Breakaway Books

Authored by Barbara Truelove; Published June 2025; Science Fiction/Horror

⭐️⭐️⭐️ / 🏖️🏖️🏖️🏖️

Of Monsters and Mainframes is like a TV show that goes on a season or two past when it should have been cancelled. It’s just a little too long for its own good.

In Of Monsters and Mainframes, the AI Demeter pilots an interstellar spaceship and carries passengers throughout the galaxy, until one fateful voyage, when all of her passengers are discovered murdered upon arrival. Thus begins her reputation as a “ghost ship,” a notion only reinforced by several more deadly journeys. Demeter is determined not to be scrapped, and with the assistance of the medical AI on board, Steward, it seeks to figure out precisely why its passengers keep dying. Along the way, the two encounter a surprisingly large amount of monsters. 

The horror aspect of this novel might just be where it is the strongest. I enjoyed the mystery of the shadowy figure hiding on Demeter and the slowly building horror as it becomes apparent that something awful has happened in that initial deadly voyage without the onboard computer ever realizing. But as the novel progresses and more is revealed, it becomes less interesting. The monsters aren’t shadowy and scary anymore but are instead potential new friends. While this is certainly more positive and heartening, it makes for a less compelling story. By the time the crew consists of a werewolf, a Frankenstein-like creation, a vampire, and an ancient Egyptian evil creature, it seems more like comedy than horror, and it’s not funny enough to be good comedy. 

Two thirds of the way through the novel, the personification of the on-board computers, which initially made me chuckle, began to grate on me. My rational brain, which I can usually easily turn off while reading fiction, yammered at me at every turn: Computers cannot feel sadness; computers cannot fall in love. I’m no expert on computers, but even I began to roll my eyes at the way the AIs express more and more personality. And I began to wonder–for all the references made in the novel about the reputation Demeter is gaining for hosting so many deadly trips, we have relatively little insight into the humans that created her. There is but one little interlude on the manufacturing company which left me with more questions than answers. Diving into the reaction of Demeter’s creators would have been an interesting direction that I almost certainly would have appreciated more than the definitely-jumping-the-shark plot line of two AIs confessing their undying love for each other.

Of Monsters and Mainframes snagged my attention at the beginning, but it just couldn’t keep it all the way through. Still, if you’re looking for a futuristic science fiction novel with a tad of horror blended in, this could be a good one for you.