RABBIT & ROBOT

Two overly privileged teens unwittingly escape Earth’s last days on a luxury spacecraft.

Cager Messer’s father has made a fortune from the eponymous Rabbit & Robot, a television show devoured by the masses yet one Cager and his best friend, Billy (beautiful, bisexual, and equally wealthy), are forbidden to watch. The secondary Messer fortune was made from lunar cruise ships, one of which Billy, along with Cager’s caretaker, Rowan, hijacks to get Cager off drugs. Like all best-laid plans, everything goes awry: Two human girls stow away disguised as robots, a loss of gravity leads to chaos, and Earth might very well have imploded in their absence. Reading as a nonlinear diary, Cager grapples with his secrets, his should-have-dones, and what it means to be human, all while simultaneously begrudging and wielding his own social standing. Intermittent third-person omniscient chapters reveal the tandem story of the two stowaways as they slowly form bonds with Cager and Billy (spoiler alert: romance). Just like any journal, some thoughts are deeper than others, with the content meaning more to the writer than the reader. Cager is a drug-addicted, privileged kid on a stolen playground without any supervision, and the book reads with as much depth as his situation portends. The cast is presumed white save for a royal family of liquid blue life-forms.

A scattered sci-fi romp with occasional fun parts but a passable whole.