AHHHHH AHHHHHHH, I just had to start my review by screaming because this book, Of Monsters & Mainframes (yes I know you guys can see the title but like the title is pretty cool so I'm going to over-use it in this review) IS SO GOOD and its literally a genre blend of horror, sci-fi/science-fantasy and cozy (to me, it is cozy) and has found family trope which like what, you cannot beat that! Okay, now that my screaming is out of the way (not really, here is another one: AHHHHHHHH) let's start the review

"The Second Battery drops to zero.
I'm scared. I know I shouldn't be scared. One Moment I'll be here, and the next ... It won't hurt. I've died before. I've died much more catastrophically before. This is nothing. Just another shutdown. One that I might never wake up from, but that's ok. It'll be OK..."

GENRE: Sci-Fi Horror with a little tinge of coziness
RATING: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐/5
FORMAT: eBook eArc

Would I recommend to others?: YES, in summary: YES!

Long Review:
Okay where can we even start? Where!! But let's start with how Of Monsters & Mainframes has aliens, vampires including Dracula, werewolves, humans, AI robots and alien-zombie combination? One of my favourite part of reading found family tropes is usually the fact that books that have both elements of coziness & found family tend to include a diverse type of cast, always including different type of species

Of Monsters & Mainframes (yes, I did say I was going to over-use the title) is a multi-POV sci-fi cozy horror book and I usually love multi-POV books when they blend well and Truelove did the multi-POV thing so WELL! Like seriously, its honestly been amazing how well she did it and how you get to learn a little about all the different characters and how they see what is happening. You learn to love them with all their quirky traits and they're all so relatable, which was just so lovely and adding to the found family trope and wholesomeness of the book

There was also a dark sort of humour in the book, where the ship & the medical robot had on point dark humour that you would hope to find in a robot if you spend some time thinking about it:

"Oh. They're all dead. Well. That's awkward."

Demeter, the ship, goes through a character development era in this book. She starts out very naively believing that she won't become a ghost ship and despite everything, she tries to protect all the humans on her ship even though she is not meant to have "feelings". The thing that makes her first become a ghost ship?

She can't even see what it is but it is a vampire and not just any vampire, its Dracula out of all the vampires in the world

And then, Demeter gets revamped, gets another chance and gets sent to space with a new mission in mind of transporting humans again. This time, we encounter a new set of characters and species, we get to see the humanity side of the robots, especially Demeter and we get to see the wholesome development of relationships and friendships. Even the robots, who are not meant to have any feelings start to develop some and then

Demeter is raising two humans?!

+ is being so wholesome in general.

I want to write so much more and share so many quotes in regards to Of Monsters and Mainframes but this book is truly a piece of adventure that you will need to experience yourself and so I have covered some things with spoilers and will write a little part that is primarily ALL spoilers.

Before we move on to the spoiler bit, thank you to Colored Pages Book Tour, Bindery Books, Barbara Truelove for this eArc and for hearing about this lovely book from Ezeekat and generating enough hype for it!

PLEASE do read this book if this genre blend sounds like your thing and you enjoy multi-POVs!

Please only proceed if you are willing to see the spoilers or have read the book and want to fan girl together:

Okay, so one of my favourite parts of this book is the interactions between the characters, how they are all so wholesome, so sarcastic and caring (not one specific character, all of them). Here are some of my favourite interactions:
"You're doing a good job, I tell the capsule.
Wee! it says as Mr. Marsh rounds the corner"

"Holy Shit.
He's a mummy.
I mean ... duh. Of course he's a mummy. That's why he can spew up flesh-eating bugs and turn into sandstorms."

"My passengers.
I decide, then and there, to love them. I've never loved before. Love is not a standard component of my programming. But these three have helped me."


My other favourite thing is that we legit had multiple climax in this book, a lot of points where things happen and it was a fast paced book with multiple battles happening but ONE big focus and I think that is why it worked out so well! Its usually so hard to pull off multiple plot lines but Truelove does it so well and kept me excited throughout the whole plot.

And truly, the dark humour in the book had me laughing as it was so sarcastic and blunt at times that it was just so refreshing!