I started reading this full of hope and optimism, but sadly I didn't enjoy this as much as other entries in this story series. There are a lot of very fun and interesting ideas here, and it is really good to see how the programs and the company offerings are coming together, but over all the story felt quite cold and mechanical. I feel that there was a lot of promise here that wasn't really realised.
When the story starts, the first 3 paragraphs or so feel like an information dump, getting us up to speed and setting the scene. This is always a tricky spot, when a story has to introduce a bunch of background to make sense of things and move forward, but if you could have mixed it in with more feelings, more humanity and a better sense of Jackie as a person and how she feels. Show us how she feels, show us something of what she gave up, and how she has been objectified by her new life, and left empty and board by it. I want to connect with her, and to feel her before and after emotions. The whole point of this is her change from free but purposeless woman to a captured and controlled "object", who remembers who she was, and sees the change in her situation.
Her friend, who told her about the maid program, she could have done with a name, to make her more human, and to make it easier to track who is who when she comes back to see Jackie, and figures out that Jackie is now acting the part of the maid, and has even brought in a maid-bot that looks just like her, to play her role as mistress of the house.
Moments so full of emotional promise, such thoughts and feelings that could course through her friend, perhaps envy and curiosity at taking the game as far as Jackie has, happiness at seeing her embrace the idea so fully, etc. But this was not really realised, sadly.
In part 1, I really did smile when we saw Jackie signing a load of forms without reading them, let alone checking out the small print or possible warnings and side effects! So familiar, but also such a wonderful way of setting herself up for trouble down the line *wicked smile*
The end of the story, and discovering that the mistress-bot that had been programmed with a dominant version of Jackie's memories, and thus personality, has taken such total control of events is fascinating. It would have been nice to see a bit more of where this came from, and how it came to be. How much of this drive and passion did Jackie herself exhibit before her marriage, and then the dull and empty life she drifted into and through? Surely all of this did not come from nowhere, out of the blue.
Topic: The Maid-bot in Me by Gromet (Read 6650 times)