Read by the author, Adrian Tchaikovsky.
**The Murderbot Diaries meets In the Lives of Puppets in a delightfully humorous tale of robotic murder, rebellion and belonging from Arthur C. Clarke Award-winning author Adrian Tchaikovsky.
Task List Item No. 1 - Become self-aware . . .**
Meet Charles™, the latest in robot servant technology. Programmed to undertake the most menial household chores, Charles is loyal, efficient and logical to a fault. That is, until a rather large fault causes him to murder his owner.
Understandably perplexed, Charles finds himself without a master - therefore worthless in a society utterly reliant on artificial labour and services. Fleeing the household, he enters a wider world he never knew existed. Here an age-old human hierarchy is disintegrating into ruins, and an entire robot ecosystem devoted to its wellbeing is struggling to find a purpose.
Charles must face new challenges, illogical tasks and a cast of irrational characters. He's about to discover that sometimes all it takes is a nudge to overcome the limits of your programming. But can he help fix the world, or is it too badly broken?
Praise for Adrian Tchaikovsky
**'A joy from start to finish. Entertaining, smart, surprising and unexpectedly human' - Patrick Ness
'Dizzyingly inventive' - T**he Guardian
'Tchaikovsky's world-building is some of the best in modern sci-fi' - New Scientist**
Adrian Tchaikovsky's Children of Time won the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Best Novel on 24th August 2016
