Reviews tagging 'Trafficking'

Autonomous by Annalee Newitz

14 reviews

indeedithappens's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional reflective tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Drug use, and Slavery

Moderate: Mental illness, Self harm, Mass/school shootings, Injury/Injury detail, Violence, Police brutality, Sexual harassment, Sexual violence, Abandonment, Death, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Xenophobia, Addiction, Alcohol, Blood, Confinement, Cursing, Gun violence, Homophobia, Kidnapping, Medical trauma, Stalking, Terminal illness, Toxic relationship, Vomit, Body horror, Child abuse, Classism, Death of parent, Drug abuse, Fire/Fire injury, Torture, Toxic friendship, Trafficking, Bullying, Colonisation, Emotional abuse, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Gaslighting, Grief, Physical abuse, Domestic abuse, Gore, Medical content, Murder, Panic attacks/disorders, and Rape

miraveta's review

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

This book brings up some really interesting concepts and worldbuilding, but sadly they are undercooked. The ending also left a bad taste in my mouth and made me second guess everything I thought the author understood. 

Like, Eliasz and Paladin are essentially FBI agents for a worse govt carrying out extrajudicial murders for a corporate coverup. Eliasz explicitly notes that he changed from his previous job hunting down child traffickers because he likes how cut and dry the corporate patent laws are re: who's the bad guy and they also will let him do whatever he personally thinks is justified while in the field. They cover up each killing for them. This is all bad! And he grooms Paladin into doing the same thing, because Paladin is enslaved and has been built with programs to make them want to please their owners and even experience love towards them. He even uses Paladin to get off at a point where Paladin has basically no understanding of what's going on or what sex means. It seemed like Paladin was having a moment of questioning what was truly right while in Vancouver with the other autonomous bots, but one call from Eliasz and right back to torture (of an unrelated person no less). This is all concluded with them basically succeeding in their campaign (the company shuts down all negative press and has the reports pulled, and the bot who managed to get video footage of them torturing a scientist never uses it for. some reason. If you build in a police violence cameras allegory, why would you do nothing with it?) and getting away to live together on Mars. It makes me wonder if the author intended all the stuff about human indenture parallels, trafficking, and corporate + pharmaceutical human rights issues to be just a plot vehicle for the two to fall in love, which would be really disappointing.

 

Also, I don't know that it's right to categorize this as an lgbt-friendly story. The robot Paladin states multiple times that they are genderless and merely allow humans to use male pronouns for them because that's what people assume when looking at them. They decide to allow Eliasz to start misgendering them as a woman instead of as a man because they can tell how much he wants to after finding out their original organ donor was a woman--basically just so he can act on his desire for them without addressing his mindset that men being with men are f*****s (his word) and wrong. And again -- the author's conceptualization of the robot's ability to genuinely consent to anything Eliasz asks is pretty debatable given the programs the robot is forced to run while indentured. And the WLW are all murdered, tortured, or sent into hiding. All in all not exactly the lgbt scifi romance win it has been marketed in some places as.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Drug abuse, Police brutality, Torture, and Trafficking

Minor: Addiction and Homophobia

bebidocrimes's review against another edition

mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

This opens an interesting discussion into where strict pharmacy patents can lead, and the idea of what is private property and who has the rights to it. It shows many ways a revolution can be conceptualized and enacted, as well as the downfalls and dangers. The indenture culture in this world is fascinating and horrifying, where if AI can be indentured for the cost of their creation, well then people can be too. This makes Threezed and Med an incredible foil to one another. I don't think Paladin has completely thought through her choices in the end, and I believe the loyalty programming did affect her decision making after autonomy. She's being fetishized and she subconsciously recognizes this through Eliasz not understanding or wanting to understand bots outside of anthropomorphizing her.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Homophobia, Police brutality, Death, Gore, Trafficking, Cursing, Blood, Slavery, Addiction, Medical content, Sexual content, Injury/Injury detail, Violence, Grief, Gun violence, Torture, Drug abuse, Drug use, and Murder

Moderate: Alcohol, Fire/Fire injury, and Rape

Minor: Pedophilia and Vomit

garbagebarge69's review against another edition

adventurous emotional reflective tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

If you took the

man/robot sexual romance

out, the book would be cut in half.

Not saying that plot is bad, or that it doesn't fit contextually; just like, how

much exposition do we need dedicated to a solider getting descriptively horny for a robot?

And not like, a human-looking robot. Like a robot built with all the passionate humanity of a Jeep Cherokee.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Injury/Injury detail, Slavery, Police brutality, and Violence

Moderate: Sexual content, Classism, Trafficking, and Drug use

Minor: Drug abuse, Adult/minor relationship, Grief, Torture, Gore, and Sexual assault

imjustadow's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.25

This is such a complicated review to write.

On the one hand, I loved Jack. Bisexual, anti-corporate, emancipator pirate lady? I'm all in, say less. Her life and experiences were very enjoyable to read and I really enjoyed her interactions with the other characters in her insane life.

But GOD, the stuff with Eliasz just kind of ruined everything for me. I don't like the way his "relationship" with Paladin played out starting from THAT chapter (if you've read it, you know which one I'm talking about). The fact that it was never resolved really made having any sympathy at all for Eliasz' quest to stop Jack next to impossible

Eliasz, at the end of the day, is a deeply homophobic cop who has no issue whatsoever with killing people to get what he wants. And more disgusting than that, he feels all of his actions are justified by him "following the law." He mentions that his time hunting down child traffickers was hell and that now that he was in patent law everything was simple and black and white, but that's such a one-dimensional state for a character to begin in, and never grow from as a person.

I loved the worldbuilding, the concept is fascinating, but I really ultimately did not enjoy this book, and I really really wanted to

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Fire/Fire injury, Transphobia, Death, Gore, Gun violence, Pandemic/Epidemic, Torture, Addiction, Homophobia, Violence, Grief, Medical trauma, Cursing, Blood, Trafficking, Injury/Injury detail, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Police brutality, Sexual assault, Kidnapping, Rape, Slavery, Drug use, Murder, and Sexual content

At the end of the day, I would say that the stuff with Eliasz represents a more realistic depiction of someone with deeply internalized homophobia who never actually improves from that point. And if we're considering how some people in real life are, that's not abnormal. However, to write Eliasz's actions out to be anything other than a villain in the story and then to give him a "happy" ending, it just wasn't for me. The author made choices I wouldn't have, and that is their prerogative. I just really didn't enjoy the choices made for Eliasz

amalyndb's review

4.5

I want to reread this one 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Homophobia and Trafficking

dchaploeb's review

adventurous dark emotional hopeful reflective fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Murder, Police brutality, Slavery, and Trafficking

Moderate: Violence, Torture, and Sexual violence

Minor: Rape

samdalefox's review against another edition

adventurous medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.25

Future dystopia, bisexual, pirate, social justice activist, hi-tech low-life(?) society. This is a tricky one to rate. I loved the premise and themes. I loved all the constituent parts individually, but they just never meshed together as a whole for me. The whole world felt jumbled, the individual storylines felt superficial, and even the characters themselves felt flat. I can't say for sure this was poorly written since I still enjoyed reading it, but I really feel that this book had more potential and somehow it let itself down. I wanted more!

There are HUGE topics introduced such as intellectual property rights and access to medicines, slavery/indenture, autonomy, robotic intelligence, corporate capitalism, and climate change and none are sufficiently explored. The novel simply needed to be longer with more depth to give us time to immerse ourselves in the jargon-overfilled world and actually get to know these characters and feel the lives they are living and the consequences of their actions. The whole thing came across more superficial that intended, especially considering the moral arguments around literally any one of the topics listed above. Even the goddamn romances were superficial. I found the ending pleasing in some areas, anticlimatic overall, and a bit confusing

why did the story end focussing upon Paladin and Eliasz instead of Jack?

. 

Andystone's review sums it up:

"...The plot follows two different sets of characters, switching off every chapter until the climax where they meet… for all of one page. There was no discussion, no one learned anything and nothing was solved. By the time I got through 80% of the story, I worried that there wouldn’t be enough time to do something compelling to give a reason for the trials and tribulations of the previous couple hundred pages. Sadly, those worries were well founded...."

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Drug use, Homophobia, and Slavery

Minor: Sexual content, Trafficking, Forced institutionalization, Murder, Colonisation, and Violence

gremlin_with_a_biscuit's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional hopeful reflective sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Torture and Violence

Moderate: Homophobia and Trafficking

Minor: Rape

quihi's review

adventurous tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Classism, Addiction, Child abuse, Murder, Sexual content, Sexual harassment, Torture, Adult/minor relationship, Violence, Police brutality, Sexual violence, Injury/Injury detail, Trafficking, and Slavery

Moderate: Homophobia