Service Model

Book Review: HOMEBOUND by Portia Elan

| Jessica Crawford

Homebound by Portia Elan is a 304 page novel being published by Scribner on May 5, 2026.

Genre

Science Fiction, Cli-Fi

Blurb

Five interlocking lives. One beloved story. A dazzling adventure across centuries and continents in search of the things that hold us together.

It’s 1983 and Becks can’t wait to get the hell out of Cincinnati. She’s nineteen, blasting her Walkman, and hiding from the fact that her beloved uncle, the only person who understood her, is dead. But she has work to do: he left her a half-finished game to complete—one last collaboration to find her way out of loneliness.

Little does she know, what Becks is making will echo far into the future and shape the lives of a scientist, a sentient automaton, and a flinty sea captain in ways she cannot imagine. All are bound together by their search for connection—and by a futuristic traveler on a mysterious mission through space.

A novel about our deep interconnectedness, Homebound is a clear-eyed, hopeful adventure into humanity’s future and capacity for love.

Opening Line

I love the way a computer program doesn’t just describe something; it is the thing.

My Thoughts

A young woman grieving the death of her uncle in the 1980s takes up the mantle of completing the video game he left unfinished. 600 years in the future, their joint creation is still impacting lives.

This book felt like a cross between Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin with I Cheerfully Refuse by Leif Enger (and maybe just a tad of Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovzky). It’s got video game development, androids, and a bleak future on Earth after climate crises. I appreciated the themes of loneliness versus connection and the power of stories. But I felt similarly about this book as I did those others: there were things I quite liked about all of them, but taken as a whole just weren’t a home run for this reader. I’m not sure if it’s because I failed to feel much of a connection with the characters, or if it was the format that didn’t work for me (two timelines, a gameplay log, and emails). But I do think there will be readers who it’s a perfect fit for, and I think especially anyone who enjoyed the other books mentioned above should consider picking this one up.

Thank you to Scribner and NetGalley for the eARC in exchange for my unbiased review.

Book Review: SERVICE MODEL by Adrian Tchaikovsky

| Jessica Crawford

Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky is a 376 page standalone novel published by Tor Books in 2024.

Genre:

Science Fiction, Dystopian

Opening Line:

On activation each morning Charles’ first duty was to check his master’s travel arrangements for the day.

My Thoughts:

This book is clever and funny, but because of how grim it is, I’m not sure how much I actually enjoyed it.

A robot who finds himself no longer of use goes searching for purpose in a dystopian future in which humanity has pretty much wiped itself out, and poorly thought out programming leaves scores of inefficient robots dedicated to performing useless tasks.

..he completed two contrasting analyses of the situation using his best human-facing sophistication and decided that it was simultaneously of enormous credit to [his] ongoing fidelity and professionalism, and also that it was terribly pointless and sad.

Society collapsed thanks to a combination of factors, including climate, economics, problems with infrastructure, etc. Plus with all of the automated services provided through AI, people’s skills were not needed, and yet they were still looked down on for being lazy and idle. As civilization itself was dying:

”…I estimate that 45% were unaware of the situation or considered it fake, owing to the precisely curated news sources that they limited themselves to, whilst a further 30% were aware but did not consider it their problem and 20% were aware and actively cheering on the fact or profiting from [it]…A final 5% seem likely to have been directly and deliberately contributing to the collapse…”

Uncharles teams up with The Wonk, who wants to learn the meaning of it all. There is a moral that a kind and ordered society should be the goal.

Smart and oftentimes extremely amusing writing, but the bleakness and the infuriating absurdity of all of the situations Uncharles comes across during is journey into the world kind of canceled out some of the joy these things offered.

There is no sexual content in this book, and the only violence involving humans happens off the page.

I wish to report an error in the way that everything works. Charles, it is not an error. It is how things are.