Literary Ames

There’s nothing like a bit of necrophiliain the morning.

Our RoboZombies  (the zombies are actually referred to as ‘steins’, as in Frankenstein) don’t decompose and still retain all of their bodily functions so there are no ball sacks falling off during fellatio or penises detaching mid-coitus (oh look a new dildo!) so my tea and toast stayed happily in my stomach.

Our heroine, Josie, is a newly made RoboZombie sex doll. Her memories have been wiped in favour of rudimentary programming to engineer her to need, and be submissive to, a ‘husband’. Her obviously abusive maker had no other use for her than that. Free will is only for the living. She’s child-like in her curiosity and discovery of new concepts and sensations, but she’s very much able to learn and grow beyond her original programming.

The hero, turned Peeping Tom during recon, is also a RoZo of the soldier / assassin variety with PTSD, employed by a pro-free will organisation. Bane’s been working towards earning a memory and programming reset to relieve his mental anguish to become blissfully ignorant of the deeds he’s done while his free will was taken from him.

Bane’s mission is to retrieve the heroine from her maker by any means necessary before an evil RoZo corporation can swoop in and recover the scientist and his research. As the heroine had been designed to require biofeedback via touch and an electronic mental connection from a husband, the hero has to fill that holerole to prevent her programming from degrading to the point of leaving her a lifeless rotting corpse.

It’s important to note that Bane doesn’t rape Josie, the very thought disgusts him. Josie’s personality, that of a ‘virtual child’, also unnerves him so he’s very careful about how he handles her, leaving Josie to decide what she wants.

I’m riding the line between love and hate, hiding in the no-man’s-land of meh. Predictable paranormal romance that isn’t too cheesy, worldbuilding and character development of the supporting cast is lacking, but it possesses an interesting, and I suppose plausible, possibility of cyborg RoboZombies in the future. I’d still take Langlais’s cyborgs over Harris’s though.

Favourite Quote:

But all idealism faded if exposed to enough reality.