You don’t have to eat food to know the way to a city’s heart is through its stomach. So when a group of deactivated robots come back online in an abandoned ghost kitchen, they decide to make their own way doing what they making food—the tastiest hand-pulled noodles around—for the humans of San Francisco, who are recovering from a devastating war.

But when their robot-run business starts causing a stir, a targeted wave of one-star reviews threatens to boil over into a crisis. To keep their doors open, they’ll have to call on their customers, their community, and each other—and find a way to survive and thrive in a world that wasn’t built for them.

Amazon | Goodreads

What happens when a group of robots wake up to discover their business shut down without any communication and debts they need to pay? They run the restaurant themselves!

Automatic Noodle tells the story of 4 robots who ‘wake up’ to discover that a number of months ago they had been shut down by their contract holders with no warning. Facing their own debts and wanting to stick together they need to figure out a way to re-open their restaurant, the way they want to.

On the surface this sounds purely like a fun and cozy sci fi, but there’s lots of commentary through the robots eyes that hit very close to home in the current climate. California is its own nation after a war with the rest of America, and working on rebuilding. One of the changes? Robots have civil rights…but not all rights. It’s very reminiscent of the gradual gaining of rights after slavery ended, or after women started getting rights (such as being able to have their own bank accounts…which here, robots cannot). The robots are in constant fear of being discovered while also trying to make enough money to survive without being sold off.

The relationships between the robots (and some human friends) are genuine and each of their personalities is unique. It’s a quick read, but definitely has a lot of heart at its core, tackling subject and prejudices that are common even today.

Happy reading!

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