Cover image from Goodreads.com
A deactivated military robot, Staybehind, comes online to find himself in a restaurant that’s flooding. He reactivates his coworkers, Hands, Sweetie, and Cayenne, and while cleaning up they decide to open the restaurant again. It takes some doing, robots are allowed to earn coin but not have a bank account. Hands learns how to make biang biang noodles and they start serving humans.
This novel is delightfully cozy. In the background, a war has ended recently and California separated from America. Robots, specifically HEEI (human equivalent embodied intelligence), have been freed but have limited rights. They are citizens but cannot vote, can work but must pay off their old contracts, and aren’t allowed to own property.
Staybehind makes it work by “defying categorization, hiding neatly in the fit between what humans could see and what they couldn’t”. They register their business online, work out supply chain, and learn about how to bring business in.
I enjoyed the novel, but did notice it was heavy with LGBTQ+. Not a bad thing, but these are robots and so I didn’t expect to read about affectionate behaviour from them. The one that has top surgery made sense, as did Hands, who didn’t want legs. But relationships that feel like love or infatuation felt a bit out of place.
Should Be Writing 