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Red Gods Sing (Brobots, #2)

Trevor Barton

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What Members Thought

Oct 22, 2017 Bill rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: gay-fiction, science-fiction, british-fiction

Book 2 of the Brobots series takes off where book 1 ended. I wish I had re-read book one as it took me a bit to remember who was who and some of the structure of Trevor's universe. The Brobots as a 'species' are fascinating and in a sense are what we or I wish humans were like. Their struggle with identity is all too familiar. Their appeal is one relationships are made of. These feeling I got in book one continued consistently in book 2.

A new story develops around the current political meme: 'G Book 2 of the Brobots series takes off where book 1 ended. I wish I had re-read book one as it took me a bit to remember who was who and some of the structure of Trevor's universe. The Brobots as a 'species' are fascinating and in a sense are what we or I wish humans were like. Their struggle with identity is all too familiar. Their appeal is one relationships are made of. These feeling I got in book one continued consistently in book 2.

A new story develops around the current political meme: 'Get rid of the aliens.' Indeed there is much in these novels that is allegorical in relation to the current political situations in the USA and in Europe. This is very up to date and includes Trump-isms and May-isms. The Brobots are the aliens and also right-thinking progressives (IMnsHO). There is also a play on the fear of AI, technology and science. Some of this is clear, others I likely read into the situations not uncommon with allegory.

The story is engaging and finished open-ended. There are lots of ways further novels in the series could go—enough of these of interest to result in many more novels. I hope it does.

Problems: The book is not without problems common to self-published books. I read the paperback edition which had too many typos from misspellings (I don't mean the use of British spellings), to wrong words to words left out. I feel that the novel was not professionally proofed. This caused me to have to stop and figure out what was intended—not a big deal, but annoying.

There was also inconsistency in writing. Most chapters had great clarity. But, every once in a while a chapter was confusing to me and I had trouble figuring out was happening, even with re-reading. I felt some were written at different times, perhaps times of conflict. In this case it seemed that the novel was not professionally edited.

These are common problems with self-published books. I do understand the trouble such authors have getting professional input into their works. I do think these problems were more of an issue in book 2 than book 1 of the Brobots series. Still I am forgiving and fully intend to continue with the series. And, at the finish, these problems did not interfere with an overall understanding of the world and the story.

7 of 10 stars ...more

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