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Not bad, but I was kinda bored :/ wished the horses had appeared sooner.

A devastating war between man and machine has left the world in ruins. Silas, a timid household robot, is left to roam the streets alone. Lacking in courage and confidence, Silas struggles to survive on his own as he searches for a new home. When he encounters Deacon, a human scavenger, he recruits the stranger to escort him to Limbys Technologies, the global giant responsible for creating Silas and other robots. Along their journey, the two develop a close friendship that defies their physical differences. Is this unlikely bond enough to keep them alive in a world full of violence?

“For an exciting science fiction story about survival in a post-apocalyptic world, get Metal Chest today.”

I received an ARC and reviewed honeslty and voluntarily.

Rating: 2 out of 5 stars.

Content warnings include: violence, death, theft, oppression, dystopia, public execution by hanging.

The book started off with rather wooden dialogue and not entirely natural descriptions. It felt a bit overdrawn and affected – maybe it was supposed to not take itself too seriously and be slightly humorous, but that wasn’t the vibe I was getting.

Plot wise I was a bit bored, which made it a slow read. That wasn’t an entirely bad thing, as I have a lot happening in my life right now, so a slow read that doesn’t provide too much distraction suited me fine.
For the most part Deacon and Silas just ran around the dystopian wasteland and found abandoned places or hostile people, no matter what they seemed like on first glance.

Speaking of the two main characters: I adored Silas, but disliked Deacon intensely.
Silas was the titular simulated intelligence in a robotic body, and he referrs to himself and others like him as simmies. He was super cute, hopeful and a bit guileless. He should be protected at all costs.
And while Deacon ultimately did protect Silas… he’s just the sort of character I do not enjoy in any shape or form. He joked around a lot, but his jokes were mostly based on hearing himself talk. He’s one of those “jaded-jerk with a heart of gold” character types, except his heart of gold was highly selective. One moment he’s all buddy-buddy, close to tears and rueful with Silas, the next he kills some random person completly unprovoked and shows no remorse while looting their body.

My biggest issue lay with the worldbuilding. So many things weren’t explained, which, okay, not everything needs an answer, except I really wanted to know more about simmie history. It was hard to understand the nuance behind human and simmie relationships when barely any of the history was explained. Like how were simmies created exactly? There’s hints but not much. How did the simmie rebellion go down? How did the leader, Riley, get power, and why was her backstory hinted at so strongly just to lead into nothing?

What was even worse than that was the overall themes. Ultimately the simmies are a marginalized people, with humans being the oppressors. Yet it’s never portrayed that way. Until the very last page, simmies are seen as needlessly violent and anti-human, while Deacon referrs to simmies with a term that Silas said multiple times was a slur to them, and Deacon clearly doesn’t think of simmies as people. That made the events of the ending very uncomfortable, and the story felt kind of pointless.

Check the book out of Goodreads and buy it here.