Robopocalypse: A Novel

Clever book that is worth reading if you want to hear about the coming robot apocalypse. However, the author tends to turn every ordeal into an epic moment. No matter if it is climatic or mundane, the cast is "pushed to the limits of human extreme - gritting their teeth in total absolute effort beyond the most greatest challenge ever" as they crawl out of bed.
Concept is great, but don't read unless you can tolerate hyperbole and that kind of geeky foreshadowing were someone acts like something coming up is the PENULTIMATE BADARSE THINGY, but you don't get told what and have to wait four chapters to see.

When Asimov (I, Robot) and Matheson (I am Legend) set the bar for the for the killer robot and zombie story…many, many years ago…it’s hard to imagine really successful works following. But, great authors have amazingly done it…produced well thought out, original ideas that earn them the right to sit on the shelf next to their ground breaking predecessors. Dr. Wilson, a genuine “mad” scientist, has successfully done it with Robopocalypse. I read reviews that compared this to Max Brooks (World War Z)…and the book is similar to Brooks, in that dooms day is chronologically covered through different characters. I loved both books…gives the story a much broader scope…and bigger feel. Both zombie and apocalypse junkies will not be disappointed…gore, battles, villains and heroes….something for the entire family!

I just adore this book. I like the way the story is delivered to you. I will agree the first listen it was a little slow to get into, but that is because you land right in a battle scenery. I have read this .... sorry listen to this book a couple of time. I do skip to certain parts sometimes. If you like the style of WWZ you will like. there are parts that i was glued to & even thought i was there. I loved the delivery of the story. The only problem i can see it not with the book or story. It will be with the movie that is set to come out, now granted this will make an awesome movie. However, it is not a family movie(which you know they will make) Some scenes in this book are a little graphic & i don't see how you could film them and not be "R" or even NC-17.
I would like to thank Mr. Wilson for now making me a little edge on Zero Hour a/k/a Thanksgiving Day.. 8-)

It would be so nice if books that were written in nonstandard styles came with warnings of this. This book was written in the present tense, which to my ears sounds awkward and distracts from my ability to enjoy the story (and I have over 300 audiobooks in my Audible library, all of them written in the past tense, except for this one). I couldn't get past an hour of this book before I gave up. If you find present tense writing styles a bit off-putting, you may wish to avoid this book.

Robopocalypse is an interesting variation on the increasingly common emergent-evil-AI theme. A really smart AI wakes up and hijacks the arms and legs and wheels of all the smart devices we've been building, extending itself into all of our smart machines, which suddenly begin to attack humans like artificial zombies. The story is told from the perspective of both people and machines beginning right before and immediately after the singularity (awakening), and it does a fair job of capturing what might be distinctive about those different points of view. The author has a tin ear when it comes to the portrayal of some of his characters (young girls and women seem especially badly done), but on the whole there are some memorable and compelling players here (the Japanese roboticist who genuinely loves his robots is quite moving). There isn't a lot that's new otherwise, except the suggestion that maybe the evil AI isn't really evil after all but is just trying to teach humanity a lesson for its own good. Those hints in the plot aren't very coherent and becoming annoying by the end. The narration is excellent, the story idea is solid, and it's a perfectly entertaining way to spend several hours, but the execution could have been better.

I bought this with apprehension. So many books try to capture the reality of the situation. This book however made it seem very plausable. Excellent performance makes this a darn good listen.

Another novel in the fear mongering genre that makes like an updated, more human version of movies similar to iRobot, 2001 A Space Odyssey, or the Terminator. The story, a set of recounted narratives, is written entirely in the present tense, while read from a futurist perspective. This choice of tense makes the audible version slightly annoying.

Plus, the narrator, Mr. Chamberlain, leaves a bit to be desired in the quality category. Of the dozen or so characters, he portrays each in one of three dialects/accents. These three become fairly repetitive and somewhat grating. It came to the point, where I couldn't figure out if I really disliked the book or just his reading. You will have to decide for yourself I guess.

Each character is written in a way that brings out the best attributes of humans. This is the saving grace of the book. If you like the post-world ending stories, this is at least a fresh take on an old tale.

This future history is a string of progressive comfortable assumptions about people and technology, save your time and get how to survive a robot uprising if you’re interested in this topic. I recommend you skip this title unless you like predictable story lines.

Just before writing this review I thought no one else realized that this book shared a really similar feel to Max Brooks' World War Z (not to mention Max also wrote a book called the Zombie Survival Guide and Daniel H Wilson created a book called How to Survive a Robot Uprising). It seems as if others here did indeed notice this as well. As a matter of fact there were points in the book I just felt like the whole plot was lifted and re-purposed. Okay so with all this aside...

The book was actually quite good. The story is essentially a re-telling of how a computer program named Archos found a mind of its own and in pretty short order decided to go to war with the humans. The story took place somewhere in the near future which made some of the story a bit easier to believe.

My 3 stars are really because there are many unanswered questions. So many unanswered questions in fact that I believe there must be another book in the works. There was so much ground to cover in so many years, you really wanted to know more about what was going on. Without giving anything away, I will say I kept thinking "What was Archos' strategy and why did he do some of the things he did?"

Perhaps the best part of this book was Mike Chamberlain who read the book perfectly. Perhaps one of the reasons for why I wanted to learn more about Archos was the fantastic voice Mike used for him. Anytime Archos spoke, I got that weird creepy feeling that added some real entertainment.

Enjoy the book but be aware it feels like it was designed for a movie more than a good book. Perhaps that is why Steven Spielberg is directing it :-)

Great concept but poorly executed. I would have liked more of a climax to the story. I felt the final scene was a bit of a let-down.