[Review] The Obsoletes - Simeon Mills

Summary: Fraternal twin brothers Darryl and Kanga are just like any other teenagers trying to make it through high school. They have to deal with peer pressure, awkwardness, and family drama. But there’s one closely guarded secret that sets them apart: they are robots. So long as they keep their heads down, their robophobic neighbors won’t discover the truth about them and they just might make it through to graduation.

But when Kanga becomes the star of the basketball team, there’s more at stake than typical sibling rivalry. Darryl—the worrywart of the pair—now has to work a million times harder to keep them both out of the spotlight. Though they look, sound, and act perfectly human, if anyone in their small, depressed Michigan town were to find out what they truly are, they’d likely be disassembled by an angry mob in the middle of their school gym. (Pub Date: May 14, 2019)

Maybe this was too weird?

Darryl and Kanga are robots living in a world where robots do exist but aren't accepted as equals to human beings. Darryl knows it and does his best not to be found out, even sending his robot parents back to their maker after becoming obsoletes. Kanga was raised to think he's human and has recently ascended in status at school where he's the new talent of their basketball team. Having to take care of them both, Darryl also must deal with the jealousy toward his brother.

This narrated from Darryl's point of view so it was fitting that he sounds hard to relate to most of the time. The writer also did amazing research—or he's creative as hell—to build their way of living. I won't call it worldbuilding because for this part it's really a world mostly like ours and that's probably his point, showing how we tend to hold prejudice against anything unfamiliar.

At the same time... the story gets boring. It starts amazing, what a different sort of YA, how creative! But then the story never starts until almost the end... It wasn't really the sort of book I had in mind when I picked it up. I needed more events.

Also, I feel parts of it never got closure. I don't want to spoil anything but a couple of characters were accused of being robots and while I believe they weren't, I didn't see any confirmation or even consequence to them being mentioned. You can say I should just reread it and the answers will be there, but it's neither the sort of story I'd want to read again. I would read a second novel in this universe. In fact, I'd love it! But this book was too much like one of these super heroes live actions—an introductory arc, when we see it should get good along the way but it's still early to say.

And because it feels like we had so many plotholes, the ending while "yeah, it's okay", it had had to be much more to make up for the slow pace. I confess when I noticed the middle wouldn't take us anywhere, I started thinking the writer had some shocking truths in store. But it was just an okay ending.

This is a good story that needed some more work while in the making, because the potential was unbelievable. It's a pity to see all the work building the reality, building how the robots work go to waste. So here's hoping for other volumes.



Honest review based on an ARC provided by Netgalley. Many thanks to the publisher for this opportunity.

Rating: 3 out of 5.