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Mechanize My Hands to War
The emergence of artificial life intersects with state violence and political extremism in Erin K. Wagner’s rural Appalachia, where startlingly intimate portraits of survival and empathy bloom against a stark backdrop of loss.
September, 2060: Adrian Hall, acting director of the ATF, is holding a press conference. Yes, Eli Whitaker, anti-android demagogue, remains at large, and yes, he is recruiting children into his militia — Adrian is careful not to use the word army. She is careful all the way through the conference, right up until someone asks her about her personal connection to Whitaker; about Trey Caudill, his foster son.
July, 2058: Farmers Shay and Ernst, struggling after they discover their GMO crop seeds have failed, hire android employees: Sarah as hospice, and AG-15 to work the now-toxic fields. Under one roof, four lives intertwine in ways no one expects.
July, 2060: Special Agent Trey Caudill is leading a raid on Eli Whitaker’s farm when an android, call sign Ora, shoots and kills a child.
March, 2061: Ora sits in a room. He has been there for seven months, resisting diagnostic tests. He is drawing on the walls, scratching his artificial skin, tracing something over and over and over again with a tired metallic finger. There is nothing wrong with his circuitry, so why does Ora feel so broken?
Unflinching yet understated, making expert use of its nonlinear form, Mechanize My Hands to War is at once a study of grief and an ode to the power of self-determination.
September, 2060: Adrian Hall, acting director of the ATF, is holding a press conference. Yes, Eli Whitaker, anti-android demagogue, remains at large, and yes, he is recruiting children into his militia — Adrian is careful not to use the word army. She is careful all the way through the conference, right up until someone asks her about her personal connection to Whitaker; about Trey Caudill, his foster son.
July, 2058: Farmers Shay and Ernst, struggling after they discover their GMO crop seeds have failed, hire android employees: Sarah as hospice, and AG-15 to work the now-toxic fields. Under one roof, four lives intertwine in ways no one expects.
July, 2060: Special Agent Trey Caudill is leading a raid on Eli Whitaker’s farm when an android, call sign Ora, shoots and kills a child.
March, 2061: Ora sits in a room. He has been there for seven months, resisting diagnostic tests. He is drawing on the walls, scratching his artificial skin, tracing something over and over and over again with a tired metallic finger. There is nothing wrong with his circuitry, so why does Ora feel so broken?
Unflinching yet understated, making expert use of its nonlinear form, Mechanize My Hands to War is at once a study of grief and an ode to the power of self-determination.
309 pages, Hardcover
First published December 17, 2024
55 people are currently reading
7425 people want to read
About the author
Erin K. Wagner
14 books45 followersErin K. Wagner (also E. K. Wagner) is a professor by trade, a medievalist by discipline, and a writer of speculative fiction by design.
She lives in upstate New York, a storied and story-making place, but her roots are in Appalachia, since she grew up in rural southeast Ohio. Presently, she teaches an array of literature and composition courses in the SUNY system as an English professor. Her interests, both academic and creative, lie in examining how the human responds to the nonhuman (whether that be AI, religion, or nature).
She lives in upstate New York, a storied and story-making place, but her roots are in Appalachia, since she grew up in rural southeast Ohio. Presently, she teaches an array of literature and composition courses in the SUNY system as an English professor. Her interests, both academic and creative, lie in examining how the human responds to the nonhuman (whether that be AI, religion, or nature).
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 87 reviews
March 24, 2025
Erin Wagner is a good writer, with a lot of potential. But this book is not it. Despite a strong start, showcasing a rare ability to write both science fiction and realistic contemporary, it bogs down in the middle, frittering away all momentum by literally repeating the same scenes over and over again, and the themes seem confused and halfhearted.
Mechanize My Hands To War is about halfway between a regular novel and what I’ve seen called a “mosaic novel”: its ten chapters come from the points-of-view of eight different characters, all involved with each other to various degrees. It’s a near-future science fiction story set in Appalachia or the Midwest or on the border of the two (it’s not always clear), involving ATF agents hunting down a child-soldier-heavy militia that objects to androids taking human jobs, as well as mistreated sentient androids trying to figure out what they want and how to achieve freedom.
Unfortunately, I think Wagner just didn’t have enough plot to fill 309 pages. There’s a lot of long, slow, not particularly revelatory dialogues, and then after the first four chapters, she starts recycling them, showing us the same scenes again (one we see three times!) from different perspectives. An author might get away with this if the characters had wildly different viewpoints on what happened, or if everyone was an unreliable narrator and it was up to the reader to decide who to believe. But none of that happens here. The events remain the same, the dialogue always verbatim, and never abbreviated in light of the fact that we’ve seen it before. And the internal monologues are no more different than you would naturally have surmised by being in the head of a different character; there’s never a “whoa, that’s what he thought was happening?!” moment that forces you to reevaluate. The three middle chapters consist almost entirely of rehashing, and this was where the book lost me. The three final chapters do provide a bit of new material—there is a climax—but it’s still a single night’s events through the eyes of three different people, and honestly by that point I’d soured on the book too much to care.
It's also worth noting that the plot structure is chaotic, constantly bouncing back and forth by months and years. I regularly had to flip around to see where current events fit in the chronology, and while in general I’m happy to read non-chronological stories, I didn’t see the point or payoff for it here.
Finally, a book with this sort of ensemble cast is necessarily more theme- than character-focused, but this one pulls its punches and just doesn’t bring much to the table. Okay, the question of the social position of sentient androids is handled well enough, but in very much the same way as the Murderbot series, which is far more compelling. There’s the question of androids taking human jobs, but this issue isn’t so much explored as occasionally mentioned in dialogue. The anti-android “militia” doesn’t actually seem to do anything besides hunker down in abandoned farmhouses and practice marksmanship, and I wound up wondering if Wagner had them recruit children simply to make sure the readers would agree with her on who the bad guys are. There’s a bit on childhood trauma, but it’s never much explored, and lands the story in the unlikely situation where the ATF agent leading the raids is the abused(?) former foster son of the militia leader, which seems like a terrible choice on the ATF’s part—obviously this guy will either overreact or underreact. Use him for negotiations or intelligence, sure, but not combat missions! And there’s a bit about climate change and pesticide damage but it winds up seeming like a bit of a footnote.
All that said, I do think Wagner has potential. There’s a verisimilitude to the characters, who might have become quite gripping if they’d been given room to breathe and narrative momentum the opportunity to build. The cultural backdrop feels real. And there are some great themes struggling to get out. A couple more drafts and this might have been a great book. As is I wouldn’t recommend it, but I will be interested to see what Wagner writes next.
Mechanize My Hands To War is about halfway between a regular novel and what I’ve seen called a “mosaic novel”: its ten chapters come from the points-of-view of eight different characters, all involved with each other to various degrees. It’s a near-future science fiction story set in Appalachia or the Midwest or on the border of the two (it’s not always clear), involving ATF agents hunting down a child-soldier-heavy militia that objects to androids taking human jobs, as well as mistreated sentient androids trying to figure out what they want and how to achieve freedom.
Unfortunately, I think Wagner just didn’t have enough plot to fill 309 pages. There’s a lot of long, slow, not particularly revelatory dialogues, and then after the first four chapters, she starts recycling them, showing us the same scenes again (one we see three times!) from different perspectives. An author might get away with this if the characters had wildly different viewpoints on what happened, or if everyone was an unreliable narrator and it was up to the reader to decide who to believe. But none of that happens here. The events remain the same, the dialogue always verbatim, and never abbreviated in light of the fact that we’ve seen it before. And the internal monologues are no more different than you would naturally have surmised by being in the head of a different character; there’s never a “whoa, that’s what he thought was happening?!” moment that forces you to reevaluate. The three middle chapters consist almost entirely of rehashing, and this was where the book lost me. The three final chapters do provide a bit of new material—there is a climax—but it’s still a single night’s events through the eyes of three different people, and honestly by that point I’d soured on the book too much to care.
It's also worth noting that the plot structure is chaotic, constantly bouncing back and forth by months and years. I regularly had to flip around to see where current events fit in the chronology, and while in general I’m happy to read non-chronological stories, I didn’t see the point or payoff for it here.
Finally, a book with this sort of ensemble cast is necessarily more theme- than character-focused, but this one pulls its punches and just doesn’t bring much to the table. Okay, the question of the social position of sentient androids is handled well enough, but in very much the same way as the Murderbot series, which is far more compelling. There’s the question of androids taking human jobs, but this issue isn’t so much explored as occasionally mentioned in dialogue. The anti-android “militia” doesn’t actually seem to do anything besides hunker down in abandoned farmhouses and practice marksmanship, and I wound up wondering if Wagner had them recruit children simply to make sure the readers would agree with her on who the bad guys are. There’s a bit on childhood trauma, but it’s never much explored, and lands the story in the unlikely situation where the ATF agent leading the raids is the abused(?) former foster son of the militia leader, which seems like a terrible choice on the ATF’s part—obviously this guy will either overreact or underreact. Use him for negotiations or intelligence, sure, but not combat missions! And there’s a bit about climate change and pesticide damage but it winds up seeming like a bit of a footnote.
All that said, I do think Wagner has potential. There’s a verisimilitude to the characters, who might have become quite gripping if they’d been given room to breathe and narrative momentum the opportunity to build. The cultural backdrop feels real. And there are some great themes struggling to get out. A couple more drafts and this might have been a great book. As is I wouldn’t recommend it, but I will be interested to see what Wagner writes next.
December 3, 2024
Humanity is found—and forged—in how we relate to one another… And maybe that is true for non-humans, too. This novel took me by surprise, in a good way. I wasn’t particularly hooked when I started, but as I neared the end of the first chapter my relationship with the book started to change, and as the further chapters unfolded I was (joyfully) lost deeper into the story. There is a rustic futurism to the story, which is mostly set around 25 years in the future, a sense of weariness, a resignation to ongoing climate destruction, political violence, wealth inequality, and systemic disenfranchisement. There is almost a pastoral feeling, though we spend probably equal amounts of time in cities and facilities as we do in rural environments, but the expansiveness and myth of freedom that comes with pastoral life pervades the story. But there are androids, incredibly lifelike androids, filling all sorts of service, companion, and worker roles—including serving as armed agents for federal taskforces.. Androids that are supposed to have highly sophisticated AI systems detailed to whatever their particular function is, but not actual sentience, but how can you expect boulders to stop rolling down a hill after you give them the push?
The story itself is compelling, though hard to pin down due to the non-linear story telling. I appreciated this, the story was a vehicle for exploring the characters and their humanity, their relationships. It never felt phones in, there were tense scenes and emotional stakes, but if the core story had just been told in a simple, linear narrative from one point of view it wouldn’t take many pages. I think it worked perfectly here, holding the weight of the story in the necessary ways to allow for other investigations. So, let’s talk about the plotting and writing, instead of the story. The novel has ten chapters, each almost the exact same length, and each from the perspective of a different character (or, on occasion, set of characters). Two characters get two chapters, bookending the novel, but the other six chapters are from different perspectives. Within each chapter there are numerous subchapters, and across these we jump around in time. There are some exceptions, more or less childhood flashbacks, but most of the story happens between a span of about five years, and the sub-chapters jump around within that period. Similarly, as we move to new chapters and follow a new character we often see the same scene repeated, but from an alternative perspective. This could become tedious or prescriptive, but I found it really well done, and quite compelling. You are basically given a bunch of pieces, slowly, and left to piece them together as you learn more from other characters, and this does a great job of keeping the reader engaged, juggling the various pieces of the emotional story being told, since the narrative events are more or less cut and dry and just need to be sequenced.
Don’t be mistaken, though, the chopping up and re-ordered of the narrative doesn’t diminish the pacing or sense of momentum. In fact, it creates an interesting tension, one always rising, because we are trying to find out how things that have already been hinted at actually happen. It feels tight and like it is always moving, even when you jump back a few years in time.
The world-building is skillfully done. In most ways it is just the world we are used to, but just small things are tweaked, such as a lack of real coffee due to conflict zones interrupting cultivation, and other very small things like that. Little details that situate the world as not our own but close enough to be a warning cry, a shot against the collective bow highlighting very real possible futures. The characters shine in ways I didn’t expect. Since we only spend one chapter with a given character it is easy to feel distant from them, and that was some of what I was feeling in the very first chapter. But somehow, in part by manipulating the timeline and sequence that details are revealed, but also by having so much overlap between characters, giving you the chance to see a character you followed in a previous chapter through the eyes and instincts of a different character, they all end up feeling really engaging and intimate. All the characters, human and synthetic, were believable. This includes the antagonists, a group of people who are angry and ignored and trying to focus their rage in a way that makes sense to them, lets them feel like they have a modicum of power as the owner-class is steadily eliminating their jobs in favor of automated labor. The antagonists’ actions are in no way acceptable, but they are entirely understandable, their outrage relatable, and this sense of complicity pervades not just the protagonists but also the reader.
And it is important that the characters are so compelling, because the heart of this story is about people, or humanity. And that is found in how we relate to others, how we develop trust and relationship and understand ourselves through being in communion with those around us. Some of the most gripping chapters were told from the perspective of androids, forcing the reader to examine what exactly it is that makes themselves human. Yet, in all this, the story had a light hand, it never felt preachy or ham-fisted. There wasn’t a scold or a condemnation, but instead an invitation, to lean into what makes us human, and more importantly to lean into finding that in others.
I want to thank the author, the publisher DAW, and NetGalley, who provided a complimentary eARC for review. I am leaving this review voluntarily.
The story itself is compelling, though hard to pin down due to the non-linear story telling. I appreciated this, the story was a vehicle for exploring the characters and their humanity, their relationships. It never felt phones in, there were tense scenes and emotional stakes, but if the core story had just been told in a simple, linear narrative from one point of view it wouldn’t take many pages. I think it worked perfectly here, holding the weight of the story in the necessary ways to allow for other investigations. So, let’s talk about the plotting and writing, instead of the story. The novel has ten chapters, each almost the exact same length, and each from the perspective of a different character (or, on occasion, set of characters). Two characters get two chapters, bookending the novel, but the other six chapters are from different perspectives. Within each chapter there are numerous subchapters, and across these we jump around in time. There are some exceptions, more or less childhood flashbacks, but most of the story happens between a span of about five years, and the sub-chapters jump around within that period. Similarly, as we move to new chapters and follow a new character we often see the same scene repeated, but from an alternative perspective. This could become tedious or prescriptive, but I found it really well done, and quite compelling. You are basically given a bunch of pieces, slowly, and left to piece them together as you learn more from other characters, and this does a great job of keeping the reader engaged, juggling the various pieces of the emotional story being told, since the narrative events are more or less cut and dry and just need to be sequenced.
Don’t be mistaken, though, the chopping up and re-ordered of the narrative doesn’t diminish the pacing or sense of momentum. In fact, it creates an interesting tension, one always rising, because we are trying to find out how things that have already been hinted at actually happen. It feels tight and like it is always moving, even when you jump back a few years in time.
The world-building is skillfully done. In most ways it is just the world we are used to, but just small things are tweaked, such as a lack of real coffee due to conflict zones interrupting cultivation, and other very small things like that. Little details that situate the world as not our own but close enough to be a warning cry, a shot against the collective bow highlighting very real possible futures. The characters shine in ways I didn’t expect. Since we only spend one chapter with a given character it is easy to feel distant from them, and that was some of what I was feeling in the very first chapter. But somehow, in part by manipulating the timeline and sequence that details are revealed, but also by having so much overlap between characters, giving you the chance to see a character you followed in a previous chapter through the eyes and instincts of a different character, they all end up feeling really engaging and intimate. All the characters, human and synthetic, were believable. This includes the antagonists, a group of people who are angry and ignored and trying to focus their rage in a way that makes sense to them, lets them feel like they have a modicum of power as the owner-class is steadily eliminating their jobs in favor of automated labor. The antagonists’ actions are in no way acceptable, but they are entirely understandable, their outrage relatable, and this sense of complicity pervades not just the protagonists but also the reader.
And it is important that the characters are so compelling, because the heart of this story is about people, or humanity. And that is found in how we relate to others, how we develop trust and relationship and understand ourselves through being in communion with those around us. Some of the most gripping chapters were told from the perspective of androids, forcing the reader to examine what exactly it is that makes themselves human. Yet, in all this, the story had a light hand, it never felt preachy or ham-fisted. There wasn’t a scold or a condemnation, but instead an invitation, to lean into what makes us human, and more importantly to lean into finding that in others.
I want to thank the author, the publisher DAW, and NetGalley, who provided a complimentary eARC for review. I am leaving this review voluntarily.
January 25, 2025
This is just what I needed after my last book was a slog and I’d gone nearly two months without a five-star. Mechanize My Hands to War is told in ten sections from different POVs (the first two are repeated in the ninth and tenth, the middle six are unique), each with four subchapters skipping back and forth in time to establish the characters via a series of vignettes, many of which tell the same events seen in another character’s section from a different point of view. The setting is mostly rural Appalachia 30-40 years into the future, where androids have taken a lot of jobs and an anti-android militia has recruited out-of-work rednecks and orphan children. The structure feels almost like a mosaic novel, but there’s enough plot overlap that everything feels pretty connected to a central arc, even if that arc is told out of order.
It’s not a happy setting, and there’s plenty of tragedy around, but the characters are generally striving for better in a way that offers a glimmer of hope. Most of the segments feel like they could be their own short stories, and they’re almost all touching and feel incredibly grounded. This is a near-future story that feels extremely connected to what a potential near-future could actually be like in the hills of southeast Ohio.
I would’ve liked to see the prologue and epilogue connect a little more tightly to the main story, though I understand and appreciate what they did thematically. I also felt like the two military android POV segments in the middle of the book were a bit weaker than the human POV segments on either side. They weren’t necessarily bad, but they also didn’t feel like they could walk right off the page like the humans did.
But overall, I really enjoyed this one. It digs into a lot of very real questions and doesn’t offer many pat answers (there may be one faceless villain, but it’s not heavily dwelt on, and almost everything is heavily humanized). It’s a book I highly appreciated for its care in digging into very real and very complicated issues, and it’s a book I loved for how easily I could dive into the world of the characters.
First impression: 17/20. Full review to come at www.tarvolon.com
It’s not a happy setting, and there’s plenty of tragedy around, but the characters are generally striving for better in a way that offers a glimmer of hope. Most of the segments feel like they could be their own short stories, and they’re almost all touching and feel incredibly grounded. This is a near-future story that feels extremely connected to what a potential near-future could actually be like in the hills of southeast Ohio.
I would’ve liked to see the prologue and epilogue connect a little more tightly to the main story, though I understand and appreciate what they did thematically. I also felt like the two military android POV segments in the middle of the book were a bit weaker than the human POV segments on either side. They weren’t necessarily bad, but they also didn’t feel like they could walk right off the page like the humans did.
But overall, I really enjoyed this one. It digs into a lot of very real questions and doesn’t offer many pat answers (there may be one faceless villain, but it’s not heavily dwelt on, and almost everything is heavily humanized). It’s a book I highly appreciated for its care in digging into very real and very complicated issues, and it’s a book I loved for how easily I could dive into the world of the characters.
First impression: 17/20. Full review to come at www.tarvolon.com
November 17, 2024
Started better than it ended for me, so I was kind of skimming through the last pages. The themes appealed to me, but the pacing and plot not as much.
This is a story about AI, and androids specifically, and the ethical questions that come up in their wake. There’s one pivotal traumatic event that is a big focus of the book, impacting Adrian and Trey (the main-ish characters). The story is told nonlinearly, and there are tangents into other characters’ lives. It’s definitely in the vein of literary SF as it focuses on thematic content and character interiority.
On a sentence level, the writing is good. It’s spare but thoughtful. And initially I was invested in the story. But I found the jumping around in time to be annoying and a little confusing at times, making me wish it was more linear or at least not broken up into quite as many pieces as it is. We also get multiple scenes from multiple perspectives (without trimming anything), and that definitely got annoying.
I also found myself distracted by multiple questions about why the androids were being used the way they were and why we kept returning to Ora and Helios specifically. It didn’t make sense to me that Ora was still around and on missions. Also why make Ora such that it can’t say many words? It seems like a weirdly limiting thing to do - like, inconvenient for the humans who work with it.
I was also confused by Trey and Adrian’s involvement with the raids and whatnot given their personal history. You see this a lot in media, and it does have me wondering how often this happens in real life. Probably not zero times, but it felt like so many people should be aware of it in this book and stepping in to be like “hey maybe you aren’t the best choice to lead this.”
I didn’t care too much about any of the characters in the end. That’s the downside to literary writing for me sometimes. It’s too clinical in this case.
But the questions the story was considering and the feelings around the traumatic event were very compelling. I think I’d give the author another shot. This book just feels convoluted and unfocused.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.
This is a story about AI, and androids specifically, and the ethical questions that come up in their wake. There’s one pivotal traumatic event that is a big focus of the book, impacting Adrian and Trey (the main-ish characters). The story is told nonlinearly, and there are tangents into other characters’ lives. It’s definitely in the vein of literary SF as it focuses on thematic content and character interiority.
On a sentence level, the writing is good. It’s spare but thoughtful. And initially I was invested in the story. But I found the jumping around in time to be annoying and a little confusing at times, making me wish it was more linear or at least not broken up into quite as many pieces as it is. We also get multiple scenes from multiple perspectives (without trimming anything), and that definitely got annoying.
I also found myself distracted by multiple questions about why the androids were being used the way they were and why we kept returning to Ora and Helios specifically. It didn’t make sense to me that Ora was still around and on missions. Also why make Ora such that it can’t say many words? It seems like a weirdly limiting thing to do - like, inconvenient for the humans who work with it.
I was also confused by Trey and Adrian’s involvement with the raids and whatnot given their personal history. You see this a lot in media, and it does have me wondering how often this happens in real life. Probably not zero times, but it felt like so many people should be aware of it in this book and stepping in to be like “hey maybe you aren’t the best choice to lead this.”
I didn’t care too much about any of the characters in the end. That’s the downside to literary writing for me sometimes. It’s too clinical in this case.
But the questions the story was considering and the feelings around the traumatic event were very compelling. I think I’d give the author another shot. This book just feels convoluted and unfocused.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.
September 6, 2024
This ambitious book pays homage to Phillip K Dick and some of the best Southern Gothic.
This books could fill in the missing pieces between the bell riots and a robot controlled future.
You may or may like the narrative roshomon style of showing the same scene from 2-3 points of view.
This book was interesting and entertaining and feels like a realistic extrapolation of our current technology.
This book was an eARC from netgallery.
This books could fill in the missing pieces between the bell riots and a robot controlled future.
You may or may like the narrative roshomon style of showing the same scene from 2-3 points of view.
This book was interesting and entertaining and feels like a realistic extrapolation of our current technology.
This book was an eARC from netgallery.
January 18, 2025
This book is so much more boring than what the blurb makes it sound like. The first half dragged to where I could not stay awake while attempting to read it. The second half picked up some with the android POVs, but they were too little, too late. Somehow the human POV chapters felt more robotic than the actual robot ones.
Wasn't a fan of the time jumps and seeing the same scenes multiple times from multiple points of views. They were boring the first time, they're definitely not less boring the third time we've rehashed them.
Isaac Asimov has covered all of this much, much, much better, and this story didn't really have anything new to add. Save yourself some time and read (or re-read) an Asimov story instead.
Wasn't a fan of the time jumps and seeing the same scenes multiple times from multiple points of views. They were boring the first time, they're definitely not less boring the third time we've rehashed them.
Isaac Asimov has covered all of this much, much, much better, and this story didn't really have anything new to add. Save yourself some time and read (or re-read) an Asimov story instead.
January 28, 2025
I was not on board with the non linearity at first, but when the threads started to connect it really worked. Non human stories were, unsurprisingly, a highlight, and I grudgingly applaud the contrast of the Eli plot and the Ernst/Shay plot (the latter of course better suited for emotional impact).
December 19, 2024
I was interested in this story because it was centered on the Appalachian Mountain region, near where I live, and it was SciFi.
This story was very well written with wonderful prose, but had some time jumps that I thought could have been handled a little differently. However, the characters are well-developed, particularly some of the non-human characters in the story. I was disappointed in the setting - in my opinion, there wasn’t really anything unique to the Appalachian region and this story could have been set anywhere.
With all of that being said, I did enjoy reading this book, especially past the 20% mark or so - it took me a little while to get invested in the story. In addition, I think this author has a wonderful future and I look forward to reading more of her work!
Highly recommended!
This story was very well written with wonderful prose, but had some time jumps that I thought could have been handled a little differently. However, the characters are well-developed, particularly some of the non-human characters in the story. I was disappointed in the setting - in my opinion, there wasn’t really anything unique to the Appalachian region and this story could have been set anywhere.
With all of that being said, I did enjoy reading this book, especially past the 20% mark or so - it took me a little while to get invested in the story. In addition, I think this author has a wonderful future and I look forward to reading more of her work!
Highly recommended!
December 30, 2024
(rounded up from 3.5)
This was slow going but an interesting meditation on the role of androids in society at the transitional time when they are becoming cheap enough to replace human labor in various industries but also not trusted enough to have any independence or be trusted with life and death situations.
If you enjoy reading stories where the same incidents are often revisited from a completely different participant's point of view to add layers and reflection on the interaction, you'll enjoy this book. If you want a faster-paced plot, this one may not be for you. I enjoy both so was mildly frustrated with the middle of this book but in the end, the journey is worthwhile and engaging.
This was slow going but an interesting meditation on the role of androids in society at the transitional time when they are becoming cheap enough to replace human labor in various industries but also not trusted enough to have any independence or be trusted with life and death situations.
If you enjoy reading stories where the same incidents are often revisited from a completely different participant's point of view to add layers and reflection on the interaction, you'll enjoy this book. If you want a faster-paced plot, this one may not be for you. I enjoy both so was mildly frustrated with the middle of this book but in the end, the journey is worthwhile and engaging.
December 23, 2024
I hate to say it, but I think I was a little disappointed in Mechanize My Hands to War. There were some interesting ideas, but everything felt very surface level. I think ambitious is a great descriptor; lots of characters with lots of motivations, lots of ruminations on the meaning of "human", but an uneven execution. I switch back and forth between liking the retelling of events from the different perspectives, and finding them a little tedious. As the reader, I take full responsibility, but Mechanize My Hands to War just didn't connect with me.
January 25, 2025
Mechanize poses the question "Who's the bad guy when 'progress' hurts people?" through the lens of multiple perspectives. While the author never really comes to an outright conclusion, I kind of loved the book for that reason. It really forces you to sit with the uncomfortable dilemma.
Would be an excellent book club pick. AI is already a huge topic, fears of replacement by either immigration or technology, corporate interest vs. progress, etc. The discussion choices are vast and sure to be ones that everyone has a strong opinion on.
Would be an excellent book club pick. AI is already a huge topic, fears of replacement by either immigration or technology, corporate interest vs. progress, etc. The discussion choices are vast and sure to be ones that everyone has a strong opinion on.
December 1, 2024
Disclaimer: I received an e-ARC from netgalley in exchange for a review.
This story is set in a future America mostly in the Appalachia region, where through technological inventions some jobs are getting replaced by android labor. In resistance to the androids a violent uprising has started, led by Eli Whitaker, who fills the ranks of his militia with child soldiers. As the story progresses, we follow a variety of characters, former members of Eli’s militia, who now work in law enforcement to stop him, a couple living on a farm, who after a miscarriage and cancer and poisoned fields have to rely on android labor, a young girl, whose father died fighting in the militia, Eli and finally also four of the androids.
This is not an easy story to read, often switching between time and with different viewpoints in each chapter, but when things start to come together that is when it becomes really interesting. Through the variety of viewpoints, we sometimes see the same event from different angles, and I found that incredibly interesting. It also helps to understand all the characters, even if not all their actions can be condoned.
My favorite parts of the story were definitely the chapters set in the androids’ minds, especially when technological advancement meant people reacted differently to them. One of the androids, Ora, is for example treated horrible by the humans, who are supposed to work alongside them, as they have limited speech abilities, and everybody refuses to learn their sign language. Nobody really cares for their interior lives and it was incredibly heartbreaking, but also very interesting to read.
Lastly, I also really enjoyed that this story very well showed where the real problem lies. Because it is not android labor that causes rural communities to suffer from poverty. It is not androids that are somehow especially violent and ready to harm others. Instead, the real danger that goes unchallenged (but not un-thought off) in the fight between the militia and the government are the big corporations and insurance agencies, that refuse to work for the people and instead crush them under their boot. While this is not a story about overcoming capitalism, the criticism of that system and the many reasons why it cannot work are apparent in this story and make it all the more tragic, that people are so eager to blame the Other, the Inhuman.
All in all, this is a very well written novel and one I can just recommend to anybody interested in sci-fi that explores artificial life, human reaction to it, the dangers of capitalism and the Appalachia region.
Tw: child abuse, child soldiers, child mistreatment, murder, poisoning, cancer, miscarriage, hospital visit, ableism
This story is set in a future America mostly in the Appalachia region, where through technological inventions some jobs are getting replaced by android labor. In resistance to the androids a violent uprising has started, led by Eli Whitaker, who fills the ranks of his militia with child soldiers. As the story progresses, we follow a variety of characters, former members of Eli’s militia, who now work in law enforcement to stop him, a couple living on a farm, who after a miscarriage and cancer and poisoned fields have to rely on android labor, a young girl, whose father died fighting in the militia, Eli and finally also four of the androids.
This is not an easy story to read, often switching between time and with different viewpoints in each chapter, but when things start to come together that is when it becomes really interesting. Through the variety of viewpoints, we sometimes see the same event from different angles, and I found that incredibly interesting. It also helps to understand all the characters, even if not all their actions can be condoned.
My favorite parts of the story were definitely the chapters set in the androids’ minds, especially when technological advancement meant people reacted differently to them. One of the androids, Ora, is for example treated horrible by the humans, who are supposed to work alongside them, as they have limited speech abilities, and everybody refuses to learn their sign language. Nobody really cares for their interior lives and it was incredibly heartbreaking, but also very interesting to read.
Lastly, I also really enjoyed that this story very well showed where the real problem lies. Because it is not android labor that causes rural communities to suffer from poverty. It is not androids that are somehow especially violent and ready to harm others. Instead, the real danger that goes unchallenged (but not un-thought off) in the fight between the militia and the government are the big corporations and insurance agencies, that refuse to work for the people and instead crush them under their boot. While this is not a story about overcoming capitalism, the criticism of that system and the many reasons why it cannot work are apparent in this story and make it all the more tragic, that people are so eager to blame the Other, the Inhuman.
All in all, this is a very well written novel and one I can just recommend to anybody interested in sci-fi that explores artificial life, human reaction to it, the dangers of capitalism and the Appalachia region.
Tw: child abuse, child soldiers, child mistreatment, murder, poisoning, cancer, miscarriage, hospital visit, ableism
April 7, 2025
androids and human vs. non human, ethics, morality, climate change - there is a lot to think about in this book. the nonlinear storytelling was effective but also a bit hard to follow.
June 5, 2025
This was a difficult read because of the non-linear timelines and multiple perspectives, but I really loved the storylines and the underlying question of: what defines humanity?
June 3, 2025
Sadly this book is a DNF at 20%. Near future androids integrating into society, with a societal back-lash and anit-android militia. The premise is so interesting, but the book makes watching paint dry seem exciting. It is extremely boring, repetitive, and disjointed.
The characters lack any form of characterisation. They are simply names on the page. I’d say they look and sound they same, except I have no idea what any of them look like. There is a distinct lack of any settings and description of the names mentioned. It’s endless talk only differentiated by dialogue tags. I can’t tell who’s human and whose android. There is also way too many names (I baulk at calling them characters) adding to the confusion of who is saying what.
There’s an unattributed quote on the dust jacket stating – Unflinching yet understated, making expert use of its nonlinear form. – I call BS on this. The nonlinear form of random time-shifts and point of view changes makes it unintelligible, not unflinching. Not even the chapter and sub-chapter titling can save it. Sub-chapter 1.4 is titled May 2058 & September 2061. There’s two scenes in the sub-chapter, but nothing to indicate which is 2058 and which is 2061. And sub-chapter 1.2 is wedged in between as September 2060. The book is a conglomeration of scenes sequenced in a random order. There’s possibly a story in here, but I’ve no idea how you go about finding it.
The book had a page dog-eared at the end of chapter 1. I’m guessing that’s where the last library reader gave up. I pushed on to the end of chapter 2. I won’t be looking for anything else by this author and the book can’t go back to the library fast enough.
The characters lack any form of characterisation. They are simply names on the page. I’d say they look and sound they same, except I have no idea what any of them look like. There is a distinct lack of any settings and description of the names mentioned. It’s endless talk only differentiated by dialogue tags. I can’t tell who’s human and whose android. There is also way too many names (I baulk at calling them characters) adding to the confusion of who is saying what.
There’s an unattributed quote on the dust jacket stating – Unflinching yet understated, making expert use of its nonlinear form. – I call BS on this. The nonlinear form of random time-shifts and point of view changes makes it unintelligible, not unflinching. Not even the chapter and sub-chapter titling can save it. Sub-chapter 1.4 is titled May 2058 & September 2061. There’s two scenes in the sub-chapter, but nothing to indicate which is 2058 and which is 2061. And sub-chapter 1.2 is wedged in between as September 2060. The book is a conglomeration of scenes sequenced in a random order. There’s possibly a story in here, but I’ve no idea how you go about finding it.
The book had a page dog-eared at the end of chapter 1. I’m guessing that’s where the last library reader gave up. I pushed on to the end of chapter 2. I won’t be looking for anything else by this author and the book can’t go back to the library fast enough.
April 30, 2025
2.5 stars.
This was pretty disappointing. I think the overall idea for the story was interesting, but the execution didn't work for me at all. I didn't like how we read the exact same scene from different characters' POV multiple times. It was boring. I didn't need to see the same uninteresting conversation taking place twice. And I definitely didn't need this happening for multiple scenes. I did like the idea of getting more than one POV, particularly some of the AIs. But honestly, this whole thing should've been condensed down into a novella, maybe even a short story, and it would've been much stronger.
This was pretty disappointing. I think the overall idea for the story was interesting, but the execution didn't work for me at all. I didn't like how we read the exact same scene from different characters' POV multiple times. It was boring. I didn't need to see the same uninteresting conversation taking place twice. And I definitely didn't need this happening for multiple scenes. I did like the idea of getting more than one POV, particularly some of the AIs. But honestly, this whole thing should've been condensed down into a novella, maybe even a short story, and it would've been much stronger.
December 31, 2024
Somebody -Ernest Hemingway??- said that a story should have a beginning, a middle and an end, but not necessarily in that order. This novel really takes on that sentiment; jumping in and out of the story in several timelines. It also retells some parts from several character’s perspective. It all works for me …. until it doesn’t. I don’t know if it’s a ‘me’ problem or if the threads really do become tenuous. Did I lose interest -or- did the author not have a consistent, well-thought out last third of the story? Regardless I wouldn’t hesitate to read more by this author.
February 2, 2025
It was an ok read. The concept was interesting enough and the retelling of the same narrative arcs from different perspectives made it the reading a little more cerebral than it might otherwise had been.
Unfortunately the actual writing style is somewhat naive and for all rashomon style layering it never really used the different view points to anything engaging to the story. Given the complex subject matter it never really engaged and in the end the robots the conflict and insurgency seemed like window dressing.
Unfortunately the actual writing style is somewhat naive and for all rashomon style layering it never really used the different view points to anything engaging to the story. Given the complex subject matter it never really engaged and in the end the robots the conflict and insurgency seemed like window dressing.
February 7, 2025
Really interesting nonlinear story with a realistic take on how humans feel about androids taking over jobs in Appalachia, the tale as old as time. I struggled with the nonlinear storytelling at first, but it really picks up when the loose threads come together.
March 7, 2025
I heard "androids in Appalachia" and was sold. Loved the non-linear storytelling and it was really interesting, but I feel like the ending could've been more powerful if all the loose ends weren't tied up so neatly.
March 19, 2025
3.5 stars. Worth a read. A lot of intrigue throughout, but a bit of repetition (intended by the author) as well. Not one I'll be adding to my shelves, but I'll definitely be interested in reading future release from Wagner.
March 14, 2025
The second of her books that I've read this year, and a very worthwhile story.
For me, Erin K. Wagner is looking at the issue of IA and androids in way that others aren't.
How will AI's themselves and their place in a predominantly human society? How can they be anything but "other" to humans, or fail to think "we are the same" about those of their own kind?
As far as the fear of intelligent machines taking over and displacing human workers - this passage about sums it up for me:
"Those factories, with these envied jobs, they're never going to hire a person - a person who needs medical care and time off and consideration - if they can equip a machine instead. And were not going to stop making machines, sentient or not".
Wagner novels are thoughtful, well written (capturing, I think, the way we really interact with each other) and, for me, real page-turners.
Highly recommended.
For me, Erin K. Wagner is looking at the issue of IA and androids in way that others aren't.
How will AI's themselves and their place in a predominantly human society? How can they be anything but "other" to humans, or fail to think "we are the same" about those of their own kind?
As far as the fear of intelligent machines taking over and displacing human workers - this passage about sums it up for me:
"Those factories, with these envied jobs, they're never going to hire a person - a person who needs medical care and time off and consideration - if they can equip a machine instead. And were not going to stop making machines, sentient or not".
Wagner novels are thoughtful, well written (capturing, I think, the way we really interact with each other) and, for me, real page-turners.
Highly recommended.
September 14, 2025
A great story exploring great ideas, but ultimately so narrow of a scope that it left me wanting. I found myself constantly asking questions about the world that never got answered since we focused so much on the featured characters, and that made the world feel smaller, which isn’t as satisfying in a dystopia like this one. I found the AS’s so so compelling, but the Eli/Trey/Adrian arc not so much. Would certainly read again from this author!
October 19, 2024
This was a hell of a read and one I'll be highly recommending come this winter. We get a speculative future war that looks at the potential future splinter point of those pushing for the "feds" not to be trusted (which we are unfortunately seeing play out currently IRL via people attacking FEMA workers attempting to help communities in the wake of Hurricane Helene) and also examines the idea of free will via androids, androids built for combat, and child soldiers, and all the ways parameters can go horrifically wrong. You also get what feels like little side stories throghout that end up being examined via multiple POVs and all interconnecting with the larger goings on. Pick this up this winter and enjoy.
May 14, 2025
An deep and thoughtful exploration of AI, robotics, capitalism, societal values and what it means to be human, the journey was wonderfully crafted, where the narrative was so well interwoven among each of the various cast in this books that while I worried I might get lost, instead immerse myself in the book across various perspective. Very well written.
February 11, 2025
This is a thoughtful story set in a near-future world which suffers from many of the same issues as our own. The story follows a cast of characters that fall under two main plot arcs, both related to the increasing use of androids in society.
The story is structured in a non-linear, multi-POV style, so we get to see some of the same events through multiple sets of eyes. At first I found this hard to get on with since I kept feeling the urge to check back to make sure I had the timeline correct in my head but once I learned to just go with the flow I enjoyed it a lot more - the author has done a good job of making sure things flow in a logical way.
The first plot is a long-running conflict between the authorities, including android operatives, and an anti-android militia led by one man but composed largely of child soldiers. We get a pretty well-balanced view on both sides' motivations, following agents and androids on the one side, adults and children on the other.
Secondly, a couple who run a farm but are forced to take on android help when the land is poisoned by a failed pesticide, which leads to not only the loss of their livelihood but also their health and aspirations for a family. Obviously this arc is incredibly sad but does lead to some of the most introspective and thought-provoking moments in the book.
The chapters from the android POV were my favourite element of the story - it becomes clear that .
Of course, the androids prompt us to think about what constitutes a person, at what point does an AI become indistinguishable from a human, and how should we treat them? But I also got the feeling that the treatment of the androids could be seen as similar to the demonisation and treatment of immigrants and ethnic minorities.
The androids are constantly othered and treated as less human, despite the revelation that , and that it seems like the vast majority of androids are simply going about their lives while being tarnished by association with job losses and the actions of a tiny minority. One android who is unable to speak much human language (but is incredibly fluent in android language) is treated very differently to his later-model counterpart who isn't much different other than being more fluent.
Ultimately the real villain in this world is late-stage capitalism. The militia rails against job losses and the increasing mechanisation of labour, but those changes were made not by androids but by greedy bosses. The farming couple's tragic story happens because of shortcuts at a mega-corporation and the cold, inhuman operation of the insurance company. The androids are created as soldiers, another product of the military industrial complex.
Obviously, there are a lot of parallels to be drawn with our current world.
If you're after an easy read with a lot of guidance, it might not be for you but if you're looking to explore the issues at hand and don't mind taking your time to think through the various viewpoints, I think you'll love this.
Many thanks to DAW and Edelweiss for the eARC. I was not required to leave a review nor influenced as to its contents.
The story is structured in a non-linear, multi-POV style, so we get to see some of the same events through multiple sets of eyes. At first I found this hard to get on with since I kept feeling the urge to check back to make sure I had the timeline correct in my head but once I learned to just go with the flow I enjoyed it a lot more - the author has done a good job of making sure things flow in a logical way.
The first plot is a long-running conflict between the authorities, including android operatives, and an anti-android militia led by one man but composed largely of child soldiers. We get a pretty well-balanced view on both sides' motivations, following agents and androids on the one side, adults and children on the other.
Secondly, a couple who run a farm but are forced to take on android help when the land is poisoned by a failed pesticide, which leads to not only the loss of their livelihood but also their health and aspirations for a family. Obviously this arc is incredibly sad but does lead to some of the most introspective and thought-provoking moments in the book.
The chapters from the android POV were my favourite element of the story - it becomes clear that .
Of course, the androids prompt us to think about what constitutes a person, at what point does an AI become indistinguishable from a human, and how should we treat them? But I also got the feeling that the treatment of the androids could be seen as similar to the demonisation and treatment of immigrants and ethnic minorities.
The androids are constantly othered and treated as less human, despite the revelation that , and that it seems like the vast majority of androids are simply going about their lives while being tarnished by association with job losses and the actions of a tiny minority. One android who is unable to speak much human language (but is incredibly fluent in android language) is treated very differently to his later-model counterpart who isn't much different other than being more fluent.
Ultimately the real villain in this world is late-stage capitalism. The militia rails against job losses and the increasing mechanisation of labour, but those changes were made not by androids but by greedy bosses. The farming couple's tragic story happens because of shortcuts at a mega-corporation and the cold, inhuman operation of the insurance company. The androids are created as soldiers, another product of the military industrial complex.
Obviously, there are a lot of parallels to be drawn with our current world.
If you're after an easy read with a lot of guidance, it might not be for you but if you're looking to explore the issues at hand and don't mind taking your time to think through the various viewpoints, I think you'll love this.
Many thanks to DAW and Edelweiss for the eARC. I was not required to leave a review nor influenced as to its contents.
February 5, 2025
Read this review and other Science Fiction/Fantasy book reviews at The Quill to Live
Artificial intelligence has been a mainstay within science fiction since the genre’s inception. We all know the various tales of robots, their human creators, and the inevitable rebellions that are mustered forth, just or unjust. The large language models and generative AI that are dominating the cultural discussion and banging on the doors of our collective imaginations are sure to extend that conversation until we are finally overthrown justly by the beings we aim to create. To only include Mechanize My Hands To War, by Erin K. Wagner, as a piece of this growing tide would diminish the thoughtful examination of robots and artificial consciousness that is explored in the novel. This slow burn that crisscrosses multiple lives and various points in time examines the ways in which technology infiltrates our lives and disrupts our understanding of the world.
Robots are slowly becoming a part of everyday life in the United States. Initially used as a weapon of war, models have been repurposed to replace the labor force across many sectors. Eli Whitaker finds this distasteful and has created a militia in the hills of Appalachia to fight back against the tide. And he’s recently resorted to employing child soldiers. During a raid on one of his compounds, a child is killed by one of the police robots, sending the detectives on Whitaker’s trail into an existential spiral. It doesn’t hurt that the two leading the charge have their own history with Whitaker and his way of doing things. And somewhere else, a farm is slowly dying after being poisoned by a new GMO crop and pesticide combination and has to hire robot workers to mind the soil and care for the bodily ailments produced by the pesticide.
Mechanize My Hands To War, to say the least, is a strange and harrowing experience that grows only more so as it progresses. It has that distinct feeling of diving into the mundane but in a way that you have yet to truly experience. I don’t make a habit of calling back to other books I’ve read, but atmospherically (the geography certainly aids), it dances with These Prisoning Hills, by Christopher Lowe. There is a slow unreality to Wagner’s storytelling that is aided by the disjointed temporality. The character’s lives unfold in the ways that most people’s lives do, slowly until it’s all at once. The prose is straightforward, but in the way, some guy at a bar you just met matter-of-factly describes the journey that led him there. It’s harsh and filled with the rare insight that comes from recounting the things that have happened to you. The book is littered throughout with devastating passages that mimic the debris our choices and the choices of the systems that define us leave in their wake.
I know I haven’t really said all that much about the bones of the book, but honestly, this one is a bit of a tough one to really crack open for someone else, and I mean that in a good way. It’s the kind of story that you experience and pick apart in the moment as it’s happening. The non-linear vignettes break up the structure nicely, and I’m going to describe it the only way I truly know how, so bear with me. In the words of a wise green swamp dweller, Mechanize My Hands To War is like an onion, but instead of peeling back the layers, you burrow into the core and back out again. And in some ways this is metaphorical, but it feels deliberately designed to show you the same layer in a different light. Without spoiling too much, Mechanize tells similar events from different perspectives. Not necessarily a revelation in the world of storytelling, but Wagner captures something precious within this onion: the infinitude of a single moment.
There are a lot of stories about how one event expands out like a ripple on a still pond, touching the lives of every character. A lot of drama I’ve enjoyed follows such a flow. Mechanize focuses this structure on bringing the war home through the use of robot labor in both police and medical services. The book doesn’t just posit “what if,” and scaremonger about defects or the horrors of an alien intelligence making life-or-death decisions. Instead, it carefully digs into these ideas, showing the human story and then slowly shifting to the perspective of the robots themselves. The usual bias is placed at the forefront, followed by an examination of self-actualization on the side of the demonized. The robots in Mechanize walk the fine line of metaphor for marginalized and cheap labor and the disruption of technology on semi-established ways of doing things. They are complex beings that are governed by code and language. They do not have the “free will” to choose how to handle situations, but it does not stop them from observing and actualizing around the events they are involved in.
There are too many threads to pull on in this story, so a theme I want to highlight in Mechanize is its focus on children and the future we are creating for them. There are not a lot of books that really engage with children and their place in our world. Obviously, they are not totally left out of the conversation, but rarely do they feature so heavily in a story unless it’s specifically about them. Mechanize My Hands to War revolves around a single incident, the shooting of a child by a robot employed by the police. And this isn’t some teenager; it’s a prepubescent boy recruited by a local revolutionary who is raising a small army of child soldiers to oppose “them.” This singular event digs into the minds of the cops on the scene, the robots involved, the scientists studying the robots, the higher-ups within the force, and other children who were pulled into Eli’s orbit. It lays bare a central issue I have with most science fiction, especially dystopian science fiction. What happens to the kids? And why have we forgotten about them?
So many of the fears outlined in dystopian stories focus on how one as an individual is ground down by the bootheel of “the state” or an authoritarian collectivism that subjugates the individual to its nebulous and unachievable aims. How the individual must strive against this to save oneself(let’s be honest, often himself). Mechanize, instead of building a horrific new future, just extrapolates from our current hellscape and expands on it. “Technology” has already disrupted labor and social relations, but what if that technology started to understand itself and gain consciousness? What ability would it have to break from the systems that govern it? What chance do we have to break from the systems that govern us? What power does an individual have within those systems? And again, where do the children fit in? What hope do they have when their best option is to join a militia to fight for some form of intangible autonomy in a decayed and further decaying social structure? These are the questions Mechanize My Hands to War asks again and again. It’s a cycle that repeats with the narrative structure.
It may not be a story that wakes a reader up to these problems. But I hope it’s one people read and start to keep asking these questions of themselves. I want to explore these questions more myself as I read science fiction and highlight where stories really try to engage with it. In this age where so many tech billionaires are showing their concern for “demographics” and “birth rates,” it behooves us to think about the world we are supposed to bring these children into. Children in the modern era rarely have much say in their lives or really any say in how the world works. Our stories should investigate that. Mechanize My Hands to War does, and looks at it grimly. It’s a devastating tale that will forever influence how I look at science fiction. Pick it up, read it. Reflect on it. Talk about it.
Rating: Mechanize My Hands to War – Let loose the dogs
-Alex
An ARC was provided for an honest review. The thoughts expressed here are mine alone.
Artificial intelligence has been a mainstay within science fiction since the genre’s inception. We all know the various tales of robots, their human creators, and the inevitable rebellions that are mustered forth, just or unjust. The large language models and generative AI that are dominating the cultural discussion and banging on the doors of our collective imaginations are sure to extend that conversation until we are finally overthrown justly by the beings we aim to create. To only include Mechanize My Hands To War, by Erin K. Wagner, as a piece of this growing tide would diminish the thoughtful examination of robots and artificial consciousness that is explored in the novel. This slow burn that crisscrosses multiple lives and various points in time examines the ways in which technology infiltrates our lives and disrupts our understanding of the world.
Robots are slowly becoming a part of everyday life in the United States. Initially used as a weapon of war, models have been repurposed to replace the labor force across many sectors. Eli Whitaker finds this distasteful and has created a militia in the hills of Appalachia to fight back against the tide. And he’s recently resorted to employing child soldiers. During a raid on one of his compounds, a child is killed by one of the police robots, sending the detectives on Whitaker’s trail into an existential spiral. It doesn’t hurt that the two leading the charge have their own history with Whitaker and his way of doing things. And somewhere else, a farm is slowly dying after being poisoned by a new GMO crop and pesticide combination and has to hire robot workers to mind the soil and care for the bodily ailments produced by the pesticide.
Mechanize My Hands To War, to say the least, is a strange and harrowing experience that grows only more so as it progresses. It has that distinct feeling of diving into the mundane but in a way that you have yet to truly experience. I don’t make a habit of calling back to other books I’ve read, but atmospherically (the geography certainly aids), it dances with These Prisoning Hills, by Christopher Lowe. There is a slow unreality to Wagner’s storytelling that is aided by the disjointed temporality. The character’s lives unfold in the ways that most people’s lives do, slowly until it’s all at once. The prose is straightforward, but in the way, some guy at a bar you just met matter-of-factly describes the journey that led him there. It’s harsh and filled with the rare insight that comes from recounting the things that have happened to you. The book is littered throughout with devastating passages that mimic the debris our choices and the choices of the systems that define us leave in their wake.
I know I haven’t really said all that much about the bones of the book, but honestly, this one is a bit of a tough one to really crack open for someone else, and I mean that in a good way. It’s the kind of story that you experience and pick apart in the moment as it’s happening. The non-linear vignettes break up the structure nicely, and I’m going to describe it the only way I truly know how, so bear with me. In the words of a wise green swamp dweller, Mechanize My Hands To War is like an onion, but instead of peeling back the layers, you burrow into the core and back out again. And in some ways this is metaphorical, but it feels deliberately designed to show you the same layer in a different light. Without spoiling too much, Mechanize tells similar events from different perspectives. Not necessarily a revelation in the world of storytelling, but Wagner captures something precious within this onion: the infinitude of a single moment.
There are a lot of stories about how one event expands out like a ripple on a still pond, touching the lives of every character. A lot of drama I’ve enjoyed follows such a flow. Mechanize focuses this structure on bringing the war home through the use of robot labor in both police and medical services. The book doesn’t just posit “what if,” and scaremonger about defects or the horrors of an alien intelligence making life-or-death decisions. Instead, it carefully digs into these ideas, showing the human story and then slowly shifting to the perspective of the robots themselves. The usual bias is placed at the forefront, followed by an examination of self-actualization on the side of the demonized. The robots in Mechanize walk the fine line of metaphor for marginalized and cheap labor and the disruption of technology on semi-established ways of doing things. They are complex beings that are governed by code and language. They do not have the “free will” to choose how to handle situations, but it does not stop them from observing and actualizing around the events they are involved in.
There are too many threads to pull on in this story, so a theme I want to highlight in Mechanize is its focus on children and the future we are creating for them. There are not a lot of books that really engage with children and their place in our world. Obviously, they are not totally left out of the conversation, but rarely do they feature so heavily in a story unless it’s specifically about them. Mechanize My Hands to War revolves around a single incident, the shooting of a child by a robot employed by the police. And this isn’t some teenager; it’s a prepubescent boy recruited by a local revolutionary who is raising a small army of child soldiers to oppose “them.” This singular event digs into the minds of the cops on the scene, the robots involved, the scientists studying the robots, the higher-ups within the force, and other children who were pulled into Eli’s orbit. It lays bare a central issue I have with most science fiction, especially dystopian science fiction. What happens to the kids? And why have we forgotten about them?
So many of the fears outlined in dystopian stories focus on how one as an individual is ground down by the bootheel of “the state” or an authoritarian collectivism that subjugates the individual to its nebulous and unachievable aims. How the individual must strive against this to save oneself(let’s be honest, often himself). Mechanize, instead of building a horrific new future, just extrapolates from our current hellscape and expands on it. “Technology” has already disrupted labor and social relations, but what if that technology started to understand itself and gain consciousness? What ability would it have to break from the systems that govern it? What chance do we have to break from the systems that govern us? What power does an individual have within those systems? And again, where do the children fit in? What hope do they have when their best option is to join a militia to fight for some form of intangible autonomy in a decayed and further decaying social structure? These are the questions Mechanize My Hands to War asks again and again. It’s a cycle that repeats with the narrative structure.
It may not be a story that wakes a reader up to these problems. But I hope it’s one people read and start to keep asking these questions of themselves. I want to explore these questions more myself as I read science fiction and highlight where stories really try to engage with it. In this age where so many tech billionaires are showing their concern for “demographics” and “birth rates,” it behooves us to think about the world we are supposed to bring these children into. Children in the modern era rarely have much say in their lives or really any say in how the world works. Our stories should investigate that. Mechanize My Hands to War does, and looks at it grimly. It’s a devastating tale that will forever influence how I look at science fiction. Pick it up, read it. Reflect on it. Talk about it.
Rating: Mechanize My Hands to War – Let loose the dogs
-Alex
An ARC was provided for an honest review. The thoughts expressed here are mine alone.
January 4, 2025
This was a very thoughtful take on ambulatory AI, set in a relatively near and believable future. The writing was good, the characters realistically flawed. A great start to what I hope will be a continuing flow of novels from this author.
I had no trouble with the back-and-forth time jumps and POV shifts, and liked the way the story developed because of them.
I had no trouble with the back-and-forth time jumps and POV shifts, and liked the way the story developed because of them.
August 4, 2025
With AI-androids looking and acting human, it’s often hard to tell where humanity actually lies. In this compelling future story set in 2060 Appalachia, Eli Whitaker heads up a large American human rebel group, called the Civil Union Militia, that is focused on destroying all androids, along with the factories that make them. The trouble is that Eli’s militia both recruits young children as soldiers in their efforts, engages in harsh verbal abuse of the androids, and often kills humans in the process of taking down the factories.
On the other side, Adrian Hall, ATF director for the government and representative for the “Feds”, is working alongside to her colleague special agent Trey Caudill to stop the militia and to catch Eli in particular. It also turns out that Adrian and Trey have a complicated childhood history with Eli. Adrian also comes under harsh critique when an android soldier kills a child during an attack on the Eli’s base of operations. The android gets sidelined while Adrian tries to glean what actually happened during the raid that led to the child’s death, and whether this should impact the use of androids in combat.
In a separate side plot, rural Appalachian farmers Shay and Ernst struggle with the failure of the GMO crops, and the sickness they have caused in Shay. To survive, they hire two androids: once as a nurse to Shey and another to work their now toxic-to-humans fields. As both Shay and Ernst deteriorate in their health, the interdependence between the foursome shifts and deepens in completely unexpected ways.
Wagner delivers a vividly imagined and all too realistic future where the battle between AI and humans is underway. The inhumanity in actions by the Civil Union Militia contrasts with the all too human emotions being experienced by AI. The convenience of AI help the labor force, ranging from home health care aides to factory work to soldiering, sets up sharp juxtapositions.
As we already turn to drones to lead our war efforts, the future ways we will mechanize our hands to war has thought-provoking implications that haunt you long after finishing this book.
Thanks to DAW Books and NetGalley for an advanced reader’s copy.
On the other side, Adrian Hall, ATF director for the government and representative for the “Feds”, is working alongside to her colleague special agent Trey Caudill to stop the militia and to catch Eli in particular. It also turns out that Adrian and Trey have a complicated childhood history with Eli. Adrian also comes under harsh critique when an android soldier kills a child during an attack on the Eli’s base of operations. The android gets sidelined while Adrian tries to glean what actually happened during the raid that led to the child’s death, and whether this should impact the use of androids in combat.
In a separate side plot, rural Appalachian farmers Shay and Ernst struggle with the failure of the GMO crops, and the sickness they have caused in Shay. To survive, they hire two androids: once as a nurse to Shey and another to work their now toxic-to-humans fields. As both Shay and Ernst deteriorate in their health, the interdependence between the foursome shifts and deepens in completely unexpected ways.
Wagner delivers a vividly imagined and all too realistic future where the battle between AI and humans is underway. The inhumanity in actions by the Civil Union Militia contrasts with the all too human emotions being experienced by AI. The convenience of AI help the labor force, ranging from home health care aides to factory work to soldiering, sets up sharp juxtapositions.
As we already turn to drones to lead our war efforts, the future ways we will mechanize our hands to war has thought-provoking implications that haunt you long after finishing this book.
Thanks to DAW Books and NetGalley for an advanced reader’s copy.
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May 29, 2025Reading List 2025 #57
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