Holden Caufield anyone? Set in space, lots of f*^ks, but I have none left to give.

Oh my god. I did not like this book at at all. This was one of my most anticipated reads of the year and the biggest letdown of the year. 95% of the time, I choose my books based on synopsis alone, the other 5% of the time from word of mouth. But I almost never read reviews on books prior to reading them. I wish I had read reviews for this book just so I know it would be a complete 180° from what I expected and what I wanted.

This book was nothing but a whiny, rich teenage boy, Cager, whose main complaint throughout the novel was that he was never going to have sex with someone. He had a valet cog who spurted out "I have an erection." every other page and a best friend who .... had no real defining characteristics beyond that he actually had sex with everyone and Cager seemed mad about it. There were multiple cogs who each had one character trait: depressed, horny, elated, or they told you everything about everything. Beyond Milo and occasionally Parker, I didn't care for any of the cogs, but in reality, I didn't care about this book at all.

The plot was nonexistent until 75% of the way through and it seemed more as if "This thing happened and now our characters just sit around and do nothing about it even though the world is going to shit." The only redeemable and intelligent characters were two girls named Jeffrie and Meg. Jeffrie was kind of just there but Meg actually problem solved and knew what she was doing, although 90% of her scenes were her with Cager and his internal monologue was "I want to have sex with her and she doesn't want to have sex with me so I'm SAD."

I was extremely annoyed the vast majority of the book and once I hit about 350~ pages I really wanted to DNF but I went on. What did I gain from that? Just more time not enjoying this novel.

I'm very excited to go return this to my library and never see it again. ( )

It's been three years or thereabouts since The Alex Crow and it feels longer because I am not patient when it comes to books. So, as soon as I knew ARCs were available for this one, I let the begging commence. Okay, i sent one e-mail to my sales rep, but it was really, really pathetically beg-y.

Was it worth the wait? Very much yes.

It's...ridiculous, but please don't imagine that I mean that as a dig. It is, after all, a book about cannibalistic robots and talking giraffes and blue aliens and sex and drugs and the kind of kids TV that only makes sens when the viewer is high. It's over-the-top and out-of-control. It has elements that could have been drawn from everything from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy to the new(er) Battlestar Galactica to late-night oddity Lexx. It is smart and snarky and...sneaky.

Yes, sneaky. Because behind all of the madcap, cannibalistic insanity are serious questions about privilege and what it means to be human and even the nature and origin of humanity itself. It takes our current level of technology and the current state of world affairs and ramps them up to the nth degree to encourage the reader to ask "Just because we can, does that mean we should?"

But, mostly, it's cannibalistic robots run amok on a luxury spaceship orbiting the moon and four human teens trying to survive and get back home. Plus aliens and tacos.
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