Metallic Love by Tanith Lee

This book is the sequel to Silver Metal Lover. I read Silver Metal Lover a few years ago. It was a sweet, if predictable, love story with a sci fi twist. It raised interesting questions about what defines humanity and can robots develop souls. I liked it quite abit. So, when I saw that a sequal was available I was looking very forward to reading it. First off let me say the book may be a sequel to Silver Metal Lover-but it is a very different tone. No sweet love, no questing robot seeking a soul, no tragic female lover leaving everything he knows to follow her heart and then living with her true love on little more than love in an idyllic romantic setting. Loren-the main female characer and narrator of this book, is no Jane for sure. In fact, I liked Loren a whole lot more than I ever liked Jane. Loren was everything Jane was not-poor, outside of society, no parents, confident-very confident sexually, grounded, realistic-likable in a way Jane never was. Loren is telling this story at the same age that Jane was telling Silver Metal Lover-roughly 16/17. Yet it is almost as if Loren is the adult version of Jane. If that is case with Loren and Jane, I lack words to define the difference between Silver and Verlis. At the end of Silver Metal Lover, Silver is dismantled and Jane approaches her mother-rich influential cruel mother-to get her manuscript about Silver published. Metallic Love takes place 12 years or so later. META has revamped the Robot Lover program-with a few minor changes. Part of the controversey over the original Robot Lover program featuring Silver was that the robots were so complex as to be ale to pass as human. META has gotten rid of that feature, all robots are poreless, flawless, extremely beautiful but not designed to be able to pass as human. They are also more advanced, they can change physical shape, form clothing, jewelry and weapons out of their very flesh. Also, a fourth color has been added-the original silver, gold and copper are back-new to this line of pleasure robots is onyx-black onyx made from the black metal of the asteroid in orbit over earth. Loren's mother was a prositute and when Loren is just a baby she takes her to the orphanage she was raised in and leaves her there to be raised by religious fanatics. One day on kitchen duty Loren discovers a loose floor board in the kitchen area-hidden under the floor board is Jane's Book-the story of Jane and Silvers romance. Loren reads the book over and over until she has it memorized. At the age of 11 Loren runs away from the orphanage and happens into a man who hires her to work in his house cleaning business. Six years later Loren is successful enough to have her own crew working for her. One of the girls on her crew calls her to let her know that the client who's they are cleaning is having a psychotic break. Loren hurries over to save the client and her employees. When she gets there she sees Silver on the screen and a newscast saying that Meta is releasing a new line of metallic pleasure robots. Loren leaves immediately to investigate. Through an odd series of events she ends up Verlis's first lover-his test run before his model is fully launched. What she discovers is that just as she is not Jane, Verlis (the silver robot who has been rebuilt from the original Silver/s body parts and has all of his memories) is not at all Silver. Verlis remembers Silvers' life and especially his "death" and has a plan so that does not happen to him or the rest of the metallic "team".
~~~~Where ever you go, There you are!