Information

• Ratings: 3.97 out of 187
• Genre: Science Fiction, Fantasy
• Series: Dark Law Series
• Age Range: Adult

Summary

A robot with amnesia, a thief, a scrawny kid, and a man whose never been above ground venture around as the galaxy is set for collapse. The Robot only has one directive after waking up in a junk pile: find his creator. Unfortunately, he doesn’t know how. Or even what his creator looks like. He does happen to be sentient, though. So that’s a win. Miree is a thief who is afraid to care for anyone and is tasked with caring for Beetro, the robot. A warlord is wondering around seizing control of everything and the sky only has five stars. Only 3 people see anything wrong with that. Beetro and Miree team up to conduct a heist: steal a false of Dark Matter from the warlord. It does not go well, but Beetro does begin to learn more about his origin and learns that he may be the salvation humanity needs.

Review

This is a self published sci-fi fantasy novel that was an absolute pleasure to read. I’ve been making an effort to read more self published works and heard about this one from Petrick Leo – a recommendation that I am thrilled to have gotten. It does have an audiobook with it and I’m glad for it, but I do want to note that I could not only listen to the audio. There is so much packed into this novel with time travel, space, other dimensions, and more that I had to immersion read it (audio + ebook) in order to fully understand and read it.

We follow a few different characters. Beetro, Miree, Ribcage, and Arym. Each of them have intriguing backgrounds that we don’t fully know all of the details on just yet – but I cannot wait to learn more about all of them. Each character also goes through a process of learning who they are as people and where their loyalties lie. What is it to be a person? How do you pick and choose who you care about? How do you learn your individuality and what would you do if you learned that you’re not quite as unique as you think? Could you still be your own person if you were a clone? All of these are fascinating questions that this book explores through all of our characters. Some of them are quite unlikable, like Miree. That does not mean she is badly written. She makes horrible choices and will likely make you root for her death at some parts (If you’re as gruesome and bloodthirsty as I am when reading science fiction and fantasy) but everything she does makes sense for who she is and how she has learned to survive. Arym did take me some time to warm up to. We do learn more about the world from his perspective, but he felt so whiny and child-like at some points – which, again, absolutely makes sense for his case, but wasn’t super fun and fresh to read.

This world is horrible. It’s confusing. There’s time travel. There are clones. There are robots, both sentient and not. There are thieves, different kingdoms, and children who think an Arc is their mother (And that said Arc somehow gives her the ability to teleport and is from a different dimension). No matter how confusing it was, it never felt unreal. I was in the story and it was grim. I had a blast. There are also five stars, which is not ideal. Apparently only 2-3 people see something wrong with this. All in all, it was super fun and I had a blast reading through it. It did take me some time due to everything this book has going on within it. Never did it feel like too much, though. Definitely excited to continue and see where the story goes from here.