Reviews tagging 'Murder'

Autonomous by Annalee Newitz

7 reviews

dchaploeb's review

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adventurous dark emotional hopeful reflective fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.5

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samdalefox's review against another edition

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adventurous medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.25

Future dystopia, bisexual, pirate, social justice activist, hi-tech low-life(?) society. This is a tricky one to rate. I loved the premise and themes. I loved all the constituent parts individually, but they just never meshed together as a whole for me. The whole world felt jumbled, the individual storylines felt superficial, and even the characters themselves felt flat. I can't say for sure this was poorly written since I still enjoyed reading it, but I really feel that this book had more potential and somehow it let itself down. I wanted more!

There are HUGE topics introduced such as intellectual property rights and access to medicines, slavery/indenture, autonomy, robotic intelligence, corporate capitalism, and climate change and none are sufficiently explored. The novel simply needed to be longer with more depth to give us time to immerse ourselves in the jargon-overfilled world and actually get to know these characters and feel the lives they are living and the consequences of their actions. The whole thing came across more superficial that intended, especially considering the moral arguments around literally any one of the topics listed above. Even the goddamn romances were superficial. I found the ending pleasing in some areas, anticlimatic overall, and a bit confusing
Spoiler why did the story end focussing upon Paladin and Eliasz instead of Jack?
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Andystone's review sums it up:
"...The plot follows two different sets of characters, switching off every chapter until the climax where they meet… for all of one page. There was no discussion, no one learned anything and nothing was solved. By the time I got through 80% of the story, I worried that there wouldn’t be enough time to do something compelling to give a reason for the trials and tribulations of the previous couple hundred pages. Sadly, those worries were well founded...."
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quihi's review

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adventurous tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated

4.25

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caseythereader's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional reflective medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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charlieleelee's review

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adventurous dark tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

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renbot's review against another edition

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adventurous dark reflective medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

SpoilerThe gender revelations had me very conflicted in the end, and despite the clarification of the robot's feelings toward the concept of gender, as a trans person I had a lot of mixed emotions about the relationship between Eliasz and Paladin. Not sure whether it was good for either of them in the end, though I'm not sure that was the point.
The concept and execution were both incredibly strong, though at times I was taken out of the story by the complexity of the descriptions of the futuristic technology at play in this book's universe.
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pastry's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

1.5

I did not love this book. There's queer characters, but there's also bury your gays, there's a trans robot who is sorta only trans because her partner wants her to be so he doesn't feel bad about being attracted to her, because if she were a guy he'd be gay, oh no, when it is repeatedly emphasized that robots have no gender but this dude just does not seem to get it, there's indenture, so basically slavery, which is sort of criticised but none of the characters care to actually try and change it, it's just accepted as part of the world, and some other shit I don't really want to get into. Fuck, I'm glad I don't have to read this again.
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