Valet by J.P. Lacrampe Review

For fans of Kevin Wilson and Andrew Sean Greer, a helper robot and his 35-year-old ward embark on a mad-cap adventure to save the fate of the family company in this whimsically speculative ode to Wodehouse’s Jeeves and Wooster.
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Cy wants nothing more than to be useful, raise his utility score, and receive the next update for his operating system. But that’s easier said than done when he's tasked with helping his owner’s 35-year-old son “get out of his funk.” Grayson is nothing like his go-getter, CEO sister Charlotte. He didn’t inherit the family robotics company when their dad passed last year, he doesn’t have a master’s degree, and he just can’t seem to figure out the San Francisco dating scene. He’d rather eat synthesized mozzarella sticks and make pottery at his studio, Kilning Time.
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When Grayson learns of Charlotte’s plan to sell the company to a tech conglomerate, he panics. It’s not just the family business at stake, it’s all the technology—like Cy—their dad invented over the years. So he does what anyone would he steals the flash drive with his father’s most important work stored on it and plans a corporate takeover. If only he knew what that meant.
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To make matters worse, a fellow VALET deserts his owner and asks Cy to help him hightail it out of town, Grayson’s first real date—and her dog—keeping showing up at inopportune times, and the behemoth tech company wants this deal closed yesterday. Grayson, Cy, and their trusty golden retriever, Sasha III, must go on the lam until they figure out exactly what to do, and whom to trust.
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A hilarious, mad-cap adventure that is as tender as it is insightful, Valet asks not just what it means to be human, but what it means to be family.

As charming and delightful as a speculative fiction/scifi novel can be, J.P. Lacrampe’s Valet is a lighthearted and breezy read that covers a concise and effective story about androids, their human owners, and a lot of fun shenanigans in between. Full of witty humor and sharp yet cheeky social commentary, this book effortlessly blends its lighthearted absurdist tone with unexpectedly heartfelt and effective character writing, telling a story that’s far more human than robotic. Mixing together relevant cyber topic discussions with a snappy and well-crafted story of an attempted corporate succession turned tech hostage negotiation, Valet is an excellent and fun read that’s as intelligent as it is whimsical.

Following an advanced robotic scientific assistant turned personal butler assistant, Cy is an aging Verified Artificial-Learning-Enhanced Techbot seeking to please his owners and raise his operating utility score, a benchmark that determines whether he gets future feature programming updates or is retired to manufacturing facility monotony. Once the esteemed assistant to the CEO of Ai+, the developer of cutting-edge robotic technology, he is tasked by the late CEO’s widow Mrs. St. Claire to right her son Grayson’s wayward life, lack of motivation, and to marry him off. Unlike his CEO sister Charlotte who took over the company with futuristic augmented capabilities and sharpened intellectual clarity, Master Grayson wants nothing to do with their family’s business, spending his days lounging around eating archaic processed food and working in his pottery studio Kilning Time. However, the status quo is suddenly turned on its head when Grayson refuses to go along with Charlotte’s plan to sell the family company and its assets via a merger with a prominent android manufacturing firm, sparking an impassioned and crazed tech hostage scheme that the St. Claire’s have never experienced before. Caught in the skirmish between his devoted assignment to Master Grayson vs Mrs. St. Claire’s conflicting orders to manage him, Cy’s life is further complicated by his involved with another wanted techbot on the run from the law, the difficulties of matching Grayson with prospective dates, and an assistant score rivalry with Mrs. St. Claire’s newer and more advanced techbot Elsa.

If that synopsis sounds a little chaotic and kooky, I’ve done my job at recapturing the feel of Valet that is one-part on-brand satirical speculative fiction goodness and one-part good-natured comedic chaos. This book is a fascinating one that has several ongoing storylines that are seamlessly intertwined through effective plotting and strong narrative choices. At the front is the sibling conflict of Grayson and Charlotte quarreling over their late father’s company legacy that leads to ground-breaking tech stolen and held for ransom. Meanwhile Cy inadvertently helps an aging and irrelevant techbot named Larry escape the confines of their utility score system, complicit in breaking numerous regulatory laws and being investigated by the cyber police task force. But beneath it all is a story of familial expectation and self-worth as Cy runs Grayson’s dating app profile, encourages him to eat healthier, provides constant quality of life recommendations, and sticks with his master through the highs and lows of adulthood. While the story is no doubt entertaining and fun when it wants to be, it’s also quietly nuanced and thematically rich while maintaining its joyous tone.

Despite being only two hundred seventy-two pages in its hardcover format, Valet packs a lot of narrative and thematic content while also providing an appropriate amount of world-building. Set in a futuristic version of San Francisco, the city is full of techbots conducting a wide variety of operations, city sentry and delivery drones filling the skies, and AR/VR/AI technology filling out the rest of the world. Likely due to the author’s real-life connections to the area, the book is full of fun references and futuristic revisioning of various Bay Area locations that Norcal readers will love. As a foil, there’s also anti-technology groups, the Killjoy Collective and the Machine Crime Investigations Bureau. While other scifi books may have more expansive worldbuilding or elaborate visuals, what Valet presents is solid and well-suited for the story it’s telling, keeping things moving with a snappy sense of pacing. While there’s a lot going on, it always feels like the book knows what it’s doing and where the story is going without unnecessary tangents.

If one of Valet’s best assets is his pacing and plotting, the other is its tone. Despite having some serious topics and storylines, the book maintains an upbeat and optimistically pleasant feel courtesy of Cy’s utterly delightful narration. In addition to his quirky and comedic musings of the many idiosyncrasies of human behavior, the book has a wonderful sense of tongue-in-cheek humor that pokes fun at society. While the jokes and banter aren’t quite laugh out loud funny, they’re chuckle-worthy and consistently witty vs fellow slapstick or crude scifi-bro book offerings. Some of the references and comedic antics do have a strong older millennial/young gen x vibe with a slight Dad-joke feel to them (not a dig at Lacrampe, I myself love cracking Dad jokes) which readers can find either endearing or a little silly; both takeaways work in the book’s favor.

Complementing the appealing tone, the book also features great character writing and surprisingly good development considering its length and breezy feel. While Cy easily carries Valet on his own through his amicably snarky narration, the cast of characters are diverse and likeable. While Grayson is initially introduced as a lazy, listless, and good-for-nothing adult son coasting on the family’s wealth, his character has a lot more going on beneath the surface. If the book were stripped of its techbot and scifi flavor, his character serves a pseudo failure-to-launch arc where repeated lack of familial support and perceived inferiority to his high potential younger sister has led to a dejected, ostracized, and down in the rut man that’s highly relevant and relatable in current society; see numerous articles and studies covering the unhappiness and disenfranchisement of young men in the US that feel isolated and worthless. Not only a perceived disgrace to the St. Claire name by his own family, his potential dates set up by Cy, and his stoner friends, no one takes him seriously and the reinforced cycle that Cy is tasked with breaking is portrayed very effectively.

As the story develops, so does Grayson’s confidence as well as the reader’s opinion of him, his good instincts and sentimental values contrasting the harsh coldness of Charlotte’s hyper-efficient and high probability algorithmic mantra. The juxtaposition of the two approaches with both characters’ opinions of the company’s future is well done while mediated by the vaguely villainous figure of Mrs. St. Claire in the middle of it. But most importantly is Cy and Grayson’s bond reminiscent of Jeeves and Wooster’s master/butler working relationship on the surface, mentor and parental figure on a deeper level. While not overly sentimental, the book has a sweet and wholesome ending that delivers a satisfying resolution to Cy and Grayson’s time together, as well as Mrs. St. Claire (I thought her and Cy’s resolution to be one of the best parts of the book). Though not particularly emotional or a heavy read, the ending caught me pleasantly by surprise with how effective it was in the character development department for not only Grayson but especially Cy. On a more neutral note, though it provides a serviceable resolution to the company’s future and succession storyline, these narrative elements are handled in a more a lowkey manner in the ending that some readers may find a tad underwhelming even though this is first and foremost a book about its characters vs the plot.

Light-hearted, versatile, and certainly easy to enjoy, Valet is an expertly crafted book that has a little bit of everything. A varied mix of storylines, great character work, on-brand speculative scifi elements all wrapped up in a pleasantly charming and witty package, there’s a lot to like. Thanks to its concise story, good pacing, and fun narration style, it also makes for a great palette cleanser kind of read, providing a lot of fun with smarts and heart. I believe this may be J.P. Lacrampe’s published novel debut which makes the book all the more impressive. Valet is a wonderful book and I’m definitely looking forward to reading more of Lacrampe’s future works!