Where the Robots are Tired

The Liberation by Ian Tregillis
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

In some ways this novel (and series) didn't exactly work for me. It left some stuff out that I wanted, and it wasn't organized the way I like my stories organized. But it's so creative, thought-provoking, profound, and terrifying that it's still pretty damn awesome. I accomodate those contradictions with a 4/5, and I'll kinda explain.

The setup and world building are topnotch. The Dutch invented unstoppable robot servants in the 1600s, and used them to become the greatest world empire. The French, their only remaining enemy, use advanced chemistry to fight back, to hold, to barely survive, though they are forced to move all of government and the Catholic Church to the New World, our Quebec and Ontario, mostly. (The Dutch have the southern colonies.)

The central question of the series, concluding here, is whether the "Clakkers" are sentient beings with a right to free will, something they are denied by the various sciences used by their creators and masters, particularly alchemy. The robots are tightly controlled and are unable to do anything other than what they are told to do. We follow from book one a robot named Daniel who has accidentally gained freedom and escaped to the New World. But we learn he's not the only free robot, and by the third book many have been freed and are rampaging on both sides of the ocean, trampling their oppressors--who never believed they were sentient or capable of thought, and never knew they were committing horrible crimes against thinking beings.

There are many fantastic and horrible characters, brutal and cruel opponents among both the humans and robots, and it's the many factions and points of view that make the story less focused than I would like. The main conflict for humans, in a general sense, is very clear--survive the onslaught of emancipated and angry robots who are much, much faster and stronger than humans. That's cool. But when you try to narrow that down to a more specific goal, to something actionable, it's not there. There's no clear through-line of action; the main human characters are mostly just getting pushed around and chased and scattered. This is foxes and chickens, and I wanted the chickens to come up with something. I wanted to see a coherent plan of action, a coming-together of human factions much earlier, a dramatic push-back with explainable goals. Instead, we get a lot of muddling about, a lot of chaotic movement without purpose, before we reach a quick resolution with a lot of loose ends.

Still great. Very good prose. Lots of big ideas. I had fun reading the whole series, which is awesome in many ways, and for sure there's a lot to chew on. It's definitely worth investigating if you like fantasy.

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