I have a need to write a review of this book because, even now, almost three weeks after finishing, the story is still floating around in my head. Barring some unforeseen, amazing book, this may well turn out to be the best book of the year for me.

Let me talk about all the elements of this story that had great appeal to me....just the stuff that really gets me interested, excited and curious:

First, there is so much in our culture these days about how technology is going to destroy humanity, that AI is going to replace us, human workers are losing their jobs to automation, movies like Terminator, The Matrix, Bladerunner, etc...all tell the same apocalyptic story of humanity's ultimate demise at the hands of machines.

I happen to agree that this may actually end up being the case, but all the same, it was refreshing to find a story that actually referred back to Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics and has an AI character that is caring, gentle and kind. Remember I, Robot and the Robot series? If you haven't read any of them, please do. That is the reading country I grew up in...

I have an interest in the paleogenetic and linguistic history of Asia and (avoiding spoilers) part of the story revolves around the aboriginal culture of Formosa (now The Republic of China, Taiwan). This had me going to wikipedia and other pages to find out more and I went down the rabbit hole so far that I had to ILL books from local university libraries to learn a bit more.

My background and understanding of asian cultures is primarily from 7 years living in Korea so I don't have a depth of knowledge about Japan or the Philippines but, all the same, the characters and the way Romano-Lax tells their stories seems authentic and accurate. The slow unwinding and reaching for the kernel of the truth and the eventual trust that each of the characters gains for one another is the best part of this book.

Thinking back, this book encompasses a biting critique of Japanese culture. Historically it touches on the Japanese colonial period of the early 20th century, the atrocities of WWII and is set in a future where an aging Japanese population needs immigrant labor and expertise to care for the elderly and keep the wheels of the economy turning. Yet this same Japanese population because of prejudice, places unwarranted restrictions and disproportionate penalties on immigrants that often mean deportation despite the value they bring.

It is a moving book with well-drawn characters that you care about deeply before the book ends. Plum Rains ends well, it isn't all sunshine and rainbows, but it ends well just the same.
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I picked up "Plum Rains" because the premise interested me: a near-future Japan where longevity is rising, fertility is falling and the Japanese, dependent on immigrants for many personal services, start to introduce AI-driven robots that grow and learn as they interact with their owners.

I'd imagined a clever SF exploration of the ethics of AI and the relationship between server and served.

I got all of that but I'm also got a very human tale about the youth of a woman reaching one hundred who is now a respected Tokyo matron but started as a mixed-race aboriginal on Taiwan and about a Filipino nurse, alone in Japan, trying to work off her debt.
I supposed I shouldn't be surprised. Some of the best writing about AI taps into deep emotions: "Speak" by Louisa Hall and "The Unseen World" by Liz Moore are great examples.

What distinguishes "Plum Rains" is how strongly the imagined Japan of 2029 is fed by its deep roots in Japanese history over the past century and that the story is told from different Asian cultural viewpoints.

The language is beautiful in its accurate simplicity. The empathy and compassion with which the two woman are treated and the nuanced way in which their changing understand or their past, present, future and each other is handled make this a very human book.

There are hard issues in this book: the brutal way women are treated, our inability or at least unwillingness to confront hard truths, the crippling impact of shame, the compelling drive of motherhood, the emotional stunting that results from isolation, chosen or forced, and the freedom that comes from recognising that we are not irreplaceable. They form the emotional and ethical meat of the novel. The role of the AI in the book is mainly to provide an empathetic ear to the two women and to help them focus on the decision that will help them become the people they want to be.

I was impressed by the understanding shown in the book of what an AI might become in ten years time and the ethical and practical challenges that their existence would present. I liked the fact that while the AI is presented positively as a sentient entity growing towards maturity, it is never seen as simply a digital human. Its intelligence, its motivations and its agenda are influenced by the people who made it but not defined by them. There are points when the AI seems more humane than the humans around him but that simply highlights how deluded we are willing to be about what it means to be human. There are also points where the AI is shown as a clear threat to the employment of some of the most vulnerable people in society. I liked that this threat was confirmed rather than dispelled but that it arises because those who make the employment decisions see workers as commodities and see robots as better and cheaper commodities.

Unlike the author, I know almost nothing of Asian culture, so I can't speak to the authenticity of what's presented here but I can see how different the expectations and outcomes are than they would be of a similar book set in the West. Both of the women in the book accept that the world is a harsh place where they often cannot control damaging things that are done to them or that they have to do. They have no expectation of a happy-ever-after. They understand duty and family but they recognise that they may not be able to live up the demands of either. Yet they are strong. They persevere. They take the moments of life-affirming sweetness where they find them, without any expectation that they will last.

I think this last expectation is what the title "Plum Rains" refers to. At one point the Filipina nurse recalls the story her mother had told of what giving birth to her had meant:

"She had grown in her belly during the plum rains, that long period of rainy, moldy misery that ends, finally, in something good: summer, when the skies briefly clear again, before the typhoons come. You were the good thing, small and sweet, that comes after a long period of difficulty."
That concept of transitory happiness, made more valuable by being ephemeral, seems realistic to me. It's something that I've seen built-in to French culture, yet it is deeply at odds with the Anglo obsession with the pursuit of happiness.

This was a wonderful book. It made me think and it made me cry. My only criticism is that the pace of the first third of the book was slower than my Western reading habits have led me to expect. I stuck with it and I'm very glad that I did. "Plum Rains" now joins my (very short list) of the best AI speculative fiction.

About Andromeda Romano-Lax

Andromeda's website says:

"Originally from Chicago and now a resident of Vancouver Island, Canada, Andromeda Romano-Lax worked as a freelance journalist and travel writer before turning to fiction.

Her first novel, The Spanish Bow, was translated into eleven languages and was chosen as a New York Times Editors’ Choice, BookSense pick, and one of Library Journal’s Best Books of the Year. Her second novel, The Detour, was internationally published in 2012 and her third novel, Behave, was published in 2016.
Her fourth novel, Plum Rains, drew inspiration from her family's experience living in rural Taiwan in 2014."


Publisher's summary
"In a tour-de-force tapestry of science fiction and historical fiction, Andromeda Romano-Lax presents a story set in Japan and Taiwan that spans a century of empire, conquest, progress and destruction.

2029: In Japan, a historically mono-cultural nation, childbirth rates are at an all-time low and the elderly are living increasingly longer lives. This population crisis has precipitated the mass immigration of foreign medical workers from all over Asia, as well as the development of finely tuned artificial intelligence to step in where humans fall short.

In Tokyo, Angelica Navarro, a Filipina nurse works as caretaker for Sayoko Itou, a moody, secretive woman about to turn 100 years old. When Sayoko receives a cutting-edge robot “friend” that will teach itself to anticipate Sayoko’s every need, Angelica fears for her livelihood. But more than a mere job is at stake, especially given the robot's preternatural ability to uncover the most deeply buried secrets of the humans around it.

PLUM RAINS is a hundred-year saga of forbidden love, hidden identities, the legacy of colonialism and the future of our relationships in a distracted and uncertain world. "
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Plum Rains (Andromeda Romano-Lax, 2018) is a peek into one possible future for modern Japan.

Because of a casual interest in Japanese culture, I wanted to understand the symbolism of the title. Turns out, the titular season is a hazy, wet herald of possibility. The plum tree blossoms in the early Spring, and the plum rains mark the Japanese Spring, ushering in the warm summer months. Plum, we are old, is symbolic of the bittersweet, contrasting with the sweeter cherry that arrives later in the year. This symbolism pops up at various points in the story.

Our adventure begins as a simple story about two women who come to know each other through the use of a technological device. Angelica and Soyoko are of different generations and cultures. Each locked inside herself, resentful and distracted but dependent upon each other. Their dutiful lives erupt in bloom after Hiro, an empathic robot prototype, joins them.

But Plum Rains is more than a book about lonely people brought closer by technology. It is a book about secrets and new beginnings, the Japanese cultural themes of isolation and purity, and the ethics of technology. The events of this story are rooted in modern Japanese history and bloom a century later on the withering stem of a Japanese future.

The world were the events of this story happen gives an engaging look at technology-assisted behavioral health therapies. We see several examples of therapies coming to fruition. There are medical assistance drones connected to government databases. There is an AI-enabled empathic android. There is a virtual reality device used to promote healing from psychological trauma. Readers can observe the potential of these devices for healing or oppression and make their own decisions about where the line exists between good and evil—a fascinating question when considering the future of technology-assisted counseling and psychological interventions.

This book also asks questions about the illusory power of perception, identity, and perspective. It details how we only often see what we want to see, even--maybe especially--in our closest relationships. The power of attention and listening and compassion as change vehicles are on full display, but not where we expect them. In the end, this plum of a story is about relationships, oppression, self-awareness, and change, just as summer follows the rains.

I grabbed a copy of this book on a recommendation from one of those websites listing the "best of" small press offerings and was not disappointed. The author's mastery of her craft shows in many enjoyable sentences; yet, parts of this book are a tad slow. Genre categorization is a bit tough. Some focus on the technology and the near-future setting to classify this book in science fiction or cyber-mainstream; it does fit there as the book features technology throughout the environment. Some focus on the historical backstory that is still relevant today. For me, this is less a book about then and more a book about now and the impacts of social decisions on real people.

Finally. this book is for those readers confident in their perspective as much as it is for those who are not. ( )

This book is set in the not too distant future of 2029 in Japan. The fertility rates have dropped extremely low and the elderly are living even longer. Japan is bringing in more and more immigrant workers to take care of their old. They are also working on artificial intelligence to handle where humans are falling short.

After a slow start, I really became engrossed in this story of the Filipina nurse, Angelica Navarro who is caring for Sayoko Itou, a very private woman about to turn 100 years old. Sayoko’s son sends his mother a prototype robot caretaker that educates itself to bond with her and anticipate her needs. Needless to say, Angelica fights against this AI as she sees and hears how attached Sayoko is becoming to her robot. While I know that science fiction lovers (and you have to question how much of this is really science fiction) will really like this book, the story is engrossing enough for most readers. Once I got into this book, I did read it straight through. ( )

This novel centers on two characters: Sayoko, a Japanese woman nearing her centenary (and the attendant media coverage of that birthday), and Angelica, the Filipina immigrant nurse caring for her.

It’s the year 2029. Robot development has taken a “Pause” after the Musk-Hawking 2015 letter warning about the dangers of artificial intelligence. There was the South Korean Sexbot Ban of 2025 and the E.U.-U.S. AI Accord of 2026 (rather short-lived since the E.U. goes into the ashbin of history in 2027). Other regional agreements put similar bans in place.

But it’s just a pause, and that’s made clear when a new model of Taiwanese robot shows up to take care of the rather technophobic Sayoko. It’s was ordered by Itou, Sayoko’s son and employed by METI, according to some the government agency that really runs Japan.

The best part of the book is that robot, Hiro, and his conversations with Sayoko and Angelica. Hiro is not a programmed robot. He’s designed to learn and, particularly, learn about his charge Sayoko.

Romano-Lax does a credible job describing the Japan of 10 years from now. As now, immigrant nurses have to keep up on their medical Japanese and are tested regularly. To that, the Japanese have developed a sophisticated monitoring network to meet the needs of the natives and keep an eye on the foreigners.

This being a literary novel, there’s lots of trips back to the main characters’ past and a gradual reveal of their secrets. One of those, revealed early on, is that Sayoko is at least half Taiwanese, and we hear about her childhood during the Japanese occupation of that island.

There are, of course, subsidiary characters: Junichi, Angelica’s lover and a co-worker of Itou; Rene, an African working as a physical therapist in Japan; and Datu, Angelica’s ne’er-do-well older brother. He works in the BZ, a heavy metals mining area in Alaska – that’s BZ as in “Burned Zone”, a cordon sanitaire that killed most of the animals in Alaska to prevent the spread of bird flu.

A question I had is why go to the work of hiring people to be poisoned slowly in the BZ when robot technology is increasing in sophistication. However, Romano-Lax handles the technological extrapolation fairly well.

However, as a science fiction reader, I thought this book could have been tightened up considerably with shorter passages about Sayoko’s and Angelica’s early lives. Some descriptions could have used just one, not three, similes to present a picture.

The central conflict of the story, robots or humans to care for older Japanese, is well shown in Angelica’s mixed feelings about Hiro. After all, Hiro is potentially her replacement, and she needs the job to pay Datu’s and hers debts to a Filipino loan shark.

But Romano-Lax dilutes and cheapens that conflict by bringing in an element that makes the future of Japanese elder care as robots or humans an unlikely either-or dilemma because pollution has rendered most Japanese infertile. Thus, the normal solution, up that birth rate, is taken off the table.

There is also the question of the book’s concluding tone. Sinister implications of robot technology rub shoulders with some cyberpunk hero story. It’s almost as if sequels are planned. Though, that said, I might read such a sequel since I didn’t dislike this novel – just thought it unnecessarily rigged its central dilemma and was too long in parts. Part of that change is encoded in the metaphor of the title. The “plum rains” of Taiwan are the dreary season of rains followed by spring.

Finally, it must be said that, while it’s fairly obvious that Romano-Lax comes down on the notion that Japan needs more immigrants, she’s not heavy-handed about it. And she has presented a story with some nice ruminations on sacrifice, need, and love. ( )