I Should Read That

Book review¹

A cozy near-future novella about a crew of leftover robots opening their very own noodle shop, from acclaimed sci-fi author Annalee Newitz.

You don’t have to eat food to know the way to a city’s heart is through its stomach. So when a group of deactivated robots come back online in an abandoned ghost kitchen, they decide to make their own way doing what they know: making food—the tastiest hand-pulled noodles around—for the humans of San Francisco, who are recovering from a devastating war.

But when their robot-run business starts causing a stir, a targeted wave of one-star reviews threatens to boil over into a crisis. To keep their doors open, they’ll have to call on their customers, their community, and each other—and find a way to survive and thrive in a world that wasn’t built for them.

Sometimes all you need is a cosy book about robots opening a noodle shop, am I right? Automatic Noodle is my first book by Annalee Newitz and I thoroughly enjoyed it! Combining cosy found family tropes with discussions of autonomy and dismantling hate, Automatic Noodle is a great sci-fi novella.

Set in the near-future after a war that sees California split from the rest of the United States, this book focuses on a defunct restaurant and the bots that ran it. This setting allows Newitz to explore the ways in which the world is unsafe for ‘othered’ communities and how to survive when your community is under attack. It also has amazing friendships, a found family, and the determination to carve out a piece of the world to make a home. It’s a little book that has a lot to say, and it’s incredibly relevant to what many communities are experiencing right now across the world.

I loved all the characters in this book – they’re the heart of the story and it’s hard not to fall in love with them. The robots -who have all experienced war, traumas, and the looming threat to their autonomy – have such wonderful interpersonal relationships and Newitz creates such sympathetic characters. They may not be human, but they are incredibly relatable and loveable. Personally, I would die for Hands.

Automatic Noodle is a cosy, slice of life novella that also has a lot to say. I’d highly recommend this if you are a fan of Becky Chambers’ Monk and Robot books. Beware: you’ll be craving noodles by the end.

You’ll be able to read this book in August in the US and September in the UK.

1. A copy of this book was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review ↩︎