Tuesday, June 30, 2020

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Automatic Reload by Ferrett Steinmetz

Full Disclosure:  This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on July 28, 2020 in exchange for a potential review.  I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.



Automatic Reload is the latest novel by author Ferrett Steinmetz and what appears to be his 6th novel overall.  Steinmetz is actually one of the first authors I read when I came back to the genre, with his "mancer" series, which came recommended by an author I really enjoyed at the time.  I enjoyed the first of that trilogy (Flex), but at the same time just found myself uninterested in continuing with the 2nd book when I tried it (The Flux) so I wound up DNFing it.  But as I'd heard good things about one of his later novels, I was happy to give this novel a try when I saw in on NetGalley.

And I'm glad I did, Automatic Reload is a really interesting and pretty fun SF thriller.  And I mean thriller - the basic plot features a protagonist narrator facing off and on the run from an implacable enemy through the use of lots and lots of military ordinance/firepower.  It deals heavily with the theme of automaton and what becomes of a future in which automaton starts to replace human workers (the book very much follows an Andrew Yang-esque argument of future events), and not just in how the protagonist has literally automated his own arms and legs.  It has a few of the tics that kind of turned me off from Steinmetz' first trilogy - a habit of trying to too hard to be clever with its narration to the audience - but those mainly go away after the first act and the result is a very solid scifi thriller.


-----------------------------------------------Plot Summary-------------------------------------------------
Mat is one of the best independent operatives in the world.  You need someone rescued or some bad guys killed, Mat is your guy - provided he can pull off the mission with harming absolutely no innocent bystanders.  Mat manages this through two special traits: first, he obsessive plans and re-plans every detail of his missions and even his life, going over every tiny failure with a fine tooth comb until he figures out how to prevent it from happening again.

Second, he purposely has replaced all four of his limbs with various sets of high tech prosthetics, armed to the teeth, and set to automatically fire and kill or disable any targets in his way faster than the human mind can even think.  Whereas other operatives use stock robotic arms from expensive manufacturers or rely on the best technology, Mat custom tailors each of his limbs to work at the highest possible efficiency, to achieve his objectives without harm to any innocents whatsoever.  It's an expensive way to work as an operative, but for Mat it's worth it.

But while Mat is the best, he's not the only game in town....or even the most dangerous.  That label belongs to the IAC, a conglomerate of AI networks staffed with the best special ops agents and technology that works around the world and destroys anyone in their path.  Mat has made it his goal to never ever come to the IAC's attention and to stay away from any missions involving them - because once you're on their radar, you don't get out alive.

But when Mat's agent Trish comes along with a mission where he will be incognito assisting other operatives transport a IAC property, the money on the line is so high he can't turn it down on principle.  But of course, the mission soon goes horribly wrong, and Mat finds himself in the IAC's crosshairs, with no one but himself and the "property" - a genetically modified woman with panic disorders and insane powers - to rely upon.  With just those resources Mat will have to do what he once considered the impossible: get away from the IAC, and no amount of preplanning will be enough to pull this off......
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So I was struggling in how to write this review and the plot summary above without spoiling a key plot detail - the existence of Silvia, the second main character in this novel, an unwillingly genetically modified woman with panic disorders to go along with her super-powered physiology.  Silvia only shows up at the end of this novel's first third, and is kind of a big spoiler to know about her ahead of time.  But then I realized that she's not only on the book's front cover and own advertised plot description, but the tag line on the front cover also basically spoils part of her character traits.  The advertising print even tries to advertise this novel as a romantic comedy!  It's absolutely not in any way - there's moments of comedy and moments of romance, but anyone looking for a RomCom, even one with action, will not find that need met by this novel.  But anyhow the point is that since the publisher isn't even trying to hide Silvia's existence, I guess I'm not going to either.  Sorry.

Anyhow, on to the actual review!  Automatic Reload is a really interesting and often fun thriller featuring the two main characters.  It features a world in which automaton has replaced far more of human workers in all types of fields - including highly "specialized" ones like law and medicine for example - leading to some serious problems.*  I should point out that this is the background for the story, and the story never fully directly interacts with this idea, instead interacting with the concept of the power and terror automaton indirectly.  So you have Mat's narration about how his automatically operating arms eliminate targets and achieve objectives faster than any human ones, and the enemy often being automatically operating drones of various types, and Mat interacting with a smartcar system where every day car ownership has been replaced by AI versions of Uber, etc.  And this works really well to showcase the theme of the powers and dangers of automaton throughout, and you can see Steinmetz' thesis of the problem really well.

I should also point out by the way that this setting is a future in which gender presentation is a choice instead of anything else, with the third major character in this novel being a woman (she/her pronouns) with who prefers to have a beard.  It's a nice part of this future which doesn't really have much to do with this world, but I figured I kind of wanted to note it somewhere in this review.

*This worry was recently mainstreamed in the US by Presidential Candidate Andrew Yang, who very much feels like the type of person this book was written for.  There are however, some serious data issues with this hypothetical future being a realistic look at what's actually happening.....but those are out of the scope of this review.*  

Of course, this isn't exactly an ultra intellectual novel.  It's a novel in first person narration of a dude who replaced his human arms and legs with replaceable metal limbs equipped with numerous kinds of death dealing technology, destroying a hell of a lot of things, and working with another enhanced human to try and escape and possibly fight back against bad guys.  A different writer could've written this utterly straight, as a silly machismo thriller, but Steinmetz doesn't go there, with its narrator - Mat, our main character - being entirely self aware of how much it looks like he's compensating, Mat's still a bit annoying at first in how he does this honestly - the narration feels like it's trying to be to clever in winking to the audience about how ridiculous it all is - but as the novel goes on, that goes away as the book moves to an often fast paced thriller, albeit one with moments of lightness and romance in it as well (not nearly enough to be called a RomCom though) in between the ass kicking, hacking and blowing up of things.

It helps that our main duo is really interesting in their strengths and weaknesses, and I don't mean in a physical sense.  Both Mat and Silvia may be physically strong, but they each suffer from mental illness - for Mat, that's a severe version of PTSD which has made him desperate to do his work - killing bad guys and helping people - without harming absolutely anybody, to the point of extreme....for when he does harm someone, his brain ties up in knots with flashbacks and panic attacks and he simply cannot cope.  For Silvia, it lies in constant panic attacks over practically anything going wrong - and given the fact she's just woken up in a strange body she can't fully control with physical superpowers being hunted by an implacable enemy for who knows what, there's an awful lot that's gone wrong.  Their mental illnesses make Mat and Sylvia a strong pair - as Mat understands personally what Sylvia is going through, and Steinmetz treats these illnesses well and respectfully with the seriousness they deserve.  And in the moments Mat and Silvia are not dealing with their problems, they're fun in how they deal with stress or the things in front of them at any given moment, which makes them easy and fun to read about and follow.

Honestly, I've written far too many words for a review of a book of this type, but I'll sum it up basically as follows: If you're looking for a Rom Com, you're gonna be disappointed by Automatic Reload.  If you're looking for a fun SF Thriller with interesting questions about automaton and solid characters trying to cope with mental illness?  You're in good shape and you will definitely find yourself satisfied.
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)