Robopocalypse by Daniel H. Wilson

From Goodreads:

They are in your house. They are in your car. They are in the skies…Now they’re coming for you.  

In the near future, at a moment no one will notice, all the dazzling technology that runs our world will unite and turn against us. Taking on the persona of a shy human boy, a childlike but massively powerful artificial intelligence known as Archos comes online and assumes control over the global network of machines that regulate everything from transportation to utilities, defense and communication. In the months leading up to this, sporadic glitches are noticed by a handful of unconnected humans – a single mother disconcerted by her daughter’s menacing “smart” toys, a lonely Japanese bachelor who is victimized by his domestic robot companion, an isolated U.S. soldier who witnesses a ‘pacification unit’ go haywire – but most are unaware of the growing rebellion until it is too late.  

When the Robot War ignites -- at a moment known later as Zero Hour -- humankind will be both decimated and, possibly, for the first time in history, united. Robopocalypse is a brilliantly conceived action-filled epic, a terrifying story with heart-stopping implications for the real technology all around us…and an entertaining and engaging thriller unlike anything else written in years. 

This is an interesting simple story about a boy and his robot. Okay, not really. It is a book about a robot uprising. In this instance it is not the robots who tire of being used as domestic slaves, but rather it starts with one very smart program which is designed to learn. Once it learns it has been a part of experiments and it is the 14th in such a line, it decides that humanity is to blame for his brethren's previous deaths. It also believes it knows the solution and cause of all earth's ills. It becomes a zealot and is determined to cleanse the earth of the human parasite. So, it co-ops the other robots through a program and that is when the chaos ensues. Humans don't help much either since by this time we have become dependent on smart machines who take over for our human failings.

Interestingly enough, it is all not simply black or white. The program believes that humans will survive in small packs and even elevates those that defeat parts of "it's" plan as heroes within it's memory bank. In this way, it seems as if the program believes that the sloth that humanity has held on to will peel away once the dark illuminates the light within the human infestation. Is this the whole motivation of this program? In fact we do not find out, but although some of us might be interested, the lack of this precise information does not distract from the novel as a whole.

I give this book 4 stars and I really enjoyed this book. It is not something to make a comfortable and easy night of things as the horror of war is played out throughout each chapter. What these people go though make for an exciting and adventurous read. Also, don't be so quick in deciding who the bad and good "guys" are in this novel. That makes things interesting.

This book will be published June 7, 2011 and will become a movie directed by Stephen Spielberg in 2013. (IMDB page)

I was given this ARC as a part of the Book it Forward Tours sponsored by Dark Faerie Tales.