It's not bad. I liked the world building, the relationship between the main character and his robot partner, and some of the 'meaning-of-life' considerations. On the other hand, there were bits and pieces in there that weren't adding anything, like the grandmother falling. Jesse's pain was never explained. The detective story was average, and overall I was only moderately invested. ( )

An entertaining social commentary on politics and advancing technology, I felt it lacked depth and left a lot unexplained. I would have enjoyed knowing more of the backstory as it felt like I picked up a book in the middle of a series. Characters and relationships were dynamic but the story was often confusing or hard to follow. This story has a lot to offer and lots of room to grow.

Thank you, Atria Books, for the advanced copy. The opinions are my own. ( )

Winter, Ariel S. The Preserve. Atria, 2020.
As robotics and artificial intelligence become more and more a feature of present rather than future life, science fiction writers have recently responded with some intriguing dystopian takes on Isaac Asimov’s optimistic view of robotics. There was the disappointing Machines Like Me by Ian McEwan that used the android as an object of sexual jealousy and emotional angst. Then there was Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro, which disappointed Ishiguro fans who wanted Remains of the Day again, but which drew some very sharp comparisons between digital world-building and the human variety; humans and robots both create maps that that in important ways misconstrue the territory. Ariel Winter’s The Preserve does an intriguing take on Asimov’s Caves of Steel in which an urban police detective partners with an AI in a city in which robots are second-class citizens threatening the human labor force. Winter, on the other hand, envisions a depopulated world in which the robots dominate the government and the economy. A pandemic seems to be moving humanity gradually towards extinction. Most people are content to live under the aegis of a thriving robot economy, but some technophobic survivors have been granted a large tract of land in rural South Carolina as a kind of reservation or “wildlife preserve.” Our hero is a small-town sheriff who must reunite with his android partner from his earlier days in Baltimore to solve some crimes against robots and humans. The writing is sharp, with some subtle character development and a well-constructed plot. 4 solid stars. ( )

It's a mystery

This book is mystery in more than one way. Firstly it's a whodunit: Who killed Carl Smythe? Chief of Police Jesse Laughton used to be a cop in Baltimore where he investigated lots of murders, but since moving to the Preserve his daily work seems to be corralling drunks. This is the first murder in the Preserve's short history, and it causes a big problem because it looks as if Carl Smythe was writing and smuggling contraband programs that have started killing the robots who have built the Preserve for the human remnants.

The murder gets solved, more or less, but other mysteries do not. Mysteries like why there is a preserve at all. Why the Preserve is not set up to be either economically and technically self-sufficient or formally subsidized? The big mystery though is mentally ill robots. Robots who are sentimental about humans. Robots who are contemptuous of humans. Robots who like humans. Robots who drug themselves with altered reality apps. Robots who court death when the apps are bad.

None of this is explained adequately and I am unsatisfied.

I received a review copy of "The Preserve" by Ariel S. Winter from the publisher Atria Books through NetGalley.com. ( )

The Preserve by Ariel S. Winter is a recommended procedural set in a science fiction future controlled by robots.

Robots now control the world after the human population was almost annihilated by a plague. In this future world the AI rulers have opened a series of preserves, areas where people can live and rebuild their society and population. When the first murder occurs on the SoCar Preserve in South Carolina, Jesse Laughton, the Chief of Police in SoCar, is assigned to investigate the case. At the same time a series of robots have turned up dead from indulging in sims, which are illegal programs that are akin to drugs for robots. The murdered man was Carl Smythe, who turns out to be a hacker who wrote and sold sims. It's a tricky situation. It looks like the murders are related and could be used as a reason for the robots to close the preserves. Jesse's former partner from the Baltimore PD, a robot named Kir, comes to assist Jesse with the case.

This is essentially a procedural. If I look at it as simply a procedural and murder mystery, it is a satisfying read, but if I allow any of my sci-fi expectations to trickle in and expect more descriptions and background information it becomes a lesser novel. I chose to read it as a procedural in an interesting setting. The world building is rudimentary. The futuristic setting, with robots the controlling class who have allowed the setting up preserves for humans, is not so incidentally suppose to resemble any of a number of times the ruling group has set up an area, district, ghetto, camp, etc. to segregate another group. The groups of robots actually simply resemble humans in their prejudices, attitudes, etc. I guess I'd like a society run by robots to resemble not feuding human groups, but a more logical unemotional fact based system.

It is odd, but Kir, the robot partner of Jesse, is the most likeable character in the book. Jesse is not a character that you will connect with of feel a lot of sympathy for. He has debilitating headaches throughout the novel and they are almost mentioned too frequently. I am assuming they are migraines, but that is never openly said. I kept waiting for some explanation behind the continuous mention of them but any commentary about the cause for these headaches is never broached. The problem is that he repeatedly mentions that the headaches are interfering with his ability to do the investigation.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Atria/Emily Bestler Books.
http://www.shetreadssoftly.com/2020/11/the-preserve.html
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3623833565 ( )