![]() ![]() She doesn’t like to stay in one place long, and her repair skills make it easy for her to find work whenever she wants to pack up and move. She also struggles with the grief that comes with being functionally immortal and watching people she loves die.Ĭlara, the human heroine, repairs Raises, the much more limited AI helpers that have replaced robots. Sal, the robot heroine, is one of the few remaining autonomous AIs in existence, and as a result she faces discrimination including threats of violence. ![]() The story is on the sweet side rather than sexy or suspenseful, but it does deal a lot with themes of grief and prejudice. ![]() Overall, although the story has speculative elements and a nominally futuristic setting, it’s light on world-building and reads more like contemporary romance than sci-fi. Everything else felt very early-21st-century: the characters wear jeans, travel on trains, and communicate by email. That was hard for me to buy, though, since the only futuristic element in the story was the robots. The year is never specified, but it’s mentioned that AI was invented 300 years ago, so the intended timeframe is probably the 2300s. The Cybernetic Tea Shop is a novella set in future-ish Seattle. So when I heard there was an f/f romance about a robot that runs a tea shop, I one-clicked so hard Jeff Bezos got a bruise. I like reading about people falling in love, especially if they’re gay. Genre: LGBTQIA, Novella, Romance, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Steampunk ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |