by Gregg Rosenblum
Hardcover, 272 pages
Published January 8th 2013 by Harper Teen
ISBN 0062125958 (ISBN13: 9780062125958)


Blurb

Twenty years ago, the robots designed to fight our wars abandoned the battlefields. Then they turned their weapons on us.

Only a few escaped the robot revolution of 2071. Kevin, Nick, and Cass are lucky —they live with their parents in a secret human community in the woods. Then their village is detected and wiped out. Hopeful that other survivors have been captured by bots, the teens risk everything to save the only people they have left in the world—by infiltrating a city controlled by their greatest enemies.

The Good

  1. The premise. The general idea for this book was great, if a little overdone. Man builds robots, robots get too smart, robots rebel. You know the drill.

  2. The robot senior adviser. At the end of the novel, we are given slightly more insight into the robot senior adviser and his obsession with understanding the human nature. It is really unfortunate this was only introduced at the very end of the story, as I think mixing in this kind of information throughout the story would have made it significantly more interesting and unique.


The Bad

  1. The characters. All the characters felt very two-dimensional and, honestly, rather annoying. I didn’t connect with any of them, which made it hard to feel bad when horrible things happened to them.

  2. The MAJOR plot holes. There are so many plot holes in so many aspects of this story I think I eventually lost track. The source for most of these issues comes from the inability of the characters to make logical decisions. At so many points while reading I found myself wanting to throw the book across the room and shout, “WHY WOULD ANYONE EVER DO THAT?!?” This is probably one of the most frustrating things I have read in a long time.

  3. The immediate trust. Cass, Kevin, and Nick all immediately trust complete strangers with their lives for absolutely no good reason. You are living in a world filled with evil robots. You do not know this person. They live with the evil robots. There should be a least a little bit of suspicion here, people.


Overall Rating

Although the general idea of the book was promising and the inquisitive robots were very unique and interesting, this book was overall very frustrating to read. The underdeveloped, illogical characters and numerous plot holes ruined the story. More focus on the interests and personalities of the robots themselves would have made this book much better.