Grimlock ♥ Ultra Magnus

And unfortunately, I found some hiccups in the writing.   Some I could forgive more easily than others.   Like the few typos I found: 

"Or did he just a psychopath wanting to bring about a second slaughter?"

Was he and did he are not the same.   I figured it out quickly, so it didn't pull me out of the story too much, but it would been a smoother read if such typos were not in this.   To this story's credit, there weren't many typos, and I do believe it was edited due to this fact.   It could have gone through one more quick proofread, however. 

What bothered me more was when it showed and didn't tell:

"She had based it on Asimov's laws, improving the wording and logic in such a way as to be flawless."

Look, I really hate to say this - mostly because I enjoyed enough of the ideas in this to really enjoy the story - but this is flat out lazy.   While, yes, there are many flaws in Asimov's three laws of robotics when applied to real life - hell, they don't work all the time even in his short stories, they're too broad, they won't really protect us and this is all easily found on Google, or even in the book Our Final Invention - so much of the story was about those laws and how they guided the robots.  

I perked up when it was mentioned that Levi's wife had been working on this problem, on how to make the laws of robotics to work.  I was sorely disappointed in... this.   There's no real explanation about how she plans on making this work, and you're left to wonder if the solution was partly Levi's, which would make sense given his occupation before building Jerry. 

Furthermore, even if the laws of robotics work only as a narrative trick, they do work in that context: in Asimov's self-contained world, they work to tell us how robots will, at least for the most part, work in the world.   They are clearly defined.   

And while Jerry is Not a Robot did work on a lot of levels without the exact definition, it still felt like a cop out not to tell us how she improved the laws of robotics.   I read that sentence and thought, 'well, it's easy to write that sentence, and it's far less easy to improve on something as well known as the laws of robotics in a way that will be palatable to people.    But to make it flawless?'  I want to know what that's like, dammit!  Honestly, I probably would have given this five stars, two or three typos and all, except that this type of fuzzy logic bugged me, particularly when it came to this sentence.   Isn't it funny how one sentence can change your mind about something?

Because throughout the rest of this, I was left wondering how much influence Levi had on this, and what exactly his wife had improved.   It consumed me a bit.   And when it was left all up in the air, I was pretty disappointed.   Probably about as disappointed as the Max Barry fans were with the dangling puppy thread.   Maybe more.   Because this is like these laws are the Bella of science fiction: they can be perfect any way you want, because they are undefined!   It also means the author doesn't have to think out how to fix the laws of robotics, and the characters - especially Levi - can act any way they want, and say it's all according to his wife's plan.   We don't know if he's being an unreliable narrator or not as we're never given his wife's plan in her own words.   (Also, this is pretty male: Joel, Jerry, Levi.   His wife, Maria, who is supposed to be the crux of this story is already dead.   We're told that she wrote journals and codes for the robots, but we're given little if anything of her in her own words.   She may be important, but just because she's been fridged.   She acts as a point of grief - her death more specifically - to motivate the males while she is completely and utterly silenced.  It felt kinda creepy to be honest.)

I also spent a good deal of the book wanting to correct everyone, and scream that Jerry was a robot.   

Then the ending made me go, 'oops.'   I was embarrassed about all my preconceptions.   It was actually really nifty in that it made me think as the main character, Joel, did, and I held his preconceptions.    Only at the end did I see how wrong I was...

Nifty, but I'd like to see something else from this author, something that thinks about these narrative implications.   I'd also like to see any female characters, to be honest.