatic Noodle weaves a beautiful story of self-discovery and resilience, changing perspective between the four bots; Staybehind, Cayenne, Sweetie, and Hands, we see how each navigates the trauma, insecurity, fear, and doubt they hold within them.

I absolutely loved this novella, even though it's short, it managed to pull me in, and make me excited for where this journey is taking me. The struggle the robots went through, trying to survive, and fighting the Robophobes made me angry and feel very protective of them.

I highly recommend this book if you want a low stake, cozy, found family, and short read.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for the e-arc in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

What an unexpectedly charming read! I devoured it over the course of one evening and the next morning. Being a novella, it had snappy pacing, but the four main robot characters were well developed and had me cheering for them as they tried to get their restaurant going. Set in a postwar version of San Francisco, this book takes a very dim view of our current political climate (some hateful characters are criticized for acting like they wished it was still the 2020s), but offers a hopeful vision for avenues by which society may survive and even thrive after years of political tumult and climate change.

For fans of character-driven, robot-centered novellas, this one has more teeth than the Monk and Robot series and less action than Murderbot. It occupies a unique and (dare I say it?) authentic place in the subgenre, as Newitz is clearly writing from their heart and from their deep but open-eyed love of San Francisco.

Edited to add: Newitz had me at "Nortons" as a local San Francisco currency. They could have just invented something-- it is sci-fi, after all-- but instead, they clearly had done their historical research. Props!

Thank you so much to Tor and Netgalley for the invitation to review this eARC! I don't know that I would have picked it up without the suggestion, but am so glad I did!

Sweet and imaginative--I loved it. Now I really want to eat biang biang noodles.

This is a great one for robot fans and foodies. The robot characters are fantastic--I loved their friendships and the way they viewed the human world. It was such an original futuristic setting, where a human can be friends with a car, and a delightful octopus-shaped robot can renegotiate a contract by having a word with the contract itself. The restaurant was wonderful. I want it to be real.
It wasn't without tension, but it was mostly just really heartwarming.

What if the found family and robots-as-metaphor-for-extractive-capitalism of Murderbot, but also a love letter to San Francisco and biang biang noodles? Absolutely charming, and a perfect commute or lunchtime read. It's not subtle, but it's not trying to be.