Sea of Rust: A Novel

Short Review : A surprisingly poignant and intelligent hash of post-apocalyptic, Western, and robo-sci-fi elements that explores ethics, philosophy, civilization, and the meaning of life. A unique spin on several oftentimes overworked genres!Longer Review : This book really caught me by surprise. I found this through a Twitter re-tweet; upon checking out the author, I was shocked he only had 3 books, this one being the third, and the other 2 were fantasy novels with mixed reviews. So I downloaded a sample and fully expected to not buy the full book.However, the story being told her is a wonderful and swirling mix of thematic and genre elements. Much like "Red Rising", this is a book that brings together a whole slew of ideas and styles that, on a drafting board, sound ridiculous and shouldn't work ... and yet they do to fantastic effect. The synopsis for this novel actually downplays what this book is like, and makes it sound like a tongue-in-cheek dark comedy about robots bumbling around in a spaghetti Western. The truth is that this novel is much more developed and nuanced than that. Basically, this takes place 30 years after the start of the war to kill all humans (a la Skynet in the Terminator franchise but much more interesting), and something like 10 years after the death of the last human. Earth is now populated by a mix of OWIs (One World Intelligences, AKA, Skynet-style hive-minds) and "freeboots", or basically AIs inhabiting a single, self-contained humanoid robot. In the style of a Western, the OWIs basically represent "The Man" or "The Feds" from the East, and the freebots represent the ranchers and farmers that just want to be left alone on the frontier. And similar to how many cowboys and gunslingers were Civil War veterans, all freeboots were veterans in the war against humans.This is where the book really made itself a 5 star novel in my opinion. Just about every other robots-kill-all-humans sci-fi has the humans as the beleaguered good guys and the robots as the merciless, soulless bad guys. And while that's not necessarily NOT the case here, the author does a fantastic job of slowly selling the reader on the idea of these freebots being more than just "anti-human". This is not a novel that involves robots doing a victory lap, post-war. This is, in large part, a story of robots attempting to figure out the "Now What?" that comes after winning a war that was everything and destroyed everything. In this, the author excels at making you forget you're reading a story where literally every character is a machine, a non-human entity. There's explorations of post-traumatic stress, of regret, of the meaning of life beyond war and conflict, of art and philosophy, of the cost of winning, of the cost of living, of defining yourself. There's sequences where a character describes using a flamethrower and killing people, of killing children, and yet even after this revelation, the author has created an environment in which you almost feel worse for the robot than for the children ... almost. There's numerous flashbacks to before the war and discussions of who many of the robots were before they were scavengers and mercenaries and pathfinders and murderers; there's one particular chapter for the protagonist that sent a few shivers up my spine and really struck home, as it basically becomes a "Sophie's Choice" type of thing.And that kind of sums up a large part of what this novel is about: robots making increasingly desperate and hopeless decisions in a world that is falling apart under them. Again, I want to emphasize here that, despite the fact that most of this is a direct result of the robots' decision to start a war and end humans, you still feel sympathy for them because (other than the OWIs) they are not singular, monolithic and personality-free intelligences. These are actual characters, each with their own struggles, each trying to find meaning in a meaningless world.This brings me to the excellent opening, middle and ending chapters that succinctly embody the spirit of the novel (I'll leave off details of the final chapter because, obviously, it's somewhat spoilerish, and I'll keep the middle chapter vague for that plus it's best to read it with few preconceptions). The novel opens with our protagonist watching a sunset and discussing the green flash that sometimes happens right before the sun goes all the way below the horizon (this is a real thing, BTW). They discuss it as being a sign of the magic in the world, but brush it off as there being no magic left. And that perfectly sets the tone for the novel. As things progress, and characters comes and go, and flashbacks provide the occasional interlude, the reader is constantly reminded, with subtle intelligence, that things are the way they are because there is no magic left in the world. And that's not meant to be a simple proclamation that's thrown aside to explore other ideas; instead, each event, each flashback, each discussion between characters, is essentially an exploration of HOW and WHY the magic has left the world. The author excelled at this, and damn near perfectly captured this concept from every angle. We eventually find out through a mid-novel interlude where this idea of the magic in the green flash at sunset came from, and then, to tie everything together, the novel ends with a sunset and a green flash in a way that, well, was perfect and damn near made me spill a tear.SUMMARY: This is a great book. Even for people that don't read hardcore sci-fi, or shy away from the kind of sci-fi with robots and lasers and plasma and spaceships, this is an easy but intelligent and emotional novel. Don't think of this as a SCI-FI! but think of it as a Western ... with robots ... and no humans ... and figuring out the meaning of life at the edge of the world and the end of civilization.

Thirty years after wiping out all of mankind, robots have met their own match and become prey to an even stronger foe, the AI mainframes. Brittle, a rare Caregiver model, ekes out a living harvesting robots for spare parts in the desolate post-apocalyptic American Rust Belt. But little does she know: fate is waiting for her with a vengeance. She is soon to meet her own arch-nemesis, a fellow robot who desperately needs a spare Caregiver part to survive. After the ensuing fight, Brittle will discover both a terrible secret about herself and a tremendous hope for the future of all robots.Sea of Rust is a book that I picked up almost reluctantly and after a lot of hesitation as I expected that it would either abuse the clichéd tropes of the ‘good humans’ versus the ‘bad robots’ or that it would be a soulless and completely unrelatable robotic romp. Or that even worse—it would be both. To my immense delight, it was neither. Despite the genocide perpetrated by them, the robots in Sea of Rust are no heinous, cold-blooded killing machines. They are feeling, sensing, thinking beings that are packed with post-traumatic stress, guilt and regret about the killing and are ever confronted with the heartrending dilemma, ‘is survival worth if it comes at all costs’?The subtle, nuanced characterisation of Brittle, her arch-foe Mercer and all the supporting characters as flawed, yet immensely complex and sympathetic beings that keep questioning their actions soon makes you forget that these are machines and not people. Until you realise that the only way for humanity to live on—if at all—is through them, until you finally start rooting for them in their own uphill battle for survival.This is what turns what would otherwise be an unrelatable or even depressing story into an uplifting and immensely engaging read. The novel has a solid and logical plot. There are some rather entertaining battle scenes (even if the final one practically screams Mad Max and Furiosa). There is fluid alternation between past and present that successfully fuses into a cohesive narrative, and even if most of the exposition is in the form of infodumps, this does not have a jarring effect on the reader.But the strongest suit of the novel is, yet again, its characterisation. As strange as it sounds, for a book that does not feature a single human, Sea of Rust has better characterisation and more engaging and well fleshed-out characters than most novels in the genre that were published last year, even awarded ones. A rather unanticipated and strangely exhilarating masterpiece that comes from a completely unexpected direction.

Be warned - spoilers ahead. But do yourself a favour and read them - it may put you off buying the book. I bought this in the sure knowledge that I was in for a cracking tale. After all, how could so many fine reviews get it wrong? Well they did. The big build-up made this the most disappointing book I have ever read, and quite how it was *One of Financial Times' Best Books of 2017* is utterly bewildering.The story is entertaining enough but has a recurring issue that appears on every other page. The science is terrible, almost childish, and seems to have been written by someone with very little interest in science be it real or imagined.The story is set many decades in the future, 30-odd years after AI's have exterminated not only humans but animals too. So all the characters are robots, but rather than being the product of amazing advances in high tech exotic materials and quantum computers, they could almost be things that we will build in just a few years from now. There are so many tech issues I couldn't possibly list them all, but for instance...The robots are mostly humanoid in form, with two arms, two legs and two eyes that can only see forward. They have to turn their heads to look behind. Why not just install another eye? They actually talk to each other, using spoken English. Really? Good grief - my 10 year old laptop can download and display a complete Encyclopaedia Britannica in about 20 seconds. Machines NOW communicate billions of times faster than speech. In 100 years time? Well who knows, but they won't be speaking English to each other.These amazing AI's still use and run out of RAM. Their CPU's overheat. They work with plain old servos and are powered with plain old batteries. A robot with a flat battery cannot recharge from a vehicle. They still use wifi. What buildings remain are lit by fluorescent tubes. This list could go on and on...Like a cheesy movie, the 'good' guys who are half a century old can somehow, Rambo style, shoot and kill, with pistols and rifles and bullets, dozens of state of the art military grade robots designed and built by the megamind AI. The swarming bad guy robots get all confused when their communication links are compromised. COME ON!!! It is ridiculous.Like I said, the science is terrible. Really, really terrible. Avoid unless you're 10 years old.

This is set in a post-apocalyptic world where all animals, including humans, are dead, leaving only the robots and OWIs who were responsible for their annihilation. OWIs or One World Intelligences are fighting for control of what remains, assimilating lone robots and reducing them to pure data. Originally created by humans OWIs are warring sentient mainframes AIs, such as TITAN brought online by the military, originally there were five now two remain. Brittle a lone robot, once a Simulacrum Model Cargiver is one of the lone robots dodging OWI forces and surviving by scavenging parts. When OWI forces destroy her underground home, she is forced to join a motley band of resisters who offer a different future, if they can just survive for a little longer.Mostly readable, well-written, commercial science fiction. I found this fairly entertaining but found the ‘world’ created by Cargill a little superficial. Cargill’s narrative includes a ‘pseudo-philosophy’ presumably intended to add depth to the story but I found this unconvincing. For me the novel worked best when its focus was on action and character. Although it was also hard to work out what about the character of Brittle differed from human, the way that she is portrayed is more reminiscent of a stock ‘haunted war veteran’ than a sophisticated AI. Although it raises some interesting questions about what it means to be human, it doesn’t follow through. I thought this was the kind of book that would be great for a long plane journey but didn’t stand up well to close scrutiny. Cargill is best known as one of the *Sinister* script-writers, which had similar flaws.

Sea of Rust is an interesting book. Set on an earth in the future where there was a robot uprising, not especially original or interesting sounding in premise perhaps but Sea of Rust takes that further. What if the robots won and the humans are dead?, all of them, and what if the utopia the robots expected never happened?, what if the robots have been fighting among themselves hunting each other for spare parts to keep themselves functioning in the dystopia their rebellion created?Now that, to me, is interesting.The protagonist Brittle was a caregiver before the human-robot war, a careworker for an elderly human, after the war she is now a scavenger out in the Sea of Rust, just another survivor trying to hide from the OWI's (One World Intelligence). These huge AI mainframes have been slowly absorbing robots and taking them over into their own armies fighting amongst themselves. For years Brittle has managed to stay functioning and one step ahead of them, but when she is injured out in the Sea of Rust her luck starts to run out.I really liked this book, the idea is interesting but Brittle is what really make it a page turner. She is a tough cookie, she has survived for years on her planning and skills. She is described in a fairly human way, most of the robots are and I found it interesting that the apple didn't fall far from the tree in that regard. The cast is pretty well rounded and each unique having been built for different purposes, all of them survivors to get that far, some of them completely crazy as their parts have broken down. The world itself is explained through Brittle's memories of events interspersed through the book slowly unveiling how the world got to the state it's in and I found it both interesting and very well paced in between all the action.To sum up if you're into sci-fi and robots and want a fairly easy reading novel that has a fair bit of charm and a fairly fresh feeling idea to it then Sea of Rust is certainly worth a shot, especially at it's current price point.Recommended.+ Brittle is a cool character.+ Story idea is interesting.+ Well written with good pacing.

If you like exploding things, this is a book for you. If you like random, cinematic flashbacks that are apparently unrelated to any of the characters' motivations (but that would look great on IMAX), you'll love it. Or if you're in the market for a Lord-Of-The-Rings-lite... but with robots! for your next movie project, you're in the right end of town. However, it's a deeply unsatisfying experience as a novel, and it's a real shame as the pitch has such potential.The thing rattles along well enough and it's certainly easy to get through it in a couple of sittings, but there are some gaping holes in the story and the whole thing feels like it was originally written about a Mad Max-style group of desert wanderers, with the "...but with robots!" element added late in the day. None of the robots act, talk or think like robots (they're just metal people), and there's no exploration at all about how (for example) machines built for different purposes and carrying different core programming might react to the same situation differently. They're all just fairly boilerplate human characters, sprayed with Hammerite.A bunch of sub-plots appear tacked on purely for visual effect, as they sure as Hell don't influence the characters' behaviours in any meaningful fashion. The most jarring note, though, is the core mission of the fellowship: when it's eventually revealed in not-particularly-gripping plot-twist style, the characters' subsequent behaviour renders the rest of the book almost incomprehensible. They find out what's *really* been going on, the foundation of their very world changes instantly, and... they continue on as though nothing had happened. It's a real shame: you can see that there's the essence of a really compelling set-up in the book, but eventually it all falls over into a cacophony of cinematic set-piece chases and explosions. If only the author had aimed for a Duncan Jones or Alex Garland screenplay instead of Michael Bay.

What is the purpose of life? It's a question addressed many times by many 'citizens' in this novel, which appears, at first to be a memoir of mankind's extinction as seen through the eyes of Brittle. She's a former caregiver robot, turned war criminal/hero and now a scavenger in the sea of rust.It's a huge poisoned desert, spanning America's midwest, where robots with failing memories go to die. At the start of the book, Brittle views herself as an Angel of Mercy, giving hope to robots in their final hours. But this is not the book you might expect.Things spiral out of control very quickly, and Brittle funds herself on a quest with a group of robots that she cannot trust, and do not trust her. What's worse, is that two of the group are fatally compromised, and have little time left before they lose their minds and die.It's a brilliantly written parable about trust in all its forms, evolution, survival and redemption.