Expiration Day by William Campbell Powell (review)

Tania is used to being special, believing herself to be one of the few actual children in a world of sophisticated robots. Except oops, she’s not a real girl at all, just another teknoid who has been carefully raised to believe she wasn’t one. Luckily, Tania is mostly surrounded by people who are happy to support her in her quest to live honestly as a non-biological being, challenge the rules that would have her returned to the company that made her when she turns eighteen, and trust her judgment as she changes and grows. A diary format works well to keep readers at the same place as Tania, first a perky eleven-year-old who’s clueless about her true self and then a savvier, slightly world-weary older adolescent who sees the world for what it is but still wants to keep her place in it. This dystopic future is a memorable one, placed about forty years ahead in a world where the robotic children’s inevitable end is mitigated only slightly by the still very real, intense love parents feel for their teknoid offspring. While sci-fi buffs might be the likeliest audience, an extra push to realistic fiction fans may have them contemplating the ways in which Tania comes of age and how little it differs from what they are themselves experiencing.