I picked up this recent release at the library. Some people will really like/love this novel and some won't. I'm somewhere in the middle, but on the like side and I admire the construction of this. The cover of the book caught my attention, even if it is a little off-putting, but the flyleaf and comments on the back of the book made me want to give this a try. Well done literary science-fiction is rather rare in my experience.

Some mild spoilers here.

This is a dark gothic tale of sorts set in the future, but not too far in the future. Instead of Heathcliff and Cathy we have robots. Instead of a foundling Heathcliff we have a human boy found on the beach by robots who they name Beachstone. Instead of Cathy befriending and eventually loving Heathcliff we have a similar arrangement with the robot Mary (including Mary's brother who does not take well at all to the intrusion of Beachstone into the family dynamics). I know, that sounds ridiculous. But here it isn't. This is a future where very few humans remain. Instead sentient robots populate the places where people once lived, and they behave pretty much like people. The story is told partly from the viewpoint of Mr. Sapien, a rather rare human built robot, and he goes away from the city to a beach house he has rented. I wish the story had stayed more focused on Sapien and how he would figure out what he was going to do with his life, but the story scatters among other characters. We also move back in time to when a young human boy was adopted by the father robot, Asimov3000, and how the boy bonded to his "sister" Mary. Unfortunately when Mr. Sapien arrives at the beach house for a sort of personal retreat, all the crazy robots live in the big house above the cliff and if I were Mr. Sapien I would have left oh about one day later. But then we wouldn't have this story.

This story is a bit of fun (there's even a nod to "The Jetsons" and "Lost in Space" robots) and is rather touching at times mixed with macabre and some rather sicko elements within this tale of robot on human violence and other stuff (not a lot of this but enough). The dark scenes are rather critical to the story development and serve very well to keep the reader on the edge of things. They also serve to show very well that the robots do not follow Asimov's laws of robotics in this future tale as they go forward and create new versions of themselves. They seem almost universally warped mentally. Part of my dissatisfaction with this story came from my inability to learn something - as a robotic mimic of Wuthering Heights it is well done, but what was it trying to tell me?

Overall this was a good read that kept my attention and had me turning the pages to see how it was all going to develop. Kate Bush provided my mental soundtrack at times with her song "Wuthering Heights." ( )

Ariel S. Winter has been a finalist for several prestigious book awards, and IMHO it’s just a matter of time until he takes one of those awards home. When I saw Barren Cove, I was immediately drawn to the quirky graphic book cover. It made me curious to learn what Barren Cove was about. I have to admit that I took a leap of faith on this novel, pretty much based on that odd cover, and I’m glad I did…and once I began to read it, the cover suddenly made sense.

Barren Cove is science fiction set in an almost gothic post-apocalyptic world in which robots are the dominant “species” and humans are almost extinct. It reminds me of Ray Bradbury’s work, which is wonderful in and of itself. This is a world turned upside down and one that sucked me in immediately, thanks to Ariel S. Winter’s excellent writing. And, just as a tease, this genre-bending novel is making all of the must-read speculative and sci-fi lists for Spring…can we pick ‘em or what? Let’s see what you think at http://popcornreads.com/?p=9035 ( )