Plum Rains

April 15, 2018
A Filipino care worker's livelihood is threatened by an android in future Japan.The year is 2029, and in Japan, technology rules every aspect of life. But Angelica Navarro still provides an essential service to her employer, Sayoko Itou, an elderly woman rapidly approaching her 100th birthday. She is a caregiver, closely monitoring Sayoko's health, preparing her food, and helping her in even more basic ways. But when Sayoko's son arranges for a new android prototype to be delivered to Sayoko's home, Angelica begins to worry about her future. Sayoko, normally technology averse, is soon taken with the android and begins telling him long-suppressed stories about her childhood that even her son does not know. The android, who names himself Hiro, develops according to Sayoko's needs and seems to outdo Angelica at every turn. Angelica has other problems to contend with: debt to pay back to her uncle who helped her immigrate to Japan, worrying news about her brother in Alaska, and an unexpected medical problem of her own. But the longer she fights against Hiro, the more she begins to wonder whether he might not be the enemy she initially suspected after all. This sci-fi tale by Romano-Lax (Behave, 2016) is hardly groundbreaking: In concocting the charming, wholly human Hiro, she draws heavily on other android literature and cinema, most notably Blade Runner. But, refreshingly, her spin on the genre focuses on an elderly woman and a male android, a dynamic that provides the novel with its most original and engaging material. Though the plot is somewhat lacking in incident, the thoughtful depictions of old age, memory, and trauma are refreshing. Angelica's actions are sometimes frustrating or inexplicable, and the worldbuilding is wonderfully specific one moment and maddeningly vague the next. But on the whole, this is a compelling, enjoyable addition to the genre.A well-written, entertaining novel that both enacts and subverts the tropes of android fiction.

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April 16, 2018
Romano-Lax explores the inner lives of women in this moving but grim story of hardship and hope. In 2029 Tokyo, Filipina nurse Angelica takes care of Sayoko, an elderly Japanese woman. Sayoko is a week away from her 100th birthday when her son sends an android prototype to assist caring for her. Hiro, as the android calls himself, adapts to Sayoko’s needs and threatens Angelica’s job more and more with each new task he learns. With Hiro’s help, Sayoko recalls old memories and secrets that were once buried. While struggling to stay relevant to Sayoko’s care, Angelica faces her own troubles, with her brother taking a dangerous mining job, a loan shark punishing her, and an affair shifting out of its familiar patterns. Although Sayoko and Angelica appear to have few similarities, through Hiro they learn just how alike their hardships are. Romano-Lax proves herself a gifted writer, creating beautiful imagery. However, what begins as a story of human connection and finding joy after trauma takes a rather bleak turn, and the conclusion is unsatisfying. Readers who approach this story with few expectations will find it rewarding, but it’s less suited to those who require optimism.

May 15, 2018

Set in the near future, this new novel from Romano-Lax (Behave) is also about the past, the history we share, and the history we bury. When dropping birthrates intersect with increasing longevity, Japan faces the dilemma of caring for its aging population after its health-care industry collapses. Its answer is to increase foreign workers while never allowing them to become part of the homogenous Japanese society, and to search for a long-term solution that does not rely on humans. This is the point where the centenarian Sayoko, Filipina nurse Angelica, and advanced AI Hiro collide. Sayoko seeks care, Angelina needs a job, and Hiro requires a purpose. They navigate toward a surprising mutual dependence in which they manage to share their pasts in order to find their future--even if it's a future that no one believes should exist. VERDICT This quietly thoughtful read sits at the crossroads of literary and speculative fiction and will attract readers of both genres, especially those interested in exploring the consequences of present-day policies and the boundaries of artificial intelligence and human/robotic relationships.--Marlene Harris, Reading Reality, LLC, Duluth, GA

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from June 1, 2018
Although Romano-Lax (Behave, 2016) sets her new novel in 2029 Tokyo, a bold departure after writing three historical novels, she does illuminate a long-shadowed, painful past. Angelica is a cash-strapped Filipino nurse contending with Japan's hostile bureaucracy, a loan shark's cyber-extortion, and worry about the only other family member to survive a typhoon, her brother, who is mining rare earths in a contaminated zone in Alaska. Sayoko is Angelica's seemingly pampered patient living with her wealthy, influential son and preparing for her one-hundredth-birthday celebration. The already precarious relationship between the two women is irrevocably disrupted and Angelica's livelihood threatened by a highly sophisticated robot. Named Hiro by Sayoko, he inspires her to tell him her dramatic secrets. Like Angelica, Sayoko suffered profound trauma and loss, growing up on Taiwan during Japanese rule as an outlier among her late mother's people, the indigenous Atayal, since her unknown father was Japanese. As Sayoko's anguished story unspools, reaching into horrific war crimes against women, Angelica's troubles intensify, and Hiro rapidly evolves into an exceptionally knowledgeable, skilled, and empathic friend. In this profoundly inquisitive and compelling novel, Romano-Lax sets timeless human dilemmas involving love, racism, misogyny, violence, grief, and dissent against environmental decimation, the daunting ethical questions raised by burgeoning AI, and consideration of the very future of humanity.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)