Earth is being threatened by a giant army of robot Al's. Gus Kitko, a virtuoso pianist oddly becomes humanity's only hope. Kitko expects to spend his final moments on Earth playing piano at one of the greatest goodbye party ever. He even hopes that before humanity is ended that he can kiss Ardent violet. However, the vanguards arrive and one of the mechas decides to spare him. He just find himself with a small group of traitorous Vanguards who are dedicated to saving humanity.

I have been meaning to read this book for a while and I even received this book as an arc on Netgalley. However, I decided to finally pick this up on audio on Libby. 

I really regret waiting to read this book because this was such a fun read. We have cool giant fighting robots and the action was well done with these giant robots. This book is action packed, gets you in the feels, has you rooting for Gus and humanity, and will make you laugh out loud. 

Also, August Kitko features diversity with having Ardent, who is non-binary, which is  awesome since I feel like I have not read many books and more specifically in sci-fi/fantasy genre when it comes to gender identity.


I enjoyed Gus and Ardent as characters and Alex does well giving them pizazz to their personalities, but at the same time, they make the characters flawed and I really love when authors give characters flaws instead of only having a few minor flaws. It just makes them seem more real and relatable. 

When it comes to the romance between Gus and Ardent, I found it really sweet and just love them together. 

I decided to rate August Fitko as four stars only because I struggled with getting into the book in the beginning.