essentialsaltes | Saturn's Children, by Charlie Stross

An homage to Heinlein's Friday and Asimov's robots, Saturn's Children sets up an intriguing idea. What happens to the servants of humanity after all the humans have died. Robots have strict rules about harming humans, but when it comes to treating each other... it's anything goes. With predictable results. A highly stratified society of have and have-nots and slavery. Our heroine, a sexbot-turned-Mata Hari, slowly works her way into something big, at the behest of employers whose motives she only dimly understands. Clandestine labs are looking to produce a real-live human. Such a human would be able to order any robot to do anything. So whoever rules the human, rules the world. Along the way, gratuitous sex (see also, Friday). Reasonably fun read and less cringey than I remember Friday being.