Review: Rabbit & Robot

Rabbit & Robot by Andrew Smith
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It's been a bit since I read an Andrew Smith novel, and after picking up this ARC at work (luckily a second one came; someone else took the first one before I could), I'm pretty glad I took another chance on his latest.

The story here is more cohesive than The Alex Crow and the Marbury Lens duology, and it feels more meta-humorous than Grasshopper Jungle. That same meta-humor might get the book in trouble with certain online types because Smith has stated that a lot of the cannibalistic chaos of the robots on this doomed space cruiser was inspired, somewhat, by people who came down on him for problematic behavior at times in the last couple of years. Hell, in the very first chapter, "spirit animal" gets appropriated in dialogue, which is sure to rile up a lot of people - even if Billy, the appropriator in question, goes and takes it back upon seeing that the animal he liked so much is an incongruously carnivorous giraffe.

Then there's Smith's usual incorporation of queer male sexuality, which, as always, comes off as more than a bit weird. As well as you can expect given that Smith is literally the original "Keep YA Weird" guy, though over the years, as Smith's books have actually helped me accept my own bisexuality, I've felt that he's not had as great a handle on the subject as he thinks he does. I still think Passenger's m/m ship was awkwardly done and would have worked much better platonically; Winger, of course, pulled a Bury Your Gays; Grasshopper Jungle was perhaps the closest Smith came to creating a character who reflected my sexuality with Austin Szerba, but even then he kinda relied too much on the Cheating Bisexual trope. (Incidentally, I've put one of my #ownvoices bi manuscripts on hold precisely because I fell into the same tropey hole.) I'm at least glad that Smith makes it clear that we're in a future where sexuality is pretty much fluid by default, though I do still think it'd have been nice to have Billy not feel afraid to say he himself was bi (which is how I headcanon him, tbh.) But then again, after the opening chapter's incident with Maurice the bisexual carnivorous French giraffe, I'm not surprised he doesn't want to have a label in common with that creepy-ass cog.

Like a lot of Andrew Smith's past works, Rabbit & Robot is weird and immature and downright disgusting. Sperm and piss and fart jokes abound, and now we get recreational drugs for good measure. And tons of F-bombs. And Parker. I'm so over the current trend of casting Timothée Chalamet in everything, and especially of typecasting him as a horny-ass teenager, but Parker is the perfect role for him. Though I bet Chalamet would probably only be able to endure maybe a hundred repetitions of "I have an erection" before he can no longer say it without laughing. Or, worse, making the entire rest of the cast corpse.

That repetition is one of many that shows up throughout the book, largely because, again, most of the cast are robots. They keep repeating their programmed lines - or are they programmed? Perhaps by the Worm that infects them all. In any case, these repetitions make the book a little dull at times, though at times I admit I laughed a little more than I should have. Especially since a lot of those repetitions parrot not only fundamentalist Christians (who, because they're characters in an Andrew Smith novel, have mouths as foul as everyone else's), but also the sort of endlessly self-victimizing discourse endemic to social-justice Tumblr.

As always, Smith gives us a book that takes me, in particular, to a certain dark side of mine. In this case, as I'm telling one of my best bros (to whom I'm sending this book later this week), the side that sees everyone else submitting to vice like it's a game, and totally wants to join in anyway. Because, gorrammit, that's way too much me and I need to be a better human than that.

Which character am I most like? Parker? Milo? Lourdes? Billy? Juan? Rowan? Meg? Jeffrie? Cager Messer?

Maybe they're all me.

And I bet my buddy will feel the same whenever he reads the book himself. (Though obviously he's Billy.)

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