As I listened to Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Service Model, I was struck by two things: how the story captured a post-apocalyptic world in a manner that felt like a Terry Gilliam film, and how brilliant Tchaikovsky’s narration was. I was gobsmacked by both.
Briefly, Service Model covers the plight of a robot valet seeking answers in some indeterminate future when the world has collapsed gradually and then all at once. As a top-of-the-line human-facing service model, the protagonist has a complex decision tree programming that certainly isn’t self-aware, or is it?
The cover
This cover does an excellent job of portraying both the state of the world portrayed in the story and the dry British whimsy with which it is told.
There are moments of pure comedy woven into this story, along with socio-political commentary, but the heart of the thing is the heart of the thing. Un-Charles, the robot main character, is a wonderfully sympathetic character with a purpose that has been denied him due to a series of events that include the ending of civilization. His odyssey to re-establish that purpose provides us, as readers, with a wonderful lens with which to examine the world’s aftermath.
Throughout, Tchaikovsky skewers the rich, the military, historians, and all of us who sit back in our social media bubble and watch the whole collapse as depressing entertainment. His gift lies in the number of cultural tent poles he can roast in any one scene—it’s a large number. But don’t leave with the impression that Service Model is in any way preachy or overstuffed with one viewpoint or another. The story is a bouncy, mad adventure.
I mentioned Terry Gilliam movies and no popular culture reference came to mind as often as Gilliam’s Brazil, as Tchaikovsky explores the mechanisms of our destruction. They are often revealed to be ridiculous, banal, and usually attributable to humanity just not thinking things through terribly well.
This is a lighter, more explicitly playful Tchaikovsky that his Children of Time books (though the same inciting causation that sets that series in motion is at work here). This is a tale for the lovers of Douglas Adams or John Scalzi, and it shows us the author’s wonderful range.
But, about that other point that occupied me as I listened to the audiobook: Tchaikovsky delivers a really top-notch narration here. His character acting is excellent, and the entire performance is brilliant. I was incredibly impressed and envious (I’ve attempted to record an audiobook of my own and found it beyond my capabilities).
I’m giving this book five out of five stars.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Service Model
Adrian Tchaikovsky
Publication Date: 20 May 2025
Publisher: Tor Books