Steel Guardian

By: Cameron Coral

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

A timid robot protects an abandoned baby in a post-apocalyptic world.

The AI Uprising destroys society. Machines turn against humans. The military SoldierBots have one function—seek and destroy.

Block is a simple CleanerBot programmed to scrub floors and serve hotel guests. Forced to leave his city, he must avoid dangerous SoldierBots and find a new hotel he can call home.

But when Block discovers a human infant, his surprise attachment to the girl compels him to protect her.

Together, they road trip across the dystopian wastelands of America to a safe haven. Along the way, they encounter Nova, a rebellious soldier and ally. The unlikely friends must tackle the biggest challenge of their lives in this heartwarming science fiction tale of friendship and robot redemption.

They face mortal danger from bands of scavengers, militaristic robots, and Combat Mechs as they cross the post-apoc landscape. But their greatest threat is a cyborg Bounty Hunter who will stop at nothing to find Block and the child—an infant who holds the key to humanity’s future.

If you enjoy character-driven science fiction that pulls at your heartstrings and page-turning action, then you’ll love the award-finalist first book of this post apoc sci-fi series.

Steel Guardian is the first novel in the Rusted Wasteland complete series about a robot protagonist protecting found family amid a human vs. robot war. This hope punk sci fi book is endearing and full of futuristic action.

Award Finalist, Best Science Fiction Novel, The SPSFC

A good story!

I didn’t like the automated reading. It takes inflection out of the characters and makes it so bland.

No more AI voiceover please

The story was good but the AI voiceover was not. it had too many mispronounced words and would put the emphasis in the wrong place. No more AI voiceover. We have so many talented people that would love to cover this material. Let's not have machines take over just to save a few dollars.

Read the book instead

The story was good, the virtual voice narration was awful. The wrong words were empasized so often that it was confusing and the sentences jerked along like a car with flat tires.

good story but...

the story was good, interesting plot and I want to listen ro more, but I just can't because the fake voice spoils the story for me

AI Narrators Ruin Potentially Good Stories

This book is narrated by AI. (In the future I will be more diligent about knowing if a narrator is human or machine, ironic given the plot of this story.) The narration is abysmal. Intonation and pacing are pathetic. If the writing hadn't done a reasonable job of indicating who is speaking in the text, the listener would never know who said what. The story has a lot of potential but it is mostly lost due to the narration. The poor reading made the story feel and sound simple and silly. Finally, this book ends on a bit of a cliff hanger. That should be made clear to anyone considering buying it, IMHO. I imagine there are many books with similar story lines, human-machine relations, good or bad, whose authors care enough to hire quality voice actors to narrate them, so this book/author will not be on any list of mine going forward.