The novel “Eager” is primarily set in the future with unbelievably advanced technology including artificial robots, advanced machines, etc. The story focuses on a 12 year old with the name of Polly Newton who goes by “Flo” with a father mentioned as “Professor Gray” who is a renowned inventor. Flo’s father created a robot companion who he named “Eager” with the purpose of assisting, accompanying, and protecting Flo. The book is primarily based around the journey of Flo and Eager trying to uncover the mysterious disappearance of Eager's creator and Flos Father, Professor Gray. Throughout the journey, Flo and Eager receive assistance from other robots such as Jonquil and Winifred who help them find the Professor. Eager and his crew face many challenges which all tests their ability of teamwork, advanced thinking, and navigation skills.
Eager was a very solid read with 288 pages which perfectly made up for the time I had to do this assignment. There were many lessons that I noticed the book was trying to teach such as friendship, loyalty, and the importance and emotional significance to be human. The unique concept of an emotional human and an unemotional robot together accomplishing a goal, brings in a unique perspective to unfold the lessons and appeal through to more of the audience. Another unique idea that was shown in the book was Eager’s slow gain of self-independence throughout the story. On most occasions, his owner, Flo, would be the one to make the decisions however Eager starts to form himself as independent even with his life given duty of being a companion robot showing another large lesson of self-discovery. I am usually not a fan of sci-fi novels as some authors go too far with the limits of technology and overextend the possibilities giving the protagonist(s) almost no stakes but instead set limits or obstacles that have other solutions they do not mention whatsoever. However, “Eager” I believe addressed these problems as although the book has advanced technology where the human characters should be completely fine, gives an overarching problem where it cannot be fixed with the use of technology but instead intellectual thinking. Furthermore, the novel also focuses on lessons that are very important for self-improvement but gives these human problems to a robot which makes it a whole lot more interesting and fresh to dissect and understand.
This is a very good book for those who already enjoy Sci-Fi, but for those that don’t, this is a good book to start at as it is not so heavy on the technology itself but the characters. There's no downside as you are able to just stop at any point if you do not enjoy it and still get a few lessons out of it and get a read of Sci-Fi.
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