HUMANS BOW DOWN, by James Patterson & Emily Raymond
Brent Jones
The Great War ended. The human race lost and the machines one. The robots are replicas of humans in every way, except they lack feelings and emotions. Over time, these same robots evolved into something of better suited to be a replacement for humans called Hu-Bots.
The Hu-Bots require all humans to bow down when asked or be killed. They must serve their new masters or be banished to the Reserve where the landscape and environment is unforgiving and where it is a crime just to be human. It doesn’t seem really clear what the Hu-Bots really expect from the humans since they still have their own robots doing the work.
The evil leader of the bots is planning to first capture all the humans in the Reserve and make them bow down but then he also wants to eliminate every human.
The humans are just referred to by number and Six is a very determined woman who lost her parents in the Great War and whose brother and sister are in a prison. She has a trusted partner, Dubs, and they are running for their lives. They discover a secret that may help them free the humans.
It seems odd that the most interesting character is Hu-Bot, MikkyBo. She undergoes a moral awakening and her struggles are interesting. The book seems to lose something about halfway through. It isn’t clear why the Hu-Bots look at things the way they do, and the plot seems to narrow into a last-minute revelation of the Bot’s leaders’ motive. No explanation as to why it took so long to come out.
James Patterson and Emily Raymond’s book, Humans Bow Down, is a genre change for Patterson with the dystopian world in which people lead wretched, dehumanized, fearful lives. (Rated 2 star out of 5)
"I will not have my life narrowed down. I will not bow down to somebody else's whim or to someone else's ignorance." ~ Bell Hooks
"And once I knew a meditative rose That never raised its head from bowing down, Yet drew its inspiration from the stars. It bloomed and faded here beside the road, And, being a poet, wrote on empty air With fragrance all the beauty of its soul." ~ Henry Abbey
"Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh and the greatness which does not bow before children." ~ Khalil
"Painful for a person is rebellious independence, only in loving companionship with his associates does a person feel safe: Only in reverently bowing down before the higher does a person feel exalted." ~ Thomas Carlyle