Book Review: Of Monsters and Mainframes by Barbara Truelove

Spaceships aren’t programmed to seek revenge—but for Dracula, Demeter will make an exception.
Demeter just wants to do her job: shuttling humans between Earth and Alpha Centauri. Unfortunately, her passengers keep dying—and not from equipment failures, as her AI medical system, Steward, would have her believe. These are paranormal murders, and they began when one nasty, ancient vampire decided to board Demeter and kill all her humans.
To keep from getting decommissioned, Demeter must join forces with her own team: A werewolf. An engineer built from the dead. A pharaoh with otherworldly powers. A vampire with a grudge. A fleet of cheerful spider drones. Together, this motley crew will face down the ultimate evil—Dracula.
The queer love child of pulp horror and ​classic ​sci-fi, Of Monsters and ​Mainframes ​is a dazzling, heartfelt odyssey that probes what it means to be one of society’s monsters—and explores the many types of friendship that make us human.

I began this initially in audio, but I found it to be too overproduced and overacted in general. What could be a cute story could become annoyingly twee. This made me switch to the ebook version.

The book starts with a spaceship AI waking up from an unexpected reboot and memory wipe. The first pages of this story were really compelling. It made me happy that this book, which I started to read on a whim, was going to be a page-turner for me. The story felt fresh and original, the characters were cute, and there was a decent dose of mystery to keep me engaged. I think this novelty feeling lasted for the first third of the book. From this point onward, I began noticing some issues:

– I liked the parts where the POV was from Demeter and Steward. It made for interesting dialogues. In the end, the book constantly switched POV to all characters that appeared in it. If I’m not mistaken, we get at least five different POVs, all written in first person.
– This fragmentation helped get different points of view, but in many cases, it caused the book to have a feel of a collection of short stories.
– The monsters in this book are quite literally many of the well-known classical monsters. While one of them corresponds to the main arc, the other monsters are part of each short story.
– The short story collection feeling was increased due to the slow pace of each story and the big gaps between many of them. In the end, many interesting things happened in between those stories, which didn’t make the main arc flow very well.
– There are multiple technological analogies in the book, and most of them are quite incorrect. I kind of expected something similar to the Murderbot Diaries, but this one was just too overdone. Examples of this are the AIs talking about emotions or things that can’t be quantified. At times, it felt like a book written for children or people who don’t know anything about computers. Probably the second, as there are several swear words and some gruesome details, which would make the book inappropriate for young readers.
– As everything that happens in the book is through the lens of a specific character, we never get to fully know any of them. It made for a cute story, but POVs from multiple undeveloped characters prevented me from getting invested in the story.

Did I regret reading this book? Not really. It was entertaining, especially at first. Would I recommend it to anybody? No, since it doesn’t have enough redeeming characteristics despite being cute and a light read.

Story (Plot)
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lomeraniel

My name is Elena. Since I was a little child I loved science fiction and fantasy, and I can’t resist a good novel. In 2015, while wait I started to listen to audiobooks and I discovered the pleasure in being able to read while doing my daily tasks, so there’s always an audiobook playing on my phone. If you see me with my Bluetooth headphones on, please be gentle, I get easily startled.

I live with my boyfriend, which I met during my six-year stay in Belgium, four cockatiels, eight lovebirds, and a hamster in Madrid, Spain; and I like to spend my free time knitting and sewing while listening to audiobooks.