The premise for this story was a bit silly. It starts from the old trope that nuclear war has destroyed much of the world and the human population, and a century later nothing has apparently changed. We’re told that 'humanity' has been reduced to one surviving city which struck me as highly unlikely. No doubt that city is in North America, just north of Mexico and just south of Canada, since it always is in these stories despite the USA being a prime target in the event of nuclear war.
These people, the "Mainlanders" have food and water, and they have a wall that keeps out the "Outlanders" who for some reason want to keep attacking this city instead of getting on with their own lives on the rest of the planet! Why? Who knows. My question here is, if the mainlanders are 'humanity' what, exactly are the Outlanders? Inhumanity?!
But these attacks are why the Mainlanders build a prototype fighting robot which for reasons unexplained, they give emotions. Why? Who knows? I got the immediate impression that this author had not really thought this through. Instead he had cherry-picked ideas from sci-fi movies and TV shows that he then tossed together into a kind of kedgeree of a novel which really made no sense.
Why was the robot left in the desert a mile or more from its target, instead of at the point where it was of most use? If the people who built it could leave it there and leave supplies for it elsewhere close by the obtjective of the mission, why couldn't they themselves complete the mission? Was this merely a test?
If it was, then who were the real people the robot was killing? A knee-jerk response to this would be to ask, 'why not read on and find out'? but when the writing is this transparently bad, I have no wish to read on, and I sure as hell don't want to read a series that's written like this. The first volume is inevitably a prologue and I don't do prologues.
Besides, there were much more serious questions. Why did the robot, supposedly programmed as a military bot, not know better how to fight the 'outlander' soldiers who were chasing it? Why, when it pulled up information from memory, did it have to present the information to itself in front of its eyes - as a heads-up display instead of processing it internally? I read, "His vision allowed for information to display semi-transparent in front of him." Clearly the author was getting his ideas from movies, and bless him, he never imagined for a minute that a robot might function differently form a human.
The robot was suppsoed ot be a prototype fighter to save human lives and defend their life form the Outlanders (who no doubt all wore kilts! LOL! Seriously, outlanders and mainlanders? What dumb names. Besides, if the outlanders were wont to attack the city walls, why not just automate machine-guns to shoot them down as they attacked? Why the need for robots at all?
This novel was poorly written, unimaginative, and made no sense, and I cannot commend it as a worthy read.
