Sea of Rust by C. Robert Cargill
Might contain spoilers.
The excellent Dreams and Shadows made me a believer in C. Robert Cargill, so I was looking forward to Sea of Rust. I was unprepared. This is a bleak story through and through, and quite a gory one, considering. It’s fascinating for its premise and how comprehensively it’s been thought through; at the same time, the robot world doesn’t seem so different from the human world. That might be the point. (I like the way they handle gender, though.)
I was surprised by how much I felt for the robots who died in the end. We don’t spend much time with them, but their humanity is easy to recognize.