A blurb on the back of the book compares this one to a Black Mirror episode, and I find I don’t have much more to say about it. That is very accurate, but it wouldn’t be one of those episodes the internet is on fire about the next day.
In the (probably not-too-distant future), corporations have taken over the world, and the US has been renamed QualityLand. People are assigned levels, and the higher your level, the more perks you get (high level people can stop traffic to cross the road, low level people get waited on last even if they were first in line at the restaurant, etc.). One giant Amazon-like store has everything, and sends drones out to you with whatever you want, based on your profile. Peter is a low level machine scrapper, and he receives a pink dolphin sex toy he swears up and down he doesn’t want, but the company won’t let him return it. So Peter sets out on a very thin quest to prove that his profile is wrong, and even if it wasn’t, a person is more than their profile.
He has some help along the way: two people who live off the grid (one of whom is female, and therefore the love interest, just because), and a bunch of machines he didn’t scrap in his shop. The book feels like it thinks it’s deep, warning about the dangers of social media, consumerism, categorizing people, blah blah blah, but it’s all too obvious to be thought-provoking. Yes, we’ve all sold our souls for cell phones and the internet, but it feels like this cautionary tale has come too late.