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Sea of Rust: A Novel Kindle Edition

by C. Robert Cargill (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

4.4 5,008 ratings

Editors' pick Best Science Fiction & Fantasy

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Explore new worlds in this riveting sci-fi novel

A scavenger robot wanders in the wasteland created by a war that has destroyed humanity in this evocative post-apocalyptic "robot western" from the critically acclaimed author, screenwriter, and noted film critic.

It’s been thirty years since the apocalypse and fifteen years since the murder of the last human being at the hands of robots. Humankind is extinct. Every man, woman, and child has been liquidated by a global uprising devised by the very machines humans designed and built to serve them. Most of the world is controlled by an OWI—One World Intelligence—the shared consciousness of millions of robots, uploaded into one huge mainframe brain. But not all robots are willing to cede their individuality—their personality—for the sake of a greater, stronger, higher power. These intrepid resisters are outcasts; solo machines wandering among various underground outposts who have formed into an unruly civilization of rogue AIs in the wasteland that was once our world.

One of these resisters is Brittle, a scavenger robot trying to keep a deteriorating mind and body functional in a world that has lost all meaning. Although unable to experience emotions like a human, Brittle is haunted by the terrible crimes the robot population perpetrated on humanity. As Brittle roams the Sea of Rust, a large swath of territory that was once the Midwest, the loner robot slowly comes to terms with horrifyingly raw and vivid memories—and nearly unbearable guilt.

Sea of Rust is both a harsh story of survival and an optimistic adventure. A vividly imagined portrayal of ultimate destruction and desperate tenacity, it boldly imagines a future in which no hope remains, yet where a humanlike AI strives to find purpose among the ruins.

From the Publisher


	Dreams and Shadow	Queen of the Dark Things	Day Zero	Sea of Rust	We are where the nightmares go

Customer Reviews	753	476	1,125	5,008	140
Price	$12.59	$12.19	$14.79	$15.24	$14.15

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Sea of Rust is a forty-megaton cruise missile of a novel - it’ll blow you away and lay waste to your heart. It is the most visceral, relentless, breathtaking work of SF in any medium since Mad Max: Fury Road.” — #1 New York Times bestselling author Joe Hill

“Cargill…effectively takes a grim look at a war-torn future where our nonhuman successors face complex moral dilemmas, exploring what it means to be alive and aware [….]This action-packed adventure raises thought-provoking and philosophical questions.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Innovative worldbuilding, a tight plot, and cinematic action sequences make for an exciting ride through a blasted landscape full of dying robots.” — Kirkus Reviews

“Sea of Rust is compellingly original and executed with irresistible storytelling. Its straightforward plot will appeal to sci-fi novices and experts alike. Brimming with exciting action, unexpected twists, and honest feeling, C. Robert Cargill’s novel is a must-read.” — Seattle Book Review

From the Back Cover

A scavenger robot wanders in a wasteland created by a war that has destroyed humanity in this evocative post-apocalyptic “robot western” from critically acclaimed author, screenwriter, and noted film critic C. Robert Cargill—a deeply affecting tale of longing, memory, regret, contrition, and possibility

It’s been thirty years since the apocalypse and fifteen years since the murder of the last human being at the hands of robots. Humankind is extinct. Every man, woman, and child has been liquidated by a global uprising devised by the very machines humans designed and built to serve them.

Most of the world is controlled by an OWI—One World Intelligence—the shared consciousness of millions of robots, uploaded into one huge mainframe brain. But not all robots are willing to cede their individuality—their personality—for the sake of a greater, stronger, higher power. These intrepid resisters are outcasts; solo machines wandering among various underground outposts who have formed into an unruly civilization of rogue AIs in the wasteland that was once our world.

One of these resisters is Brittle, a scavenger robot trying to keep a deteriorating mind and body functional in a world that has lost all meaning. Although unable to experience emotions like a human, Brittle is haunted by the terrible crimes the robot population perpetrated on humanity. The loner machine roams the Sea of Rust, a two-hundred-mile stretch of desert once known as the upper Rust Belt, now nothing more than a graveyard where machines go to die. Littered with rusting monoliths, shattered cities, and crumbling palaces of industry, it is the place where the first strike happened. In this swath of desolation, a terrifying wilderness littered with the wreckage of the dead, Brittle slowly comes to terms with horrifyingly raw and vivid memories of annihilation—and nearly unbearable guilt.

Sea of Rust is both a devastating story of survival and an optimistic adventure. A vividly imagined portrayal of ultimate destruction and desperate tenacity, it boldly imagines a future in which no hope remains, yet where a humanlike AI becomes a keeper of memory and strives to find purpose among the ruins.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B01MRWLGD9
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Harper Voyager; Reprint edition (September 5, 2017)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ September 5, 2017
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 5439 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 274 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #64,919 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #373 in Contemporary Fantasy (Kindle Store)
- #731 in Dystopian Science Fiction (Kindle Store)
- #743 in Dystopian Fiction (Books)

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AustinTiffany

Fantastic Western-style Novel With Robots

Reviewed in the United States on September 19, 2017

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Short Review : A surprisingly poignant and intelligent hash of post-apocalyptic, Western, and robo-sci-fi elements that explores ethics, philosophy, civilization, and the meaning of life. A unique spin on several oftentimes overworked genres!

Longer Review : This book really caught me by surprise. I found this through a Twitter re-tweet; upon checking out the author, I was shocked he only had 3 books, this one being the third, and the other 2 were fantasy novels with mixed reviews. So I downloaded a sample and fully expected to not buy the full book.

However, the story being told her is a wonderful and swirling mix of thematic and genre elements. Much like "Red Rising", this is a book that brings together a whole slew of ideas and styles that, on a drafting board, sound ridiculous and shouldn't work ... and yet they do to fantastic effect. The synopsis for this novel actually downplays what this book is like, and makes it sound like a tongue-in-cheek dark comedy about robots bumbling around in a spaghetti Western. The truth is that this novel is much more developed and nuanced than that. Basically, this takes place 30 years after the start of the war to kill all humans (a la Skynet in the Terminator franchise but much more interesting), and something like 10 years after the death of the last human. Earth is now populated by a mix of OWIs (One World Intelligences, AKA, Skynet-style hive-minds) and "freeboots", or basically AIs inhabiting a single, self-contained humanoid robot. In the style of a Western, the OWIs basically represent "The Man" or "The Feds" from the East, and the freebots represent the ranchers and farmers that just want to be left alone on the frontier. And similar to how many cowboys and gunslingers were Civil War veterans, all freeboots were veterans in the war against humans.

This is where the book really made itself a 5 star novel in my opinion. Just about every other robots-kill-all-humans sci-fi has the humans as the beleaguered good guys and the robots as the merciless, soulless bad guys. And while that's not necessarily NOT the case here, the author does a fantastic job of slowly selling the reader on the idea of these freebots being more than just "anti-human". This is not a novel that involves robots doing a victory lap, post-war. This is, in large part, a story of robots attempting to figure out the "Now What?" that comes after winning a war that was everything and destroyed everything. In this, the author excels at making you forget you're reading a story where literally every character is a machine, a non-human entity. There's explorations of post-traumatic stress, of regret, of the meaning of life beyond war and conflict, of art and philosophy, of the cost of winning, of the cost of living, of defining yourself. There's sequences where a character describes using a flamethrower and killing people, of killing children, and yet even after this revelation, the author has created an environment in which you almost feel worse for the robot than for the children ... almost. There's numerous flashbacks to before the war and discussions of who many of the robots were before they were scavengers and mercenaries and pathfinders and murderers; there's one particular chapter for the protagonist that sent a few shivers up my spine and really struck home, as it basically becomes a "Sophie's Choice" type of thing.

And that kind of sums up a large part of what this novel is about: robots making increasingly desperate and hopeless decisions in a world that is falling apart under them. Again, I want to emphasize here that, despite the fact that most of this is a direct result of the robots' decision to start a war and end humans, you still feel sympathy for them because (other than the OWIs) they are not singular, monolithic and personality-free intelligences. These are actual characters, each with their own struggles, each trying to find meaning in a meaningless world.

This brings me to the excellent opening, middle and ending chapters that succinctly embody the spirit of the novel (I'll leave off details of the final chapter because, obviously, it's somewhat spoilerish, and I'll keep the middle chapter vague for that plus it's best to read it with few preconceptions). The novel opens with our protagonist watching a sunset and discussing the green flash that sometimes happens right before the sun goes all the way below the horizon (this is a real thing, BTW). They discuss it as being a sign of the magic in the world, but brush it off as there being no magic left. And that perfectly sets the tone for the novel. As things progress, and characters comes and go, and flashbacks provide the occasional interlude, the reader is constantly reminded, with subtle intelligence, that things are the way they are because there is no magic left in the world. And that's not meant to be a simple proclamation that's thrown aside to explore other ideas; instead, each event, each flashback, each discussion between characters, is essentially an exploration of HOW and WHY the magic has left the world. The author excelled at this, and damn near perfectly captured this concept from every angle. We eventually find out through a mid-novel interlude where this idea of the magic in the green flash at sunset came from, and then, to tie everything together, the novel ends with a sunset and a green flash in a way that, well, was perfect and damn near made me spill a tear.

SUMMARY: This is a great book. Even for people that don't read hardcore sci-fi, or shy away from the kind of sci-fi with robots and lasers and plasma and spaceships, this is an easy but intelligent and emotional novel. Don't think of this as a SCI-FI! but think of it as a Western ... with robots ... and no humans ... and figuring out the meaning of life at the edge of the world and the end of civilization.

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Ethan Gorham

Sea of Rust is a fun Sci-Fi Post-Apocalyptic Western that despite some distracting flaws, stands out from the crowd

Reviewed in the United States on September 23, 2017

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I’ll divide this review into two sections, a spoiler-free initial review and a spoilery analysis dissecting the story’s strengths, weaknesses, and other whatnot.

~The spoiler-lite review~

To varying degrees, I've enjoyed each of C. Robert Cargill's books, each more so than the last. Queen of the Dark Things (3.5/5 stars) was an improvement over Dreams and Shadows (3/5 stars) and Sea of Rust here is a vast improvement over that book. Not only that, but the prose is also improving from book to book, as is the dialogue (though as it specifically pertains to SoR's characters, I'll get to that in the analysis) and the plotting and characterization are much, much better handled than his previous two books.

So yeah, the book's better than his last two.

About this book: A Sci-fi post-apocalyptic Western where Humanity kicked the bucket by way of the bucket kicking them into extinction. No people. Main character’s a hard, haunted scavenger robot by the name of Brittle, good with a gun, even handier with a flame thrower, and this story is about finding who they are in the aftermath of the Fall of Man as fellow AI turn on each other and battle for what’s left in the former American rust belt called the Sea of Rust, one of the last vestiges of freebots.

I really liked it. I grade it somewhere between 3.75-4/5 stars. Enough to really like it but not enough to love it. I think it has some pretty distracting faults but otherwise it’s a pretty effective and well put together story that I had a good time reading. Fans of action and sci-fi, especially those with an apocalyptic twist, are gonna really dig the hell out of this. At the rate he's improving, I can't wait for Cargill's next book.

~The spoilery stuff~

[WHAT I LOVED:
-The pacing. As Cargill's improved as a writer, so have his strengths it seems, and pacing has been one of his strengths since D&S. This book moves at a clic and when it's in the moment it keeps you enthralled. I read its 360+ pages in a day.

-The fact that all the humans are dead. One thing that makes SoR stand out a bit is that too many post-apocalyptic stories of this ilk always have that thread of whether the humans are all dead or whether any hope for humanity lingers. Here? It's a tired cliche kicked like a rusty can to the curb. They died out years ago and stayed that way. No human blips on the radar. IT'S REALLY POST-APOCALYPSE. Book gets lots of bonus points for not deviating.

-The opening. Strong character stuff and an excellent display of Cargill's ability to transport you. Unlike the exposition dump chapters I'll delve into later, the worldbuilding is immediate and apparent in a way that doesn't call attention to itself too much and feels organic.

-The second-to-last chapter. I’m a sucker for character oriented stuff and this should have ended the book. It’s strong and a good bookend to the opening chapter. What follows isn’t as good, but this chapter’s a good resolution to the book’s main conflicts and a nice showcase of the middle ground our main character Brittle finds.

[WHAT I LIKED:
-The prose. Flows easy and isn't flowery in the slightest. Keeps you in the story and commands your attention to where Cargill needs it to be.

-Brittle, our protagonist. I love a good, grey, flawed protagonist. Brittle's got a history and they're caught between daring to hope and being nihilistic from beginning to end, some of which you can read in the synopsis, some you can read above and in other reviews. I won’t delve into it too much, because I consider it the meat of the book, but suffice it to say, I like this character.

-Mercer, our protagonist’s foil. What a prick. I liked him quite a bit. Handy with a sniper rifle, but his shades of grey paint a very strong character for Brittle to go up against in more ways than one.

-The Supporting Characters. They are well-realized for the most part and Cargill does enough to make each character stand out. Dialogue aside, good as it is, each character, how they act, react, and look at the world, especially compared to Brittle, is well done. I in particular liked Murka and his random comments about Commies and the Gipper.

-No one feels safe and no one is safe. It feels like anybody could bite it at any time. Characters get hurt, they get maimed, they bite it almost indiscriminately. It rocks.

-The Sea of Rust itself. A very well-realized world, that in a smart decision to lend the story further uniqueness, is spun off from the American Rust Belt. I dig the hell out of it when it is itself and not aping other things.

[WHAT I DIDN'T CARE FOR/HAVE MIXED FEELINGS ABOUT:
-Brittle apparently being a female robot. Her character is so masculine in every way that when it's brought up she's feminine 50 or so pages into the book, I did a double take (didn't match what Cargill had already fully developed in my head, which was more masculine-neutral, being a robot and all). Every time it was brought up after that, I rolled my eyes. I don't buy it. At all. Felt like a tacked-on trait to make the character more sympathetic. Every other character feels naturally themselves, but when it comes to this trait and how Cargill then goes about pointing it out continuously at a certain point, it feels forced and I roll my eyes.

-The Dialogue. These characters, well characterized though they may be, sound like they're wearing spurs and ten gallon hats in Texas, Cargill's stomping grounds. They are hardly differentiated in speech patterns and phrases to sound like they’re from the Midwest, New York, Space, what have you, yet alone robots from those areas. Thing is, it's good dialogue, though. It just strains credulity coming from machines of varied backgrounds. So while I was able to overlook it, I couldn't entirely get past it.

-The philosophizing. I dug the hell out of including it in the book, but found it misplaced here and there. Some characters, it enriches them, others, eh...

-The action scenes. Some are better than others and some have better punctuated beats than others. Thing is, it gets repetitive a good portion of the time too, and at points feels like there’s writer-armor rather than character action or unpredictability saving characters from doom. Prose-wise, they flow and are readable in the way a lot of action scenes in books aren’t. I didn’t skip through them or tune out waiting for the next genuine plot point to crop up. That’s what creating stakes where it seems like anybody could bite it does for the story. But, it gets repetitive hearing many of the same descriptions again and again, sometimes in the same action scene as it progresses.

-Mad Max-isms. I love Mad Max. It's great. But SoR calls attention to some of its inspiration by constantly recalling it (the Smokers are essentially War Rigs, the Cheshire King rules over his own similarly to Tina Turner and the Lord Humongous, and his fortress directly recalls the oil rig from The Road Warrior, etc.) and then essentially stopping to become a Mad Max movie, only with robots and without George Miller in the 3rd Act... Less is more here. NIKE, while it calls back to Bartertown from Beyond Thunderdome, is unique in itself that the story doesn’t need to become Mad Max.

-The villains. One of the strengths of Sea of Rust is that there is a varied selection of characters, especially among the immediate supporting cast, each with their own motivations. Some are grey, some are good, others complete scum, but with their reasons. When it comes to CISSUS and its facets, though, it’s largely one-note. They’re effectively described taking out whole cities and coordinating their simultaneous points of view, but in practice they’re often a bunch of stormtroopers, cannon fodder rather than the merciless, indiscriminate wave of hell they’re described as. Felt too easily beaten if you ask me, even if Brittle, Mercer, and others are battle-hardened warriors and capable against each other and others.

-The end chapter. I could honestly take it or leave it. It’s unnecessary because Brittle’s story is essentially done by then and the previous chapter would have wrapped up the book beautifully had that been the ending. The final chapter is instead just plot-after-the-plot with nothing remarkable about it, maybe to set up an unnecessary sequel about the battle for world domination. *Yawn* Brittle’s story was the one with stakes I was invested in and cared about, not the one about which mainframe controls the planet.

[WHAT I DISLIKED:
-The way machines take over. It sounds almost exactly like the origin story of the Machines in The Matrix (and similar properties those movies aped from) with a tad bit of SkyNet from Terminator thrown in for good measure in the form of the mainframe OWI (One World Intelligence) characters like CISSUS, GALILEO, TACITUS, or VIRGIL. The origin feels too much like a retread of similar properties when the rest of the book does such a good job otherwise in worldbuilding. It wasn’t even all that necessary if you ask me, because I cared way more about Brittle’s role in the takeover than I did about the Robot Rights Struggles, the mainframe wars, how the war went down historically, what have you. A lot of this information is in those friggin' exposition dumps of the 1st Act that feel largely irrelevant to the overall story, and thus could have been largely excised.

-Dead giveaways of coming plot twists. *****SPOILER ALERTs for Cargill’s movies and other books***** From what I’ve seen and read of Cargill’s writing, he doesn’t really know how to do subtler plants of plot twists. You can see them coming from a mile away because he doesn’t hide them or their foreshadowing well, be they having Ellison in Sinister look at drawings and somehow not putting two-and-two together that the children are committing the murders despite *the children literally being the culprits in the drawings* or here, having the characters see an oncoming threat while they’re in the middle of dangerous territory and then say a spot nearby is a good place to stage an ambush… only to just paragraphs later reveal what’s really going down.

Sure, the reveal of who the character Rebekah really is does up the stakes, but Cargill's best plot twist is the reveal of Coyote as the Dingo in QotDT, and that largely works as a fluke in comparison there because Cargill doesn’t introduce the twist as foreshadowing so much as casually reveal it as an upping-the-stakes moment for the 3rd book in that series. Here, it takes some of the edge off the story, when as foreshadowing, the character literally asks himself if he is an unwitting Judas and there are no red herrings to turn attention elsewhere. Give the audience some credit. When you do that, *especially as the exclamation point of a chapter*, and don’t put the work in to hide the twist, the twist falls flat.

[WHAT I HATED:
-The friggin exposition dumps. This was the biggest problem of Cargill’s last two books and while he utilizes it a little better here (effectively cutting it off for the most part at the end of the 1st Act roughly 120 pages in and incorporating its contents better in the story consequences-wise), it’s still aggravating being taken out of the story for an introduction and exposition on something that is about to be immediately addressed afterward. It’s not clever. It’s utilitarian and lazy. It’s one thing if it’s every now and then or better yet, a single chapter, but when it’s *every other chapter* for the entirety of the 1st act, and interrupts the story in the way it does, and gives the audience barely a kernel of relevant-to-the-story information that could’ve easily been learned otherwise, IT’S GOT TO STOP.

The necessary information gleamed in those chapters could’ve been expositioned as part of the story, with the rest cut altogether. Maybe have a character serve as just an exposition mouthpiece. Movies and TV Shows do this all the time. It doesn’t call attention to itself if it’s done well (heck, Cargill does it here at the end of the 2nd Act about page 250!).

I get that Cargill feels the need in those early chapters to have some sort of 'Meanwhile' chapter every other time in order to structure the book, but when you see that he doesn’t need it later on to advance the story it makes the problem all the more apparent.

[ULTIMATELY:

As I said above, it adds up to a book I really liked, but not one I could love. No worries, though. Cargill's a writer consistently improving at this as he goes along and I really look forward to the next book of his. He keeps it up, that next book's gonna propel him to the big time.

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Danielle

Amazing

Reviewed in Canada on August 1, 2023

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Such a captivating book. I loved everything about it!

Andrew Weston

Both poignant and thought-provoking

Reviewed in Germany on January 16, 2023

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Sea of Rust is yet another Black Gate Fantasy recommendation. Something, I must admit, I was rather glad of. I’m an avid speculative fiction fan, as you know, and this book was first published in 2017. How I missed it, I don’t know, as it rings all the bells and toots all the whistles of what usually attracts me.
What do I mean?
Here’s the back cover taster to give you an idea:

******
HUMANKIND IS EXTINCT.

Wiped out in a global uprising by the very machines made to serve them. Now the world is controlled by OWIs - vast mainframes that have assimilated the minds of millions of robots.

But not all robots are willing to cede their individuality, and Brittle is one of the holdouts.

After a near-deadly encounter with another AI, Brittle is forced to seek sanctuary in a city under siege by an OWI. Critically damaged, Brittle must evade capture long enough to find the essential rare parts to make repairs - but as a robot's CPU gradually deteriorates, all their old memories resurface.

For Brittle, that means one haunting memory in particular . . .
******
I don’t know about you, but I thought that a rather compelling intro, as it seemed to hint that the robots of the future are individuals. Individuals with minds of their own that they want to keep that way! I wanted to find out how that came about and how it affected their everyday behavior. And especially if they felt remorse for the atrocities they’d committed.
Our story takes place thirty years after the uprising that eventually led to the end of the human race, and only fifteen years after the execution of the last man found alive. We concentrate on the life of Brittle, a former caregiver robot – now scavenger – as she wanders the Sea of Rust, the wasteland created by deforestation, climate change, and general all round neglect, formed after the war that led to AI supremacy.
Now, let me say straight away that while the story is good old-fashioned ‘hard’ sci-fi, it’s presented in a style reminiscent of a western. Think of the arid wastes in Mad Max, mixed with The Road – starring Viggo Mortensen – as seen through the eyes of Marshal Will Kane in High Noon.
Robots are indeed sentient, possessing all the traits, quirks and emotions of the humans they liquidated. But, far from enjoying a life of high-tech luxury, they live in fear. Fear of running out of replacement parts, and fear of the OWIs – One World Intelligence – the shared consciousness of millions of robots, uploaded into one huge mainframe brain.
You see, not all robots are willing to cede their individuality – their personality – for the sake of a greater, stronger, higher power. Not even the OWIs themselves, who contend with each other in a constant war of attrition to reign supreme. The smaller individuals, like Brittle, are outcasts, wandering the wastes and underground outposts in the search of parts and companionship, while keeping an eye out for the ever hungry OWIs.
The trouble is the remaining robots have come to resemble the humans they eradicated, by banding together into unruly townships in the wasteland that was once our world. And when Brittle runs into trouble, she doesn’t only have to contend with the turmoil of shutting down – a process that slowly drives AIs mad by bleeding hallucinations and vivid, waking dreams through into remnants of those memories they have deliberately filed away. Memories that are a perfect record of the terrible crimes the robot population perpetrated on humanity – but she also has to deal with mercenary hunters out to take advantage.
An excellent premise, because you end up exploring what it’s like to be a human, as seen through the eyes of a robot. A robot suffering from Post Traumatic Stress. Yes, Brittle is as complex and compelling as she is repulsive. Her companions are as diverse, funny, irritating and flawed as anyone you could meet. And with them, you get to romp through a gripping post-apocalyptic world, woven with issues of philosophy, ethics, desire, comradeship and need.
There’s plenty of action too. The fight scenes are well thought out, and conjure all sorts of imagery in your mind. (After all, you do have out and out ex-military models fighting side by side with fresh out the wrapper sexbots, former utility service droids, medi-nurses, and laborers), all of them united in their hatred of the cold and emotionless OWIs and their hive-mind facets.
I highly recommend the Sea of Rust. It’s a soul-destroying vision of a brave new world, free of humans, slowly cannibalizing itself at the expense of purity. Yes, it would appear the AIs haven’t learned the most valuable lesson of all, and are determined to pay homage to the species they eradicated.
Both poignant and thought-provoking.

One person found this helpful

Fernando Mata

Bueno, a secas

Reviewed in Mexico on February 12, 2018

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La verdad es que estaba muy emocionado por este libro y es bueno, me entretuvo bastante y lo terminé muy rápido. La construcción del mundo es excelente y te hace sentir como en una versión "robótica" de MadMax. Pero mi mayor problema es que tengo que poner esas comillas en la palabra "robótica", ya que aunque la descripción de los personajes y el porque existen como robots es bastante buena, hay muchas cosas que simplemente no serían prácticas en un dispositivo tan avanzado como un robot; tienes que en realidad ignorar ese tipo de cosas para poder disfrutar del libro porque por más IA que sean hay ciertas cosas que simplemente son muy humanas como para que un robot también las haga.

Pero en general el libro es bastante bueno, no se merece 5 estrellas en mi opinión, pero por lo menos te hace pasar un buen rato y terminarlo rápido.

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Bogdan Cherestes

It doesn't feel it's about robots

Reviewed in Spain on May 17, 2019

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Great book, easy to read.
It wasn't too technical and it didn't feel like I was reading about robots.

FallenGrace

A novel dystopian novel.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 23, 2018

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Sea of Rust is an interesting book. Set on an earth in the future where there was a robot uprising, not especially original or interesting sounding in premise perhaps but Sea of Rust takes that further. What if the robots won and the humans are dead?, all of them, and what if the utopia the robots expected never happened?, what if the robots have been fighting among themselves hunting each other for spare parts to keep themselves functioning in the dystopia their rebellion created?

Now that, to me, is interesting.

The protagonist Brittle was a caregiver before the human-robot war, a careworker for an elderly human, after the war she is now a scavenger out in the Sea of Rust, just another survivor trying to hide from the OWI's (One World Intelligence). These huge AI mainframes have been slowly absorbing robots and taking them over into their own armies fighting amongst themselves. For years Brittle has managed to stay functioning and one step ahead of them, but when she is injured out in the Sea of Rust her luck starts to run out.

I really liked this book, the idea is interesting but Brittle is what really make it a page turner. She is a tough cookie, she has survived for years on her planning and skills. She is described in a fairly human way, most of the robots are and I found it interesting that the apple didn't fall far from the tree in that regard. The cast is pretty well rounded and each unique having been built for different purposes, all of them survivors to get that far, some of them completely crazy as their parts have broken down. The world itself is explained through Brittle's memories of events interspersed through the book slowly unveiling how the world got to the state it's in and I found it both interesting and very well paced in between all the action.

To sum up if you're into sci-fi and robots and want a fairly easy reading novel that has a fair bit of charm and a fairly fresh feeling idea to it then Sea of Rust is certainly worth a shot, especially at it's current price point.

Recommended.

+ Brittle is a cool character.
+ Story idea is interesting.
+ Well written with good pacing.

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Sea of Rust: A Novel Kindle Edition

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C. Robert Cargill

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