Review: Good fun, and good stuff underneath the nookie.
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 08 26, 2013
Book ReviewSteel Beneath Aneka Jansen ebookI'm a sucker for Robot/Cyborg stories. I'm of the opinion that the future will see many of them in our lives and we are but one technical revolution away from having them around every street corner, in every house. Embedded in our lives and our hearts in every way. To the question of, "will we love Robots," I've always been convinced we will. My spouse has an LG Robot Vacuum and brother, she loves that thing. I've also asked a few female friends if they could love a Robot partner and I think the overwhelming answer was positive. "Obedient, and comes with an off switch, are you kiddin'?"So, I bought this tale. Of a human female kidnapped fighting in Iraq during 2011. Kidnapped by an alien race, who strip out her human bits, emulate her brain and turn her into a cyborg spy. They were going to use her for infiltration purposes, but there was a hiccup. Then there was a big fight and the aliens were blown to bits, and our story begins.This is a decent story and a decent book if cyborgs are your thing. The writer wallows in the sex, but underneath, he can't help himself writing a real story, which is a good one. A kick-ass female giving it some large and knocking down the bad guys and doing good-while being done by just about all. I think the writer has a bit of a lesbo obsession, which I hope he forgets about and writes the tale, not the tail.There are some lovely touches, such as when the cyborgs AI, a separate and volitional intelligence states that it is quite happy to serve as it was given its purpose at point of creation, while humans spend most of their lives wondering what their purpose is. There's a lot of truth in that, and I hope the writer spends a bit more effort on questions of a like nature rather than all the shagging.I don't like all the bonking, it isn't necessary, and I'm anything but a prude. Despite that, I liked the book, very much. I will definitely be purchasing the next in the series to see where it goes. It has plenty of places to go.The relationships between someone known as a cyborg and humans is a fascinating one. When Ella welcomes Aneka back from one of her derring-do's there is a genuinely lovely moment. Haunting, plangent and sweet.I enjoyed this, and raced through it in one day.brendan