Bear Head (Audiobook) – Adrian Tchaikovsky –11.08.24
Because I loved Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky, I went to see what else he had on Amazon, and Dogs of War audiobook was included free in my audible membership, so I gave it a go.
The themes are similar to Service model, although this duology is not comedic. In service model, the AI robot was programmed to be a Valet, and struggled to find a place in the world without a master to serve, and in the same way, the main character in dogs of war, Rex, is a dog that has been augmented with AI and bionic stuff – like a cyborg dog and the bionic man’s love child, and it is very ingrained in him to serve his master and has feedback built into him to respond very positively to being told by his master that he is a ‘good boy’ and very negatively to being told ‘bad dog’.
Rex works with a troupe including Honey, a cyber bear, bees, a swarm of cyber bees with a single hive mind intelligence and Dragon who is a cyber-dragon! Honey is very intelligent, and when she gains access to the internet she realises that their master is not a good man and by following him they are killing innocent people which throws Rex into turmoil because he is a very good dog who doesn’t want to hurt innocent people, but also everything in him wants to obey his master.
The second part of the series explores the reaction of the world to these creatures who are sentient and feeling ‘people’ but also dangerous created weapons as well as the way humans begin to be augmented in various ways including being linked by technology which is almost moving towards telepathy or even a new hive mind species. I found the books very interesting and fun to read.
Sarah Wray Writer 