Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

The story is set in some future time where the planetary government is run by big businesses, mostly drug companies. These companies hold patents on the most basic medical drugs and sell them only to the wealthy. Everyone's life consists of the need to work hard so they can afford things like vaccinating their kids or treating them for common diseases. There are drug 'pirates' who duplicate patented medicines and hand them out free to the poor. This sort pf patent infringement is a capital crime. Jack, the protagonist, is one of these pirates. She finances her efforts by duplicating and selling other non-essential drugs, one of which is a newly released 'productivity enhancement' drug that is in great demand by big business because it functions by causing employees to become addicted to their work. Of course, people who are addicted to their job tend to die fairly quickly because they don't stop to eat or rest, but unemployment is high and it's not hard to replace a few dead workers. Jack has decided to try to find a cure for this addiction. At the same time, she's being hunted by a government agent and his robot companion whose job it is to kill her for patent infringement. Jack enlists the help of a former lover and co-pirate who has gone 'straight' and now runs a legal lab. She has also acquired a human slave, because while slavery is technically illegal, lifetime 'indentures' are not. The other half of this story is the tale of that agent and his bot, who develop a very strange sexual relationship, given that the robot is made of metal, has no genitalia and is described as only marginally humanoid. Bots have human brains and are the property of their builders (in this case the military) until they can earn enough money to 'buy' their freedom. OK, so I've just scratched the surface of the story, and really that's the problem I have with it. There's just too much going on here. It jumps around between the two stories but never gets deeply enough into either one to make sense. None of the characters are fleshed out enough to be sympathetic. Everyone is primarily interested in having sex (same-sex relationships, cross-sex relationships, master-slave relationships, and human-machine relationships) and the relationships themselves don't seem to make a lot of sense. Some of it is over the line into 'this is just creepy', like the scene in which the human climbs on the robot's back and becomes aroused by shooting the guns embedded in its arms. I'm not a prude, but this made even me think, 'eeeeewwww'. This could really have been a couple of books. The world-building needs a lot of fleshing out and the stories themselves need to concentrate more on character-building than on casual sex. As it stands, it just didn't 'click' for me.