When she offends an aristo and needs to escape off-world, she accepts a job as a courier for the mysterious Jeeves Corporation and becomes embroiled in a complex and dangerous war among factions conspiring against each other for control of society.

[3]Booklist praised Saturn's Children as “one of the most stylishly imaginative robot tales ever penned", and The Times described it as "a smart and playful romp.”[8] The San Diego Union-Tribune called the novel “Good fun ... Heinlein himself would’ve liked this.”[8] Calling it an "erotic futuristic thriller", Publishers Weekly pointed out that the novel contains "a deep message of how android slavery recapitulates humanity's past mistakes", but also suggests that Stross "struggles to make it heard over the moans and gunshots".

[9] Adrienne Martini of the Baltimore City Paper wrote that "Stross seems to be saying something about identity and class, but those larger ideas get buried in a labyrinthine plot that isn’t overly satisfying on its own," adding that "for a Heinlein fan, Saturn’s Children is an interesting game of spot the reference.

This humanless solar system is ... quite vividly explored, with floating cities ... on Venus, waste heated bio-labs on the frozen dwarf planet of Eris, and a truly frightening description of what’s happened to poor old Earth ...

Though Stross wrote Saturn's Children as a standalone novel, he published a short story sequel called "Bit Rot" in the 2010 anthology Engineering Infinity and later made it available online.

"[11] Nigel Seel wrote for ScienceFiction.com: [Hannu Rajaniemi's short story] The Server and the Dragon is ... classic SF in that it’s all head and no heart: emotional investment in the protagonist remains minimal.