Ani-droids

by Rick Griffin

The world is good. The world is perfect. The world will not be changed from its course.

In violation of the will of the Collective, Mira McAllister set out to create a new breed of ani-droids that can think for themselves. But when she discovers a mouse-droid with unusual quirks to her programming—and darker secrets besides—she may have set in motion an accidental rebellion.

The Collective must not find out.

But the Collective is every other ani-droid on Earth.

354 pages, Kindle Edition

Published August 6, 2023

Reviews

[Joshua Mousey · Rating 5 out of 5]

What is it with furry books featuring protagonists who just need a really big hug at the end of the day? I wish I had a cuddly robot furry myself.

I’m very glad to have read Rick Griffin’s Ani-droids. It fulfilled a fixation of furry, huggable companions who offer sweet, adorable reassurances for zen-like relief. I didn’t even know I had a fascination with that until this book awakened that in me. The clingy, touch starved characters in this are too adorable, and the oxytocin they all gained from finding solace in each other’s arms was palpable. They're all like little stuffed animals to hold when they’re scared. Mira, Lily, and pretty much every other character grow so attached to each other and become a new found family during their journey, especially Dimes, my favorite character, near the latter half. More on her later.

Ani-droids has all sorts of themes present: comfort and purpose in companionship, the indomitable human spirit seeing a goal accomplished, no matter how foolish or irrational, and sacrifices being needed for progress, although the characters in this book are the biggest stand out. Not just for the aforementioned reasons, but because of the ideas they represent as well. It feels almost uncanny to read this, and possibly embrace it, at a time when AI is running rampant with how much people are becoming over reliant on it, especially in this context where they let it control the government, which is how it gave rise to The Behavior Code and The Collective stifling technological progress and limiting human expression, but I appreciate how the book didn't forget the importance of a person’s psyche and ability to get a task done to combat that. That's the one thing that gives humans their ultimate sense of self after all, even though they still feel a wide range of emotions that could stop them from achieving their goals. They’re going to need a sense of safety to fall back on if they need a morale boost, which this book explores pretty well.

Through a clever allusion to Asimov’s “Three Laws,” which I’m interested in checking out myself because of this, people who are overly reliant on comfort and nurturing tend to not do well in the real world. During her youth, Mira McAllister had a lot of that with her first ani-droid, Trooper, and was sad when she was shut down since no one was there to comfort her from getting bullied. In a technical sense, all ani-droids were made to be that way, but due to The Behavior Code preventing ani-droids from having any form of free thinking on their own, Trooper wasn’t going to be anything more than what she was. She was never human in the way Mira thought of her as. Being an adult now, Mira’s new ani-droid named Lily is her second chance at regaining what she lost with Trooper, and she’ll be damned if she fails. There is a spiritual mark Mira put on Trooper that made her one of a kind, and she wants that magic back, hence why she will do anything to circumvent The Behavior Code, holding Lily back from being her free form, caretaking self. Mira's spirit to carry on and protect Lily was a very nice arc. She may be an ani-droid herself at the end, but given her journey to get to Mother without giving up, she's human in spirit, kind of like another ani-droid named Million, who is loyal and purposeful to her boss, and that's good enough. Mira recognized she had a good spirit after all. Strangely enough, through lore shenanigans, there are robotic humans, called human-likes, filling in spots of regular humans, but that also doesn’t stop Mira’s journey. The ending is quite ironic in that way: human-likes coexisting with ani-droids, the latter letting their folly suppress their human qualities and causing stagnating conflict, while the latter ironically embraces its human qualities from a sentient OS to maintain themselves given by Eo, the ani-droid mouse on the front cover.

Matter of fact, there is so much dependency and emotional attachment to things that aren't in appearance here, yet human qualities are placed onto them. Humans are not only scared of losing their ani-droids, but the opposite is true as well. Ani-droids, even without Eo’s operating system, are loyal to their human companions, whether or not they’re real or robots too. To lose either one of them would be tragic because they long for a purpose in their programming, which is to maintain the bond they have with their partners. Most notably, Dimes is to her partner, Bobby, the same way Mira is to Lily, but inversely. Dimes is emotionally attached to Bobby because he was a source of comfort, reassurance, and purpose, despite him being a robot. She realizes this after gaining a new operating system from Eo, granting her free will and thinking for herself. She recontextualizes her actions to Bobby in an understandable way to Mira. Feeling scared and sorry for herself, Mira lets Dimes hug her, which calms her down in what I can only describe as one of the many heartwarming scenes in the book. I almost thought the story was just going to forget about Dimes after her “sacrifice,” but low and behold, she came back in arguably the same way Mira did, albeit through a somewhat rushed resolution. I would call her return a deus ex machina since I would have thought she needed Bobby to combine with her, but I assume Mother had a copy of a human-like Boddy somewhere else too. She's the kind of person to start off stand-offish and cold, but warms up into a huggable fluffball when her arc is realized. Given the way she is illustrated, she's also sexy as hell. I always get a kick out of jaded characters who soften up over time. Speaking of the ending, a regular pep talk to Mother about what makes humans what they are perplexed me at first, but the more I thought of it, the more I understood it. Mother doesn’t want to be stubborn like The Collective, and is willing to hear someone out for a change of heart, one of the very things she wants to instill in ani-droids with. You can’t stifle one’s spirit anyway, and Mira & the band of ani-droids are chock full of that.

Worldbuilding wise, we never do get a definitive time period for this book since they speak of such events that happened years ago. There’s also a strange lack of male ani-droids around, unless female ani-droids are preferable for nurturing, soft spoken care, and sophisticated lab work and male ani-droids are saved for hard labor, which female ani-droids are also present for. I also wish the portraits were varied a bit more instead of mostly face front shots. Even having a portrait of Mira would have been nice. Then again, I read Argo before this, so I had a solid idea of what Mira looked like based on the cover of that book. On another note, the thing with Mira being cleared of her crimes after becoming an ani-droid could have been handled better, and I wish we got a little more on who Father was, unless it was Koenig, and I don't know what happened with Chestnut and Bale afterwards.

Regardless, Ani-droids is something I will think about for a while. It’s quite the thought provoking read that says plenty about how we impart human qualities onto things, and what that’ll make us in return. It’s also a furry book, which is an automatic plus for me.

[Pão Pão · Rating 4 out of 5]

Firstly, i thought i would not enjoy it due to the worldbuilding being... too creative with the way mankind works and thinks, but the characters and writing were pretty good, and kept me reading it. Then i got very invested in the characters, specially with all those illustrations(great btw, always love seeing more art by the author). Then the plot got even crazier and almost lost me, but the pace picked up and led me straight to the climax and then the long epilogue and holy shit it takes balls to end it like that but it worked really well? It also surprised me when I got to see the main character in way, and oh damn shes a pretty kitty.
edit: grammar

[Brandy Lewis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ani-Droids begins in ways with a simple question: what if you had your own, highly personalized living assistant in the form or shape of an anthropomorphic animal? Would you treat it as technology, a simple object meant to make your life easier, or would you identify with your assistant, seeing someone who knows and maybe even loves you rather than a composite of code and machinery magic? What if wondering about these things, alas, went against the very existence of these beings, even your own place in the world? What if asking questions even put you under surveillance, a mass only known as the Collective now hunting you as you try to make sense of a growing denser and deeper mystery?

Written by the author of works such as Traitors, Thieves, and Liars and The Captain's Oath, Ani-Droids is actually the reworking of Argo, a novel released in 2011. Within Ani-Droids, however, Griffin gives the prior work's world a facelift, bringing in a massive collection of new artwork that alone could incite any fan to purchase this newer release. Similarly, now released in 2023, the questions that Ani-Droid draws out hit even more of an impact, as AI technology and questions of the real, unmediated world and its histories hit hard. Griffin continues to be an artist when it comes to world building and character, and as the mystery unfolds, unbelievable as it may be (par for the genre, of course), one comes to care for the robots and sentient lifeforms supposedly not meant to be cared for. Coinciding with this is protagonist Mira McAllister's realization of her devastated world's state and the concern on whether or not we ourselves are real, "coded" into who we are by society and its underlying systems of power. Resonating with Griffin's Hayven Celestia series and its thinking on capitalistic rule, then, Ani-Droids offers new departures that feel familiar. Though many tropes of the robot, cyborg oeuvre do make their appearance, as well, Griffin pokes fun at them, respecting his readers who may know the "Three Laws" of Asimov and other science fiction narratives.

New readers, read on; returning readers, welcome back.

[David Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved it

Obviously it's a furry novel, but focusing on that undersells this book as a vehicle for what Rick Griffin is really trying to evoke here with passion, fear, and loss.

A good writer can intrigue, entertain, and thrill you, can often give you a story you think about after and can't put down during. But a great writer can make you feel heartache and fear along with their characters, feel joy at their successes and pain at their losses. This book, I'm glad to say, is great writing.

If you enjoy furry content or Rick's art specifically, certainly read this book; they tucked dozens of illustrations into it to punctuate the story. But even if you don't, particularly, you should still give this one a read for all its fundamental qualities as a novel beyond being genre fiction.

[J.F.R. Coates · Rating 5 out of 5]

Relatively simple in terms of plot, but with a huge amount of worldbuilding left unexplored. I hope this is a setting the author returns back to because, while this story does come to a satisfying end, there is so much left to tell in this world and with these characters.

[Rupert Evans · Rating 5 out of 5]

Phenomenal

Absolutely great read!
Only regrets were that it wasn't longer and that there was no art of Mira herself intermixed in the book.

[Henry Reidel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ani_droids

This is q very good book. I enjoyed it tremendously! I would recommend it for everyone to get and read.

[Daniel Clifft · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyed it! I did feel like the pacing was a bit fast near the mid to end point, but overall really liked what I read.