Of Monsters and Mainframes by Barbara Truelove - 4.5 stars

[Jen K]

4.5 stars for such a fun twist of scifi meets fantasy. Demeter is your average shuttle spaceship until she comes online for landing to find that her more than 300 passengers are all dead. This does not give her a good reputation among the other ship AIs. Even her own medical AI, Steward, blames Demeter for the deaths. Then on her next journey, she gets a bit too close to a moon letting loose a werewolf and really dooming her for bullying. Demeter starts to adapt her own programming to keep her remaining 2 humans alive for the rest of the passage relying on Steward to help interpret the humans and is set on revenge for the monsters especially Dracula causing her problems. Supported by a bit of a ragtag group of not quite humans, Demeter takes on Dracula to save herself and her community.

The personalities and relationship between Demeter and Steward are stellar plus the chirpy spider drones! Though I think I missed some binary visuals, the audio was spot on with the voices and really added to the enjoyment. The story is a bit of found family and coming of age and I love the evolutions especially the AIs. I love that Steward's ethics module is a bit defective and they are just so so fun. I recommend for not so surprising but joyful space jaunt with Scooby Doo vibes.

[Nicole]

I saw the cover of this book in passing and immediately assumed it was related to The Ministry of Time … I was very confused.

This sounds wonderful though! And slightly Murderbot-esq, which is very much an attraction for me! Will have to get to it soon, glad your review brought it to my attention! And that the cover also grabbed my curiosity

[Algernon (Darth Anyan)]

Fun is good. I will put this one on my wishlist.
Thanks!

[Jen K]

Hope you both enjoy as much as I did! Definitely lighter than The Ministry of Time and not quite as snarky as Murderbot but somewhat similar to their interaction with ART.

[Robin P]

Sounds a bit like Murderbot, adding to my TBR