The Wild Robot Escapes: 03/31/18

The Wild Robot Escapes by Peter Brown is the sequel to The Wild Robot (2016) which per the author's afterword took an extra six months to write. It was six months well spent crafting a lovely follow up to a beautiful book about family, gender, identity, and what it means to be a parent.

The book opens with Roz being shipped from the factory where she has been repaired and reprogrammed. She's then sent to a family farm and dairy that has been struggling since the father was injured and the mother was killed in an accident.

Roz was bought refurbished because that's all the farm can afford. She's there to tend to the milch cows, repair the old equipment, rotate the crops and basically be the farmer that the dad used to be.

Do you think Roz was truly reprogrammed? No. Of course not. So she still knows how to talk to animals and that makes her the perfect robot for farming.

There's just one big problem: she misses her friends and family on the island. The island is her home and she will almost anything to get back there.

The book has three acts. Act one is the farm and life on it. Act two is Roz's attempt to get back to her island. Act three is a brief coda where we learn more about Roz's background and the world in which she lives.

Roz's story is basically done now. It's a satisfying arc across two books but Peter Brown has done a ton of world building to make Roz's story so compelling. If he's ever tempted to revisit Roz's world and tell new stories with new characters, I will be there.

Five stars

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