Service Model by Adrian Tchaikivsky.

 

Well, this is a hilarious and grim SF novel. Plausibly a little hope at the end, but only after things have been shown to be utterly and completely fucked. At this point there've been enough stories told from the POV of robotic protagonists that Tchaikovsky isn't breaking a tun of new ground with that, though his depiction covers much of what makes the character tick; In some ways it's a different way to invert *Huckleberry Finn* than Everett took, to make the escaped (or "escaped") slave also the naif, which isn't to say that was entirely intentional, just that it's kinda there. The writing here is mostly deft, lots of sharp turns of phrase and some interesting ways the robots in the setting communicate with each other--or at least how that communication is phrased. The characters here are mostly distinct, though there are really only a very small number of throughgoing ones. The story does kinda slog through the third quarter, but it wraps up pretty well. I hadn't read any Tchaikovsky before, he tends to write trilogies at least, I think, and those aren't super easy to find at the library as a bolus; I might look for something, though, this was interesting and fun.