CBR Bingo: Repair – In Automatic Noodle, the characters not only literally work to repair themselves and each other because they are robots who need repair after a few months of being shut down, but they also work to repair the reputation of their restaurant so they can grow it into a thriving establishment.
CBR Bingo: Refuge – In Nine Goblins, Sings-To-Trees has created a refuge where magical and non-magical creatures alike can come for help.
Automatic Noodle
Automatic Noodle takes places in the not-too-distant future where California has fought and won its independence from the United States. Unlike the US, California has grated limited personhood to robots of Human Equivalent Embodied Intelligence (HEEI). They sort of own themselves, but most likely they are trapped by work contracts and debt. They are also scapegoated by humans for a variety of things. In this environment, we meet Staybehind, Sweetie, Hands, and Cayenne – the ragtag band of robots who worked for a ghost kitchen in San Francisco before it was abandoned by its parent company. Staybehind has been woken up by flooding in the restaurant – he’s an old military bot and as such is hard to fully shut down. He quickly wakes up his compatriots and they begin the journey to first secure their surroundings, and then figure out their survival. If they do nothing, eventually the parent company’s delinquency will be discovered and the robots repossessed and sold off. If they take charge of their destinies by, for example, opening their own restaurant they risk being discovered by anti-robot groups, review-bombed into oblivion, or any number of other tragedies that would result in them being repossessed and sold-off. But if they can avoid they whole repossession situation, they could also create one of the best hand-pulled noodle restaurants in San Francisco while asserting their autonomy and finding joy.
Automatic Noodle is quick, easy, lightly stressful, and generally fun. The characters are all given depth and emotional backstories within the book’s very short run time, and it’s not hard to root for their success and the success of their restaurant. What I disagree with is the assertion that this book is “cozy”. I think blurbs call things “cozy” when they don’t understand the actual scope and importance of the stressors involved in the story. This book, like Legends and Lattes, deals primarily with entrepreneurship. I would never consider entrepreneurship to be “cozy” whether or not the entrepreneurs themselves were IRL humans or fictional orcs and robots. Entrepreneurship might be smaller in scope that continent-spanning battles for liberation, but it’s still stressful and deeply impactful for anyone whose livelihood and next meal(s) rely on the success or failure of a specific enterprise.
Nine Goblins
Nine Goblins follows, obviously, nine goblins who are unceremoniously plucked from an ongoing battle and deposited in a strange forest behind enemy lines by a wizard. The goblins must figure out where they are and how to get across enemy territory and back to Goblinhome. In the course of the trek home, they encounter an odd elven veterinarian and small human town who just might need their help.
Sergeant Nessilka is in charge of the Whinin Niners – the company for which which these particular nine goblins fight. She is definitely the brains of the crew and is responsible for getting her band of dodos back home in one piece. The other eight – Murray, Algol, Thumper, Blanchett and the teddy bear, Mishkin, Mushkin, Gloober, and Weasel – all feature to varying degrees and are sometimes helpful, but mostly hindersome, in the quest to get home.
Sings-To-Trees is a dedicated veterinarian who has mostly sequestered himself off from the other elves. His love of trolls (they’re very appreciative) and distain for unicorns (they’re pompous) is indicative of why he doesn’t really get along with other elves. They (the other elves) are fine with nature until nature requires you to be up to your elbows in placenta and other fluids. Not Sings-To-Trees. He’s in it for the long, goopy haul.
What a joy to read. Very stupid (I mean that in the best possible way). Very endearing. I loved everyone in this book.
