Stross: Saturn's Children review

Just a few hundred years into the future, and all life on earth is extinct. However, humans built some rather impressive robots before we all died out. These robots, bound by Asimov's classic Three Laws of Robotics, have formed a society.

The novel follows Freya Nakamichi-47, a pleasure bot, who has offended one of the ruling-class aristo bots. In order to get away from the aristo and here chibiform lackeys, Freya takes a job as a courier for the Jeeves corporation. At this point, the novel begins to resemble Heinlein's Friday even more than Asimov's Robot series. Freya needs to figure out exactly what she's carrying for Jeeves and what their goal is. She also needs to learn why she was activated (long after the extinction of humanity) in the first place.

The story is kind of slow in parts and doesn't become truly interesting until the last third of the book. It tackles some interesting ideas about identity and society. It features some very cool world-building, especially the city on Mercury set on rails to keep the city perpetually in twilight so that it does not suffer the full heat of the sun, nor freeze in the Mercury night. It also shows some very realistic technological advances and possible forms of space travel.

The book is pretty good, really. I'd like to give it a 3.5, but the rating system doesn't quite work that way. It's not good enough for a 4, so I'll round down to 3.
/ [Viking]

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