For his last post before our summer break, Caramel decided to review the first book in the Confessions of a Trash Droid series of Michael Cheney: Fatal Error first published in 2025. As usual, Sprinkles is taking notes and asking questions.
Sprinkles: So Caramel, tell us a bit about this book.
Caramel: This is a book about a robot. This robot is sentient and he does not really like humans.
S: How come?
C: He does think they are very useful or intelligent.
S: Hmm, one does not have to be useful or intelligent to be worthy of care and kindness, but okay. So why is he a trash droid? Does he collect trash? Or is he old and people want to discard him like trash?
C: The first more or less: he is a waste disposal robot.
S: Okay, so what happens to him?
C: So he is on a plane that crashes and he does nothing to save anyone. So the company that built him or is using him is mad because he is supposed to help humans.
S: So is that what the confessions part of the title is about?
C: Sort of. But also he has a strange error that causes him to black out and go violent and so on.
S: This reminds me a lot of Murderbot, at least in the TV series version, where he was having flashbacks or memory clips of himself going violent and being involved in a chaotic event.
C: Yeah, there are some parallels for sure.
S: Honestly when I first read the description of the book, I immediately thought of All Systems Red and Artificial Condition. So I thought you might enjoy it.
C: Yeah, I did enjoy it; it is pretty good. And yes, there are some similarities perhaps but this one is a little more of a misanthrope, you’d say, he is much more negative towards humans. And he is more robotic. Murderbot is a lot more human, his body is a lot more organic, and he looks like and can pass as a human. The trash droid looks very robotic. Also this one has a much much dirtier vocabulary. There is a bad word every few sentences. I mean it works, but maybe if a bunny’s parents don’t want them to read a book with bad words, this might not be right for them.
S: And I think this one has much shorter chapters.
C: Yeah, it is also a shorter book. So quite easy to read.
S: Okay, Caramel, I think this is a good time to wrap up our review.
C: Sure.
S: And this is your last review till August.
C: I love summer time!!!
S: Yes, summer is really nice. And we will take July off as usual. So what would you like to tell our readers?
C: Stay tuned for more book bunny reviews! There is one more post from Marshmallow and then there will be many more in August!
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