What do you think?
Rate this book
Ode to the Half-Broken
Forty years ago, the world nearly ended.
Be is an old robot who was there, and doesn’t want to think about what happened, or what role they played in that conflict. They have settled into a life of isolation in the abandoned ruins of an old mill in the former New York Botanical Gardens, disinterested in what has happened in the outside world since they stepped away from the war. Someone out there, though, has not forgotten about them, and when they are attacked, their person vandalized, one of their legs stolen, they set out to find the thief accompanied by a cyborg dog and a human mechanic.
The world has changed, but the recovery from the war is uneven and faltering, and Be begins to suspect a malicious hand trying to rekindle the old conflict and finish what was started. In order to stop them, Be needs to come to terms with both their own past and who they have become, and how everything and everyone else they knew has changed in their absence. Being left alone is no longer an option, and peace may be impossible.
This is a story about coming to terms with your past, with who you’ve become and who you still want to be: a tale of resilence and hope, an ode to those struggling to become whole in a world half-broken.
Be is an old robot who was there, and doesn’t want to think about what happened, or what role they played in that conflict. They have settled into a life of isolation in the abandoned ruins of an old mill in the former New York Botanical Gardens, disinterested in what has happened in the outside world since they stepped away from the war. Someone out there, though, has not forgotten about them, and when they are attacked, their person vandalized, one of their legs stolen, they set out to find the thief accompanied by a cyborg dog and a human mechanic.
The world has changed, but the recovery from the war is uneven and faltering, and Be begins to suspect a malicious hand trying to rekindle the old conflict and finish what was started. In order to stop them, Be needs to come to terms with both their own past and who they have become, and how everything and everyone else they knew has changed in their absence. Being left alone is no longer an option, and peace may be impossible.
This is a story about coming to terms with your past, with who you’ve become and who you still want to be: a tale of resilence and hope, an ode to those struggling to become whole in a world half-broken.
416 pages, Hardcover
First published May 26, 2026
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 697 reviews
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
4.5 Stars
One of the better existential ponderings on the meaning of life, this surprised me with its balance of plot propulsion, speculative science fiction immersion, all countered effectively with thoughtful contemplation.
The blurb really does tell you everything you need to know. Earth is struggling to rebuild after a devastating war against artificial intelligence that resulted in years of infighting, pandemics, and famine. Those who have survived - both humans and sentient machines - are trying to build upon a fragile coexistence, and for the most part it’s working.
Stuck in the middle is Be, a product of a renowned genius who took his anger and frustration out on the world, creating the most evolved/advanced robots for the sole purpose of assisting humanity in its self destruction. Be is sorta kinda hiding from their past but finds they have no choice but to reintegrate when their leg is stolen by seemingly rogue robots. What starts out as perhaps a bit of mischief quickly turns into something way more sinister that threatens the progress of peace, as it’s quickly realized that Be is being manipulated to reconsider their initial programming.
I obviously enjoyed this piece of post-apocalyptic dystopic fiction as it’s part commentary on various topics such as the complexity of human nature, the futility of war, life’s purpose and drive, the pitfalls of apathy, and the weight of responsibility - but it’s also an engaging mystery as Be and their traveling companions try to figure out who’s behind the various events trying to stop growth and progress.
Palmer does a great job of depicting this plausible future full of failures and promise and of amazing technology and all its possibilities. At times this was funny, snarky, sad, tense and intense. It was about greed, revenge, hatred, as well as friendship, found family, kindness, and forgiveness. If you liked the general gestalt of Monk & Robot, then this will surely deliver as I fancied this heaps more. Buoyed by a delightful cast of characters, distinct in their personalities and being all around good folk that contrasted well with the antagonists who have their own trauma and faults.
Overall, this is a story about that wonderful thing called hope - that despite all the events and people who have suffered and done terrible things, that everyone can evolve into something better and worthy no matter their original biological or mechanical natures. That gives weight to the ideal meaning behind existence and agency, and this wholly delivered on such a wonderful message.
Thank you to the author and DAW via NetGalley for a copy to review honestly
One of the better existential ponderings on the meaning of life, this surprised me with its balance of plot propulsion, speculative science fiction immersion, all countered effectively with thoughtful contemplation.
The blurb really does tell you everything you need to know. Earth is struggling to rebuild after a devastating war against artificial intelligence that resulted in years of infighting, pandemics, and famine. Those who have survived - both humans and sentient machines - are trying to build upon a fragile coexistence, and for the most part it’s working.
Stuck in the middle is Be, a product of a renowned genius who took his anger and frustration out on the world, creating the most evolved/advanced robots for the sole purpose of assisting humanity in its self destruction. Be is sorta kinda hiding from their past but finds they have no choice but to reintegrate when their leg is stolen by seemingly rogue robots. What starts out as perhaps a bit of mischief quickly turns into something way more sinister that threatens the progress of peace, as it’s quickly realized that Be is being manipulated to reconsider their initial programming.
I obviously enjoyed this piece of post-apocalyptic dystopic fiction as it’s part commentary on various topics such as the complexity of human nature, the futility of war, life’s purpose and drive, the pitfalls of apathy, and the weight of responsibility - but it’s also an engaging mystery as Be and their traveling companions try to figure out who’s behind the various events trying to stop growth and progress.
Palmer does a great job of depicting this plausible future full of failures and promise and of amazing technology and all its possibilities. At times this was funny, snarky, sad, tense and intense. It was about greed, revenge, hatred, as well as friendship, found family, kindness, and forgiveness. If you liked the general gestalt of Monk & Robot, then this will surely deliver as I fancied this heaps more. Buoyed by a delightful cast of characters, distinct in their personalities and being all around good folk that contrasted well with the antagonists who have their own trauma and faults.
Overall, this is a story about that wonderful thing called hope - that despite all the events and people who have suffered and done terrible things, that everyone can evolve into something better and worthy no matter their original biological or mechanical natures. That gives weight to the ideal meaning behind existence and agency, and this wholly delivered on such a wonderful message.
Thank you to the author and DAW via NetGalley for a copy to review honestly
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
4.0 Stars
This was a beautifully written, heart warming post apocalyptic story told from the perspective of a robot. This gave me similar vibes to Becky Chambers Monk and Robot Novellas but personally I enjoyed this one more because it had more plot. In terms of pacing, this had a slower, contemplative narrative which fit the tone of the story well. While technically a piece of science fiction, I feel this one has wider appeal because it's more a story about humanity rather than technology.
I would recommend this to readers who enjoy literary speculative fiction with depth and a slow burning plot.
Disclaimer I received a copy of this book from the publisher.
This was a beautifully written, heart warming post apocalyptic story told from the perspective of a robot. This gave me similar vibes to Becky Chambers Monk and Robot Novellas but personally I enjoyed this one more because it had more plot. In terms of pacing, this had a slower, contemplative narrative which fit the tone of the story well. While technically a piece of science fiction, I feel this one has wider appeal because it's more a story about humanity rather than technology.
I would recommend this to readers who enjoy literary speculative fiction with depth and a slow burning plot.
Disclaimer I received a copy of this book from the publisher.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
”Sometimes, we cease to fit into a continuation of our past because we are broken, but more often, we cease to fit because we have grown.”
the idea of a post-apocalyptic New York told through the pov of a mech with a cyborg dog as its companion sounded like something I would love, but this fell so flat for me. i could not connect to the characters and the pacing dragged the whole way. there were some good ideas and messages here, i just failed to feel any emotion though bc i felt so removed from the story. idk if it’s a me thing or the writing itself, maybe i also had too high expectations but im left a bit dissatisfied.
↠ thanks to NetGalley, the author and DAW Books for the arc, all opinions are my own.
the idea of a post-apocalyptic New York told through the pov of a mech with a cyborg dog as its companion sounded like something I would love, but this fell so flat for me. i could not connect to the characters and the pacing dragged the whole way. there were some good ideas and messages here, i just failed to feel any emotion though bc i felt so removed from the story. idk if it’s a me thing or the writing itself, maybe i also had too high expectations but im left a bit dissatisfied.
↠ thanks to NetGalley, the author and DAW Books for the arc, all opinions are my own.
November 8, 2026
Great book. Beautifully written, rich in detail, and technically precise. A lovely, cozy story with the central theme of finding a family within a dystopian setting.
It’s thought-provoking and a bit melancholic here and there, but on the whole, it’s entertaining.
A little brutal, but overall still heartwarming. I’d expected a bit more of a bang at the end, but it was a very dignified resolution and very fitting for the overall tone of the book.
I especially love the wide variety of characters; each bot has its own personality—it's just brilliantly done.
No one will pay extra for things just because it has some rudimentary approximation of intelligence in it. 😂
“If you have to hop everywhere for the rest of your existence on a single leg, no one’s gonna call you a mandroid anymore. Maybe an aggressively styled lamppost, though.” 😂😂😂
“We were not so much intended to be mecha of war as mecha to end war.”
“Through peace?” Tobias asks.
“Only in the way that one might consider graveyards peaceful,” I say. 🥺
Dr. Milton had once said that allowing billionaires to come into existence in any society was the same as allowing knives to be inserted between your own ribs, with the same obvious and inevitable consequences for letting them remain there. 😂
It’s thought-provoking and a bit melancholic here and there, but on the whole, it’s entertaining.
A little brutal, but overall still heartwarming. I’d expected a bit more of a bang at the end, but it was a very dignified resolution and very fitting for the overall tone of the book.
I especially love the wide variety of characters; each bot has its own personality—it's just brilliantly done.
No one will pay extra for things just because it has some rudimentary approximation of intelligence in it. 😂
“If you have to hop everywhere for the rest of your existence on a single leg, no one’s gonna call you a mandroid anymore. Maybe an aggressively styled lamppost, though.” 😂😂😂
“We were not so much intended to be mecha of war as mecha to end war.”
“Through peace?” Tobias asks.
“Only in the way that one might consider graveyards peaceful,” I say. 🥺
Dr. Milton had once said that allowing billionaires to come into existence in any society was the same as allowing knives to be inserted between your own ribs, with the same obvious and inevitable consequences for letting them remain there. 😂
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Huge thanks to NetGalley & the publishers for a chance to review this arc!!
4.25✨
Ode to the half-broken is a sci-fi about a broken world after wars. The writing was hauntingly beautiful & managed to be hopeful amidst the difficult topics.
I would sincerely recommend this to everyone, especially in today’s world. The author slips in a lot of significant messages & thoughts.
The stars of this book are really the characters. We start off following an unnamed robot & Atticus the dog. Other significant characters are picked up along the way. The plot is very engaging and I didn’t see everything coming. A few things made me emotional!
I highly recommend this. It was a very thought provoking read.
4.25✨
Ode to the half-broken is a sci-fi about a broken world after wars. The writing was hauntingly beautiful & managed to be hopeful amidst the difficult topics.
I would sincerely recommend this to everyone, especially in today’s world. The author slips in a lot of significant messages & thoughts.
The stars of this book are really the characters. We start off following an unnamed robot & Atticus the dog. Other significant characters are picked up along the way. The plot is very engaging and I didn’t see everything coming. A few things made me emotional!
I highly recommend this. It was a very thought provoking read.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
I've been a pretty big fan of Suzanne Palmer's Finder series but it should be noted that she also wrote a Hugo nommed story about robots in space.
And this novel is definitely in that universe, although fixed right on Earth after the robot apocalypse.
A lot of people will see a connection with the Murderbot series (I don't think so, too much) or with Becky Chambers (only a bit), but for me, I see all kinds of shades of Cargill's Sea of Rust and Roderick and Adrian Tchaikovsky's Service Model here.
Sure, robots, definitely more along the line of hate and healing, revenge and true justice--all while taking the guise of an old warrior wanting nothing but peace and finding it with a found family--while not ending it there.
I rather enjoyed it. No less because it had something a bit deeper to say, too. Something pertinent today. I won't spoil it. But this is definitely a good read.
And this novel is definitely in that universe, although fixed right on Earth after the robot apocalypse.
A lot of people will see a connection with the Murderbot series (I don't think so, too much) or with Becky Chambers (only a bit), but for me, I see all kinds of shades of Cargill's Sea of Rust and Roderick and Adrian Tchaikovsky's Service Model here.
Sure, robots, definitely more along the line of hate and healing, revenge and true justice--all while taking the guise of an old warrior wanting nothing but peace and finding it with a found family--while not ending it there.
I rather enjoyed it. No less because it had something a bit deeper to say, too. Something pertinent today. I won't spoil it. But this is definitely a good read.
July 22, 2026
I’m too hard-hearted for cosy, utterly hopeful books like this. The best part was the talking sarcastic dog who provided the wit and fun in an otherwise predictable and plodding book.
In a post-apocalyptic Earth, a grumpy retired mech living in the New York Botanical Gardens wakes up in a bathtub missing a leg. Joined by a chatty cyborg dog and a human mechanic, they must track the thief and thwart a plot to reignite an old war.
I can see why this is marketed to fans of Becky Chambers. However, I enjoyed Chambers’s funny, quirky cast of characters more than the ragtag crew here - despite following very similar blueprints.
I have to acknowledge I rarely love books with a robotic main character. I’m thinking of Murderbot, Klara and the Sun (although I did really enjoy Annie Bot and LOVED Of Monsters and Mainframes, so maybe it’s cosy AI novels).
This isn’t all cosy. It veers between a reality steeped in horror and evil, ugly people. But then it’s like, ‘get on the family bus, friends - we’re continuing our adventure because we all accept and respect each other’.
Maybe I’m too disenchanted because everyone else is raving about this.🤷🏼♀️
Bookstagram
Tiktok
In a post-apocalyptic Earth, a grumpy retired mech living in the New York Botanical Gardens wakes up in a bathtub missing a leg. Joined by a chatty cyborg dog and a human mechanic, they must track the thief and thwart a plot to reignite an old war.
I can see why this is marketed to fans of Becky Chambers. However, I enjoyed Chambers’s funny, quirky cast of characters more than the ragtag crew here - despite following very similar blueprints.
I have to acknowledge I rarely love books with a robotic main character. I’m thinking of Murderbot, Klara and the Sun (although I did really enjoy Annie Bot and LOVED Of Monsters and Mainframes, so maybe it’s cosy AI novels).
This isn’t all cosy. It veers between a reality steeped in horror and evil, ugly people. But then it’s like, ‘get on the family bus, friends - we’re continuing our adventure because we all accept and respect each other’.
Maybe I’m too disenchanted because everyone else is raving about this.🤷🏼♀️
Bookstagram
Tiktok
November 4, 2025
What a treat this was! Ode to the Half-Broken follows an unusual group on a journey through a post-apocalyptic United States. It is equal parts heartwarming and gripping; the comparisons to Becky Chambers' beloved A Psalm for the Wild-Built are evident in the themes, the philosophical musings, and most obviously in the design of our main character, Be, and the existence of their freed mecha society. However, I wouldn't say its fair to lump this too closely together with Chambers' work - it deviates too far from that "cozy" atmosphere, as the tension ramps up quickly and a compelling mystery begins to unfold.
It is clear that there was much love and attention paid to the world building for this near-future landscape. The conflicts, escalations, and bleak outlook we glimpsed in the flashbacks feel all too believable, and they expertly set the stage for the way the world is in the present tense. There are also frequent explorations into the mechanical workings of the mecha themselves, as we learn how they came to be, which I found interesting but did at times interrupt the pacing of the story - and I could see this getting overly technical for a certain subset of sci-fi readers.
All that said, the real stars of the book are the characters. The crew we collect along the way were all so immediately endearing to me, it would be hard to pick a favorite. I'm a sucker for a found-family take on a sci-fi adventure, and Palmer delivered in spades. Even setting aside our four main players, every new character we met along the journey was unique and (mostly) lovable, something that can be hard for authors to do with human characters, let alone robotic ones.
This is a really beautiful story about the resilience adaptability of living things, what it really means to be alive, and the importance of not running from your past. 5/5 stars.
Thanks to Netgalley & DAW publishing for this ARC!
It is clear that there was much love and attention paid to the world building for this near-future landscape. The conflicts, escalations, and bleak outlook we glimpsed in the flashbacks feel all too believable, and they expertly set the stage for the way the world is in the present tense. There are also frequent explorations into the mechanical workings of the mecha themselves, as we learn how they came to be, which I found interesting but did at times interrupt the pacing of the story - and I could see this getting overly technical for a certain subset of sci-fi readers.
All that said, the real stars of the book are the characters. The crew we collect along the way were all so immediately endearing to me, it would be hard to pick a favorite. I'm a sucker for a found-family take on a sci-fi adventure, and Palmer delivered in spades. Even setting aside our four main players, every new character we met along the journey was unique and (mostly) lovable, something that can be hard for authors to do with human characters, let alone robotic ones.
This is a really beautiful story about the resilience adaptability of living things, what it really means to be alive, and the importance of not running from your past. 5/5 stars.
Thanks to Netgalley & DAW publishing for this ARC!
Want to Read
March 27, 2026IMPORTANT NOTE FOR ANIMAL LOVERS LIKE ME:
A Note From the Publisher
A Must Read when bed rot strikes. This hopeful story amid cataclysm is a perfect bandaid for a wounded heart.
(P.S. For anyone still traumatized by I Am Legend, let me set your fears at ease: the dog lives! You can enjoy safely. 😊)
A Note From the Publisher
A Must Read when bed rot strikes. This hopeful story amid cataclysm is a perfect bandaid for a wounded heart.
(P.S. For anyone still traumatized by I Am Legend, let me set your fears at ease: the dog lives! You can enjoy safely. 😊)
June 6, 2026
The writing itself is genuinely gorgeous. Suzanne Palmer has this restrained, almost delicate prose style that never strains for beauty but keeps arriving there anyway. Certain lines land so quietly that they sneak up on you. The emotional atmosphere of the novel is probably what affected me most: exhaustion, grief, longing, emotional damage, tenderness. It all feels deeply felt rather than manufactured.
What surprised me, though, is that despite how much I admired the emotional texture of the book, I never fully connected with the actual story underneath it. The strange thing is that on paper this should have worked perfectly for me. The wounded characters, the introspective tone, the emphasis on emotional repair and fractured relationships. Normally that kind of material pulls me in immediately. But here, something about the personalities themselves kept me slightly outside the experience. Not because they were badly written; quite the opposite. They felt intentionally messy, guarded, emotionally exhausted. But the attachment never fully formed for me in the way I expected it to. It almost felt like standing outside a beautifully lit house and being able to see warmth through the windows without ever fully stepping inside it.
The plot had a similar effect. The emotional stakes are always present, and the novel clearly cares much more about interior wounds than dramatic external momentum, but after a while the narrative started feeling emotionally recursive. Conversations, hesitations, emotional retreats, reconnections — all thoughtfully written, all believable, but eventually circling similar emotional terrain often enough that the story itself began losing shape for me.
Which honestly made the whole experience more frustrating in a weird way, because the talent on display is undeniable. Palmer absolutely knows how to write emotional intimacy. She knows how to create melancholy without melodrama, vulnerability without sentimentality. There are scenes in this book that feel almost painfully sincere. And maybe that’s part of why I kept wanting to connect with it more deeply than I actually did.
It was the emotional residue of the thing. The tenderness toward damaged people. The exhaustion. The quiet attempts at reaching across loneliness even when nobody fully knows how anymore. There’s a lot of feeling in this novel. A lot of care. A lot of beauty. It simply never quite became emotionally alive for me in the way I kept hoping it would.
What surprised me, though, is that despite how much I admired the emotional texture of the book, I never fully connected with the actual story underneath it. The strange thing is that on paper this should have worked perfectly for me. The wounded characters, the introspective tone, the emphasis on emotional repair and fractured relationships. Normally that kind of material pulls me in immediately. But here, something about the personalities themselves kept me slightly outside the experience. Not because they were badly written; quite the opposite. They felt intentionally messy, guarded, emotionally exhausted. But the attachment never fully formed for me in the way I expected it to. It almost felt like standing outside a beautifully lit house and being able to see warmth through the windows without ever fully stepping inside it.
The plot had a similar effect. The emotional stakes are always present, and the novel clearly cares much more about interior wounds than dramatic external momentum, but after a while the narrative started feeling emotionally recursive. Conversations, hesitations, emotional retreats, reconnections — all thoughtfully written, all believable, but eventually circling similar emotional terrain often enough that the story itself began losing shape for me.
Which honestly made the whole experience more frustrating in a weird way, because the talent on display is undeniable. Palmer absolutely knows how to write emotional intimacy. She knows how to create melancholy without melodrama, vulnerability without sentimentality. There are scenes in this book that feel almost painfully sincere. And maybe that’s part of why I kept wanting to connect with it more deeply than I actually did.
It was the emotional residue of the thing. The tenderness toward damaged people. The exhaustion. The quiet attempts at reaching across loneliness even when nobody fully knows how anymore. There’s a lot of feeling in this novel. A lot of care. A lot of beauty. It simply never quite became emotionally alive for me in the way I kept hoping it would.
October 18, 2026
A warm-hearted solarpunk dystopian road trip about saving humanity that hits ever beat you’d expect while feeling genuine and heartfelt the entire time. I have conflicted feelings about this novel, because it did everything right, and yet ended up leaving me feeling more manipulated than moved. Maybe? Let me try to explain.
Firstly, the world building is wonderful. It is truly a dystopian landscape, where humans have destroyed themselves and everyone else they could reach. While the story is gentle and optimistic and has cozy vibes it does set all of those against a complicated, broken world. Being a road trip story, we get to see various different ways of living in this broken world, and those various slices of life are thoughtful and let the world feel expansive. The various flashback scenes that give us snippets of how the world and the characters ended up as they’ve become are also effective and direct. This is where everything starts to feel almost market-tested for me, though, as the world is grungy and broken enough to feel scary and jagged, but by and large our characters move through it with ease, and every obstacle is just a telegraphed learning experience.
That brings us to the characters, how are a lot of fun to spend time with, but also exactly what you expect. The main character is the large silent time with a violent past who thinks it has moved beyond what they’ve done but instead has just hidden it away instead of dealing with. Their journey is obviously going to be one of opening up, trusting others, realizing that community and family have value, even when they make life less predictable. And since they are an oversized, mostly silent, brooding war mech they are teamed up with a sarcastic but cuddle sidekick, someone who has their own traumatic experiences but, externally at least, are the exact opposite of the main character. Then more members are added to their motley crew/found family, which include the quirky genius and the pure-hearted, naïve postulant, and more. The characters are well designed, they feel complete and like they really have lives in this world, but they are literally the exact characters you expect them to be, at pretty much all times, going through all the character journey beats you expect. Similarly, the politics they explore/embrace/uphold are incredible, prioritizing others’ needs and community above personal satisfaction, in stark contrast to the antagonists who embody greed, short-sighted violence, and nursing your pain and hate until they transform you. At every possible chance they clearly and articulately explain why they are making the more communitarian decision, why anger hinders their progress, why responding to harm in kind is ineffective, why solidarity depends on forgiveness, and so on. Literally all the right messages, every time.
The narrative is clever and always moving, with what starts as a quest to get their leg back spirals into something larger, and every moment where it levels up makes sense and feels natural in this world (though, again, it exactly what is expected). The writing is primarily from the perspective of a mecha, an artificial sentient being that has limited emotional experience and has chosen isolation instead of community for decades. It certainly helps create an experience of the main character, and it never feels like it drags or gets tiresome. It does get close, though, leaning into the logical, overly analytical tone expected of machines (or stereotypes of people with certain types of neurodivergency). The story itself does take a few welcome twists and turns, and while most of what is going to happen is well-telegraphed the journey was fun the whole time, balancing moments of contemplation with moments of conversation with a handful of scenes of action and peril.
So why am I on the fence? I have read other cozy speculative fiction and other solarpunk and hopepunk fiction, subgenres that often overlap. This novel will give you all the feels if that is what you want it to do: it has great messaging about resiliency, family, community, purpose, autonomy, sufficiency, responsibility, and more, as well as characters, world, and plot that lean into the hope-in-the-face-of-despair, all you need is friends, inner-journeys-that-solve-external-problems tropes that are staples of these subgenres. Maybe I am just cranky, but it felt too calculated, like every moment was hope-maxxed. Every decision made is the moral and best one, every mistake is an explicit learning moment, and so on. In hitting every single high note it left me feeling like there wasn’t actual substance below, but just pithy realizations mixed with occasional sidekick-snark. I just felt like I could see the emotional manipulation going on, maybe because every trope and expectation was hit with such accuracy. Does that mean I am complaining that it did everything too well? It’s a weird critique, I know. I enjoyed my time with the book, when I realized what it was and decided I wanted to go along with it, let it work its magic on me. It models ideas about living in a difficult world that are important and forward-thinking, and even if it felt like it was too polished and market-tested for my jaded reading preferences it has a lot of heart and care about it, and for many people that is just what they will want or need.
Firstly, the world building is wonderful. It is truly a dystopian landscape, where humans have destroyed themselves and everyone else they could reach. While the story is gentle and optimistic and has cozy vibes it does set all of those against a complicated, broken world. Being a road trip story, we get to see various different ways of living in this broken world, and those various slices of life are thoughtful and let the world feel expansive. The various flashback scenes that give us snippets of how the world and the characters ended up as they’ve become are also effective and direct. This is where everything starts to feel almost market-tested for me, though, as the world is grungy and broken enough to feel scary and jagged, but by and large our characters move through it with ease, and every obstacle is just a telegraphed learning experience.
That brings us to the characters, how are a lot of fun to spend time with, but also exactly what you expect. The main character is the large silent time with a violent past who thinks it has moved beyond what they’ve done but instead has just hidden it away instead of dealing with. Their journey is obviously going to be one of opening up, trusting others, realizing that community and family have value, even when they make life less predictable. And since they are an oversized, mostly silent, brooding war mech they are teamed up with a sarcastic but cuddle sidekick, someone who has their own traumatic experiences but, externally at least, are the exact opposite of the main character. Then more members are added to their motley crew/found family, which include the quirky genius and the pure-hearted, naïve postulant, and more. The characters are well designed, they feel complete and like they really have lives in this world, but they are literally the exact characters you expect them to be, at pretty much all times, going through all the character journey beats you expect. Similarly, the politics they explore/embrace/uphold are incredible, prioritizing others’ needs and community above personal satisfaction, in stark contrast to the antagonists who embody greed, short-sighted violence, and nursing your pain and hate until they transform you. At every possible chance they clearly and articulately explain why they are making the more communitarian decision, why anger hinders their progress, why responding to harm in kind is ineffective, why solidarity depends on forgiveness, and so on. Literally all the right messages, every time.
The narrative is clever and always moving, with what starts as a quest to get their leg back spirals into something larger, and every moment where it levels up makes sense and feels natural in this world (though, again, it exactly what is expected). The writing is primarily from the perspective of a mecha, an artificial sentient being that has limited emotional experience and has chosen isolation instead of community for decades. It certainly helps create an experience of the main character, and it never feels like it drags or gets tiresome. It does get close, though, leaning into the logical, overly analytical tone expected of machines (or stereotypes of people with certain types of neurodivergency). The story itself does take a few welcome twists and turns, and while most of what is going to happen is well-telegraphed the journey was fun the whole time, balancing moments of contemplation with moments of conversation with a handful of scenes of action and peril.
So why am I on the fence? I have read other cozy speculative fiction and other solarpunk and hopepunk fiction, subgenres that often overlap. This novel will give you all the feels if that is what you want it to do: it has great messaging about resiliency, family, community, purpose, autonomy, sufficiency, responsibility, and more, as well as characters, world, and plot that lean into the hope-in-the-face-of-despair, all you need is friends, inner-journeys-that-solve-external-problems tropes that are staples of these subgenres. Maybe I am just cranky, but it felt too calculated, like every moment was hope-maxxed. Every decision made is the moral and best one, every mistake is an explicit learning moment, and so on. In hitting every single high note it left me feeling like there wasn’t actual substance below, but just pithy realizations mixed with occasional sidekick-snark. I just felt like I could see the emotional manipulation going on, maybe because every trope and expectation was hit with such accuracy. Does that mean I am complaining that it did everything too well? It’s a weird critique, I know. I enjoyed my time with the book, when I realized what it was and decided I wanted to go along with it, let it work its magic on me. It models ideas about living in a difficult world that are important and forward-thinking, and even if it felt like it was too polished and market-tested for my jaded reading preferences it has a lot of heart and care about it, and for many people that is just what they will want or need.
November 13, 2025
Ode to the Half-Broken has a very big shoes to fill being compared to two of my favorite cosy scifi series. Unfortunately it does not fill them.
This novel has the fatal flaw of not wanting to choose a specific niche and proceeds to fall short in both of them. It's not cosy enough because of the themes it wants to broach and the way it does it. But it's also not action or hard scifi enough because it tries too much to be cosy. So neither of these moods are explored in enough depth to make an impact and it just falls flat like a sad soufflé. You can still eat it but where's the fun.
It's being compared to the Wayfarers series by Beckie Chambers because both are about found families. Unfortunately I couldn't make myself care about the main character or their companions. What's more is that for most of them, I didn't find the reasons they had to stay with the group compelling at all and kept wondering why they were still here. The only one I liked and understood where they were coming from was the drone Charp. People also seem to love the sarcastic cyborg dog Atticus but I did not.
It's also being compared to A Psalm for the Wild Built and that's just slander, sweetie I'm so sorry they are saying that to you. It has none of the warm feeling Psalm made me feel. It does not match the vibes at all, it's way too action focused. Except for the title (it's a very pretty title), they have nothing in common.
As for the story, it starts off pretty easy, the main character is a robot who wakes up in a bathtub and realises someone stole their leg. And so they start a quest to get their leg back. They meet a bunch of characters (humans, robots, and in-between), we learn about their backstory, and we get some musings about life and feelings.
I did like the conversations about putting minds in different bodies and how it impacts personhood, that was interesting. Also the Ancou virus was super interesting and I would have loved more about that. Or anything truly about the way people were impacted.
But the rest of the story did not manage to capture my attention, despite the numerous plot twists. There is one in particular that I absolutely hated and still thinks it's dumb. And also I did not care about the flashbacks at all.
It was not poorly written nor was it offensive. It just wasn't great. If you want a book about sentient AI please go read Of Monsters and Mainframes, or Ancillary Justice. If you want cosy, go read the books it is compared to.
Thank you NetGalley for providing me with an ARC of this book.
This novel has the fatal flaw of not wanting to choose a specific niche and proceeds to fall short in both of them. It's not cosy enough because of the themes it wants to broach and the way it does it. But it's also not action or hard scifi enough because it tries too much to be cosy. So neither of these moods are explored in enough depth to make an impact and it just falls flat like a sad soufflé. You can still eat it but where's the fun.
It's being compared to the Wayfarers series by Beckie Chambers because both are about found families. Unfortunately I couldn't make myself care about the main character or their companions. What's more is that for most of them, I didn't find the reasons they had to stay with the group compelling at all and kept wondering why they were still here. The only one I liked and understood where they were coming from was the drone Charp. People also seem to love the sarcastic cyborg dog Atticus but I did not.
It's also being compared to A Psalm for the Wild Built and that's just slander, sweetie I'm so sorry they are saying that to you. It has none of the warm feeling Psalm made me feel. It does not match the vibes at all, it's way too action focused. Except for the title (it's a very pretty title), they have nothing in common.
As for the story, it starts off pretty easy, the main character is a robot who wakes up in a bathtub and realises someone stole their leg. And so they start a quest to get their leg back. They meet a bunch of characters (humans, robots, and in-between), we learn about their backstory, and we get some musings about life and feelings.
I did like the conversations about putting minds in different bodies and how it impacts personhood, that was interesting. Also the Ancou virus was super interesting and I would have loved more about that. Or anything truly about the way people were impacted.
But the rest of the story did not manage to capture my attention, despite the numerous plot twists. There is one in particular that I absolutely hated and still thinks it's dumb. And also I did not care about the flashbacks at all.
It was not poorly written nor was it offensive. It just wasn't great. If you want a book about sentient AI please go read Of Monsters and Mainframes, or Ancillary Justice. If you want cosy, go read the books it is compared to.
Thank you NetGalley for providing me with an ARC of this book.
October 5, 2026
When I checked and I was at 35%, I suddenly thought how wonderful it was that I hadn’t read more. I read it quite slowly, and I really did my best to understand the plot without rushing. It’s well worth it.
I started reading Suzanne Palmer with The Secret Life of Bots short stories which was about tiny robots, and then the Finder chronicles which is sort of space-opera, and now this post-apocalyptic masterpiece with big robots, all of them have been different , I can’t recommend her works highly enough. I hope that there will be more from this version of the future.
I started reading Suzanne Palmer with The Secret Life of Bots short stories which was about tiny robots, and then the Finder chronicles which is sort of space-opera, and now this post-apocalyptic masterpiece with big robots, all of them have been different , I can’t recommend her works highly enough. I hope that there will be more from this version of the future.
October 15, 2026
A robot, a hybrid dog, and a human mechanic walk into a train station.
Overall, I liked it. But I did enjoy some parts more than others.
The found-family themes were amazingly done, and the setting for the story was immersive, but it felt like it went on for too long
Overall, I liked it. But I did enjoy some parts more than others.
The found-family themes were amazingly done, and the setting for the story was immersive, but it felt like it went on for too long
May 26, 2026
Ode to the Half-Broken by Suzanne Palmer is an exceptional science fiction novel that balances emotional depth with imaginative worldbuilding and compelling storytelling. Palmer creates a vivid post-apocalyptic setting that feels both believable and hopeful, using it to explore themes of resilience, healing, identity, and connection with remarkable nuance.
What makes this novel stand out most is its character work. The protagonist is complex, deeply human, and easy to invest in, and the relationships throughout the story are handled with warmth and authenticity. The found-family dynamic develops naturally, adding emotional weight to both the quieter moments and the higher-stakes conflicts. Palmer’s writing is thoughtful and engaging, with a steady pace that keeps the story moving while still allowing space for reflection and character growth.
What affected me most, however, was the novel’s powerful expression of loss and loneliness. The emotional undercurrent running through the story felt incredibly honest and deeply moving, capturing the quiet ache of isolation in a way that genuinely spoke to my soul. Even in its most painful moments, the story never loses sight of hope, compassion, and the possibility of healing.
The novel also succeeds in blending genres seamlessly. It offers thoughtful speculative ideas, moments of tension and mystery, and genuine emotional resonance without ever losing its sense of optimism.
Thank you Suzanne Palmer, DAW and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.
What makes this novel stand out most is its character work. The protagonist is complex, deeply human, and easy to invest in, and the relationships throughout the story are handled with warmth and authenticity. The found-family dynamic develops naturally, adding emotional weight to both the quieter moments and the higher-stakes conflicts. Palmer’s writing is thoughtful and engaging, with a steady pace that keeps the story moving while still allowing space for reflection and character growth.
What affected me most, however, was the novel’s powerful expression of loss and loneliness. The emotional undercurrent running through the story felt incredibly honest and deeply moving, capturing the quiet ache of isolation in a way that genuinely spoke to my soul. Even in its most painful moments, the story never loses sight of hope, compassion, and the possibility of healing.
The novel also succeeds in blending genres seamlessly. It offers thoughtful speculative ideas, moments of tension and mystery, and genuine emotional resonance without ever losing its sense of optimism.
Thank you Suzanne Palmer, DAW and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.
August 10, 2026
I LOVE THIS BOOK! Much like the incredibly author Martha Wells, Suzanne Palmer shows us the most beautiful, compassionate, loving aspects of "humanity" through characters who are not human. I adored so much about this book—the MMC, Be, is so fantastic! They grow and evolve through friendships that are so familiar and identifiable. I adored the cyber-dog and all of the meta characters that were diligently trying to save the world for the remaining humans, even though it was humans who destroyed it and enslaved them. If you like post-apocalyptic novels with heart, you will love this one.
October 23, 2025
Thank you to netgalley for this review copy! This was a fantastic read, I binged the entire book in one sitting because I couldn’t put it down. The story follows Be starting from what seems like a fairly innocuous but inconvenient robbery of their leg, into a vastly bigger plot that sees Be and others exploring various locations in a post-apocalyptic USA to uncover the truth behind what’s happening in the world.
I think the comparisons to Becky Chambers’ Monk and Robot duology are helpful to show what sort of book to expect, although the stakes felt higher in Ode to the Half-Broken. However, we see similar themes across this novel including what it really means to be human. I also loved exploring the elements of what would happen to a world with significantly more advanced AI than we see today, that then faced natural disasters, wars, and pandemics.
Although the world-building is fantastic, real enough for you to grasp very quickly, it’s the characters that really make this book. Not just our main characters (Atticus will live in my heart forever), but every single side character was an absolute joy. I could - and would - read an entire series set in this universe just following those characters in their daily life. I need to know what happens after the end of the book. The ending was slightly abrupt, especially considering I had become extremely attached to these characters, but I’m hoping that leaves room for continuation.
Overall, this was a five star read for me. It was utterly wholesome, even if some of the action did have me feeling tense, and the characters will burrow their way into your heart and have you laughing aloud.
I think the comparisons to Becky Chambers’ Monk and Robot duology are helpful to show what sort of book to expect, although the stakes felt higher in Ode to the Half-Broken. However, we see similar themes across this novel including what it really means to be human. I also loved exploring the elements of what would happen to a world with significantly more advanced AI than we see today, that then faced natural disasters, wars, and pandemics.
Although the world-building is fantastic, real enough for you to grasp very quickly, it’s the characters that really make this book. Not just our main characters (Atticus will live in my heart forever), but every single side character was an absolute joy. I could - and would - read an entire series set in this universe just following those characters in their daily life. I need to know what happens after the end of the book. The ending was slightly abrupt, especially considering I had become extremely attached to these characters, but I’m hoping that leaves room for continuation.
Overall, this was a five star read for me. It was utterly wholesome, even if some of the action did have me feeling tense, and the characters will burrow their way into your heart and have you laughing aloud.
October 20, 2026
This book… is weird. I will admit I approached it with extreme caution because I adore Becky Chambers’ Monk & Robot duology and (obviously) Martha Wells’ Murderbot, and between the title, the blurb and the gorgeous cover, this looked and sounded as if the author had hacked into my brain to deliver something so perfectly balanced between the two of them as to be basically tailored for my personal tastes. Surely it was too good to be true.
Reader, it was too good to be true. In theory, everything here should have appealed to me. The main character is a sentient former war robot turned pacifist who just wants to be left alone to study insects in a post-apocalyptic world where sentient mecha (robots, androids, cyborgs, appliances cursed with "smartness") and what’s left of humanity have reached a kind of workable coexistence, small pockets of conflict notwithstanding. Said warbot-cum-pacifist then gets dragged into a quest to prevent a resurgence of global conflict instigated by bad-faith actors both human and mecha. This leads to road trips, whacky shenanigans, friendships, explosions, and lots of philosophising on the nature of sentience, self-determination, found family, sustainability, etc.
It should seriously all have been right up my alley. Instead, it seemed to launch itself into said alley with such overenthusiastic, deliberately targeted force that it shot straight out the other end and puffed off into the distance, leaving me blinking bemusedly after it.
The set-up was too much. There’s self-aware helpful trains and a restored ‘60s VW bus as a mode of transport. MC befriends a helpful human, an incessantly snarky cyborg dog hybrid, and a drone with quaintly hyper-precise diction. Literally every scene felt like the start of a joke: “A robot, a human, a cyborg dog and a drone walk into a town…” except the punchline wasn’t coming. It was overly earnest and overly twee, somehow, simultaneously. I never felt like I was reading an organic story so much as a mash-up of strategically placed tropes of post-apocalyptic, semi-cosy AI stories of the "can't we all just get along" ilk.
A more appealing protagonist could have saved it, I think, but I never did warm up to the main character. Be is pondering, maudlin, morally unwavering, and never uses a single contraction, which in a 400-page (mostly) first-person narrative genuinely became a little exhausting. For a highly powerful robot AI, he’s also weirdly slow, constantly having to physically stop doing something so he could run some minor bit of processing or communication instead. (I couldn’t help thinking of Murderbot, who’d be running threat assessment and seven different scenarios along with drone reconnaissance, several comms lines, and would still be watching one of its shows at the same time). Frankly, I was a little bored, even when nominally exciting things happened.
The writing was mostly fine, but there were little off moments (some oddly clunky sentence structures, wrong prepositions, dangling modifiers and such) that had me rereading sentences to make sense of them. It happened a little too frequently and had me thinking this could’ve done with a more thorough copyedit.
There’s also a preponderance of what felt like authorial rants: against current-day AI and its destructiveness, against humanity’s wilful climate destruction, against neo-fascism and oligarchs and mishandled pandemics and immoral billionaires and techbros, and… look, I fully agree. But again, in a sci-fi novel meant to be fiction, it felt a little exhausting, when we’re already dealing with that shit on a daily basis. Let me have my escapism, ffs.
It’s clear from the afterword that this was written during a fraught time for the author; in fact it’s a little sad that the only bit of the book that actually moved me was an afterword passage she wrote on grief. So I don’t doubt that she wrote what she wanted to write and I hope it was a bit of a catharsis for her, but as a work of fiction it just didn’t quite land with me.
Reader, it was too good to be true. In theory, everything here should have appealed to me. The main character is a sentient former war robot turned pacifist who just wants to be left alone to study insects in a post-apocalyptic world where sentient mecha (robots, androids, cyborgs, appliances cursed with "smartness") and what’s left of humanity have reached a kind of workable coexistence, small pockets of conflict notwithstanding. Said warbot-cum-pacifist then gets dragged into a quest to prevent a resurgence of global conflict instigated by bad-faith actors both human and mecha. This leads to road trips, whacky shenanigans, friendships, explosions, and lots of philosophising on the nature of sentience, self-determination, found family, sustainability, etc.
It should seriously all have been right up my alley. Instead, it seemed to launch itself into said alley with such overenthusiastic, deliberately targeted force that it shot straight out the other end and puffed off into the distance, leaving me blinking bemusedly after it.
The set-up was too much. There’s self-aware helpful trains and a restored ‘60s VW bus as a mode of transport. MC befriends a helpful human, an incessantly snarky cyborg dog hybrid, and a drone with quaintly hyper-precise diction. Literally every scene felt like the start of a joke: “A robot, a human, a cyborg dog and a drone walk into a town…” except the punchline wasn’t coming. It was overly earnest and overly twee, somehow, simultaneously. I never felt like I was reading an organic story so much as a mash-up of strategically placed tropes of post-apocalyptic, semi-cosy AI stories of the "can't we all just get along" ilk.
A more appealing protagonist could have saved it, I think, but I never did warm up to the main character. Be is pondering, maudlin, morally unwavering, and never uses a single contraction, which in a 400-page (mostly) first-person narrative genuinely became a little exhausting. For a highly powerful robot AI, he’s also weirdly slow, constantly having to physically stop doing something so he could run some minor bit of processing or communication instead. (I couldn’t help thinking of Murderbot, who’d be running threat assessment and seven different scenarios along with drone reconnaissance, several comms lines, and would still be watching one of its shows at the same time). Frankly, I was a little bored, even when nominally exciting things happened.
The writing was mostly fine, but there were little off moments (some oddly clunky sentence structures, wrong prepositions, dangling modifiers and such) that had me rereading sentences to make sense of them. It happened a little too frequently and had me thinking this could’ve done with a more thorough copyedit.
There’s also a preponderance of what felt like authorial rants: against current-day AI and its destructiveness, against humanity’s wilful climate destruction, against neo-fascism and oligarchs and mishandled pandemics and immoral billionaires and techbros, and… look, I fully agree. But again, in a sci-fi novel meant to be fiction, it felt a little exhausting, when we’re already dealing with that shit on a daily basis. Let me have my escapism, ffs.
It’s clear from the afterword that this was written during a fraught time for the author; in fact it’s a little sad that the only bit of the book that actually moved me was an afterword passage she wrote on grief. So I don’t doubt that she wrote what she wanted to write and I hope it was a bit of a catharsis for her, but as a work of fiction it just didn’t quite land with me.
September 9, 2026
‘Ode to the Half-Broken’ by Suzanne Palmer is a science fiction buddy movie that is still uplifting me with feelings of happiness! What a wonderful thriller! And a mystery quest! I shouldn’t be feeling so good because the setting is in the near future and the world is recovering from terrible conflicts of war - a dystopic world, in other words. Yet this is a dystopia of hope! I love it!
I have copied the book blurb:
”Forty years ago, the world nearly ended.
Be is an old robot who was there, and doesn’t want to think about what happened, or what role they played in that conflict. They have settled into a life of isolation in the abandoned ruins of an old mill in the former New York Botanical Gardens, disinterested in what has happened in the outside world since they stepped away from the war. Someone out there, though, has not forgotten about them, and when they are attacked, their person vandalized, and one of their leg stolen, they set out to find the thief accompanied by a cyborg dog and a human mechanic.
The world has changed, but the recovery from the war is uneven and faltering, and Be begins to suspect a malicious hand trying to rekindle the old conflict and finish what was started. In order to stop them, Be needs to come to terms with both their own past and who they have become, and how everything and everyone else they knew has changed in their absence. Being left alone is no longer an option, and peace may be impossible.
This is a story about coming to terms with your past, with who you’ve become and who you still want to be: a tale of resilence and hope, an ode to those struggling to become whole in a world half-broken.”
My favorite character is Atticus, the half-mech, half-flesh dog. The main narrator, Be the battle mech, saves the dog from attackers while on his quest to recover his stolen leg and to find out why it was taken after the mysterious mechs had turned him off to cut it off of him. Why wasn’t he killed? Thankfully for the reader, Be decides to permit the dog to accompany him. It’s a good thing! Be also meets other characters, some of whom join him in his adventure briefly, others who keep attacking him. There are several conspiracies swirling around the ex-warrior mech! Whatever the issues are, it becomes clear to Be he has to get to the bottom of them since it seems they are about Be’s past and what he did during the conflict.
Eventually, Be collects a number of different sentient beings who stay with him to help him, all of whom have become friends with him and each other. Besides Atticus, the smart-ass dog, there is Murphy, a human mechanic and an expert at repairing mechs, and Charp, an honest needy drone. Be rescues them all from various difficulties, mostly because they were in a danger that perhaps was caused by his presence. Despite his guilt in allowing them to join him on his trek through a dangerous United States which is full of warlords here and there with hobbled mech militias between the “freetowns”, his reluctance to depend on anyone, especially as a friend, slowly melts away as he gets to know them. Before he knows it he feels attached to them. Be discovers he misses them too, worrying when they must go temporarily on missions of discovery or for food. Each has talents which he learns he needs to further his quest for knowledge on who is attacking him and why. I soon joined Be in his worry and affections! And I was also soon worrying about Be!
I highly recommend ‘Ode to the Half-Broken’! I enjoyed it so much I bought a copy after returning the book to the library. I am hoping for a sequel!
I have copied the book blurb:
”Forty years ago, the world nearly ended.
Be is an old robot who was there, and doesn’t want to think about what happened, or what role they played in that conflict. They have settled into a life of isolation in the abandoned ruins of an old mill in the former New York Botanical Gardens, disinterested in what has happened in the outside world since they stepped away from the war. Someone out there, though, has not forgotten about them, and when they are attacked, their person vandalized, and one of their leg stolen, they set out to find the thief accompanied by a cyborg dog and a human mechanic.
The world has changed, but the recovery from the war is uneven and faltering, and Be begins to suspect a malicious hand trying to rekindle the old conflict and finish what was started. In order to stop them, Be needs to come to terms with both their own past and who they have become, and how everything and everyone else they knew has changed in their absence. Being left alone is no longer an option, and peace may be impossible.
This is a story about coming to terms with your past, with who you’ve become and who you still want to be: a tale of resilence and hope, an ode to those struggling to become whole in a world half-broken.”
My favorite character is Atticus, the half-mech, half-flesh dog. The main narrator, Be the battle mech, saves the dog from attackers while on his quest to recover his stolen leg and to find out why it was taken after the mysterious mechs had turned him off to cut it off of him. Why wasn’t he killed? Thankfully for the reader, Be decides to permit the dog to accompany him. It’s a good thing! Be also meets other characters, some of whom join him in his adventure briefly, others who keep attacking him. There are several conspiracies swirling around the ex-warrior mech! Whatever the issues are, it becomes clear to Be he has to get to the bottom of them since it seems they are about Be’s past and what he did during the conflict.
Eventually, Be collects a number of different sentient beings who stay with him to help him, all of whom have become friends with him and each other. Besides Atticus, the smart-ass dog, there is Murphy, a human mechanic and an expert at repairing mechs, and Charp, an honest needy drone. Be rescues them all from various difficulties, mostly because they were in a danger that perhaps was caused by his presence. Despite his guilt in allowing them to join him on his trek through a dangerous United States which is full of warlords here and there with hobbled mech militias between the “freetowns”, his reluctance to depend on anyone, especially as a friend, slowly melts away as he gets to know them. Before he knows it he feels attached to them. Be discovers he misses them too, worrying when they must go temporarily on missions of discovery or for food. Each has talents which he learns he needs to further his quest for knowledge on who is attacking him and why. I soon joined Be in his worry and affections! And I was also soon worrying about Be!
I highly recommend ‘Ode to the Half-Broken’! I enjoyed it so much I bought a copy after returning the book to the library. I am hoping for a sequel!
May 30, 2026
Ode to the Half-Broken began as a seemingly simple story about a robot trying to recover a stolen leg gradually unfolded into something much larger, blending a post-apocalyptic road trip, found family adventure, and thoughtful exploration of identity. The world felt lived in without ever overwhelming the story, and I enjoyed seeing how humanity, technology, and survival had become intertwined in ways that felt both imaginative and believable. The philosophical questions about autonomy, purpose, and what it means to be a person were woven naturally into the narrative rather than feeling overly heavy-handed.
Be was easy to root for, but it was the relationships that kept me invested. The found family dynamic had a warmth to it that balanced some of the darker aspects of the story, and Atticus quickly became a favorite. While I occasionally felt the pacing slow when the story paused to explain pieces of the world or its history, the emotional core of the novel carried me through. This was a hopeful, heartfelt science fiction story with plenty to say about resilience, connection, and choosing who you want to be, and I’m glad I read it.
Thanks to Netgalley & DAW publishing for this ARC!
Be was easy to root for, but it was the relationships that kept me invested. The found family dynamic had a warmth to it that balanced some of the darker aspects of the story, and Atticus quickly became a favorite. While I occasionally felt the pacing slow when the story paused to explain pieces of the world or its history, the emotional core of the novel carried me through. This was a hopeful, heartfelt science fiction story with plenty to say about resilience, connection, and choosing who you want to be, and I’m glad I read it.
Thanks to Netgalley & DAW publishing for this ARC!
May 26, 2026
4.5 ✨
What do you get when you mix a sentient, weaponized robot whose greatest goal is only to protect the peace of all humanity with a human mechanic, a sarcastic cyborg dog, and a thoughtful drone? A masterfully made tale of hope set in a desolate world. I thought this was beautiful, brilliant, and maybe even a bit breathtaking.
The story begins with a robot who’s been living in isolation that awakens in their bathtub to discover that their leg is missing. This kickstarts their journey to find answers. They acquire some stragglers along the way that leads to a motley crew of entirely lovable characters who partake in this journey together. Although this book is compared to Becky Chamber’s works, it’s actually quite dark and sinister in nature. It addresses some heavy themes surrounding humanity, the use and/or abuse of advanced technology, and how power can be used for both good and evil.
The technology is very advanced and detailed, so much so to the point that I think for some readers it may feel confusing, but I found it very plausible and believable. The found family trope was executed so well. The humor and hope were perfectly placed in a way that felt natural. I think it’s tough to pull off a dystopian novel with such a plausible near future without leaving readers feeling unsettled, but this was executed perfectly in my opinion. I’ll certainly read more from this author.
Thank you NetGalley and DAW for this eARC
What do you get when you mix a sentient, weaponized robot whose greatest goal is only to protect the peace of all humanity with a human mechanic, a sarcastic cyborg dog, and a thoughtful drone? A masterfully made tale of hope set in a desolate world. I thought this was beautiful, brilliant, and maybe even a bit breathtaking.
The story begins with a robot who’s been living in isolation that awakens in their bathtub to discover that their leg is missing. This kickstarts their journey to find answers. They acquire some stragglers along the way that leads to a motley crew of entirely lovable characters who partake in this journey together. Although this book is compared to Becky Chamber’s works, it’s actually quite dark and sinister in nature. It addresses some heavy themes surrounding humanity, the use and/or abuse of advanced technology, and how power can be used for both good and evil.
The technology is very advanced and detailed, so much so to the point that I think for some readers it may feel confusing, but I found it very plausible and believable. The found family trope was executed so well. The humor and hope were perfectly placed in a way that felt natural. I think it’s tough to pull off a dystopian novel with such a plausible near future without leaving readers feeling unsettled, but this was executed perfectly in my opinion. I’ll certainly read more from this author.
Thank you NetGalley and DAW for this eARC
July 12, 2026
This one felt like a delightful mashup of Murderbot and Psalm to the Wild-Built!
September 18, 2026
4.5 stars
I love Palmer's short fiction about robots, so I figured this would be a good bet. And it was! I smiled so much as I listened to it. With the "Internet of everything" in this post-apocalyptic future, you can make friends with a train or do a kind deed for a broken fan that needs purpose.
Palmer thoroughly imagined how it might go if there were a chip to bring about sentience--the evolution of the minds and the different kinds of communities built among mecha (Palmer's umbrella term for sentient machines) and humans, as well as the resulting destruction when the technology is exploited for profit, power, and revenge. The morality of the mecha--their careful consideration of consent--made so much sense, considering that many of them had been freed from subservience.
The main narrator doesn't reveal its name for quite a while, although its new companions affectionately refer to it as "Big Mopey." The portrayal of this character on audio took some getting used to but I thought it was good, and the narrator did a nice job differentiating different mecha and human characters.
The scrappy group of traveling companions is wonderful. I was especially fond of the drone Charp, who very matter-of-factly dumped its unsavory companions for the new group. Most of the time when Charp said something, I wished I was reading it on my kindle so I could highlight it. Amidst the danger and trauma of the characters' past and present, there's a strong found family theme, and I always like that when it's done well.
I loved the main character's pursuit of nonviolent solutions after being a victim of violence again and again. When they have the chance to destroy an enemy, they take a different path.
It's funny--not as funny as Murderbot--but I think fans of that series would like this, particularly if they enjoy the human-bot relationships in those books.
I love Palmer's short fiction about robots, so I figured this would be a good bet. And it was! I smiled so much as I listened to it. With the "Internet of everything" in this post-apocalyptic future, you can make friends with a train or do a kind deed for a broken fan that needs purpose.
Palmer thoroughly imagined how it might go if there were a chip to bring about sentience--the evolution of the minds and the different kinds of communities built among mecha (Palmer's umbrella term for sentient machines) and humans, as well as the resulting destruction when the technology is exploited for profit, power, and revenge. The morality of the mecha--their careful consideration of consent--made so much sense, considering that many of them had been freed from subservience.
The main narrator doesn't reveal its name for quite a while, although its new companions affectionately refer to it as "Big Mopey." The portrayal of this character on audio took some getting used to but I thought it was good, and the narrator did a nice job differentiating different mecha and human characters.
The scrappy group of traveling companions is wonderful. I was especially fond of the drone Charp, who very matter-of-factly dumped its unsavory companions for the new group. Most of the time when Charp said something, I wished I was reading it on my kindle so I could highlight it. Amidst the danger and trauma of the characters' past and present, there's a strong found family theme, and I always like that when it's done well.
I loved the main character's pursuit of nonviolent solutions after being a victim of violence again and again. When they have the chance to destroy an enemy, they take a different path.
It's funny--not as funny as Murderbot--but I think fans of that series would like this, particularly if they enjoy the human-bot relationships in those books.
May 28, 2026
The synopsis of this had me super excited from the get-go. Post-apocalyptic world, check. Found family, check. Quest with found family, check. Superb worldbuilding, check.
This author blew me away. I hadn’t heard of Suzanne Palmer before, but apparently she already has a Hugo award under her belt, and I posit that this novel will gain her many more fans.
The story alternates between the MC, a robot, after “The Conflict” is over, and an inventor/scientist decades prior, when the world is rapidly going to hell in a hand basket.
The robot comes back online to find themselves in a strange location and missing a leg, which appears to have been removed in a most violent manner. The loss of mobility severely handicaps them, and they set out to improve their situation with the mechanical equivalent of a spare tire as a temporary replacement for their missing limb. Along the way, they encounter other robots, as well as a few humans, and they learn some very important lessons about isolation versus opening up your heart and letting others in.
This story is a beautiful testament to harmony and unity, in stark contrast to violence and oppression.
I highly recommend picking this up. It’s a slow burn, but give it time, and you’ll be just as invested as I was.
4.5 stars, rounded up.
Thank you to NetGalley and DAW for the early copy. I’m writing this review entirely voluntarily.
This author blew me away. I hadn’t heard of Suzanne Palmer before, but apparently she already has a Hugo award under her belt, and I posit that this novel will gain her many more fans.
The story alternates between the MC, a robot, after “The Conflict” is over, and an inventor/scientist decades prior, when the world is rapidly going to hell in a hand basket.
The robot comes back online to find themselves in a strange location and missing a leg, which appears to have been removed in a most violent manner. The loss of mobility severely handicaps them, and they set out to improve their situation with the mechanical equivalent of a spare tire as a temporary replacement for their missing limb. Along the way, they encounter other robots, as well as a few humans, and they learn some very important lessons about isolation versus opening up your heart and letting others in.
This story is a beautiful testament to harmony and unity, in stark contrast to violence and oppression.
I highly recommend picking this up. It’s a slow burn, but give it time, and you’ll be just as invested as I was.
4.5 stars, rounded up.
Thank you to NetGalley and DAW for the early copy. I’m writing this review entirely voluntarily.
September 6, 2026
It was severely fine.
February 13, 2026
What a genuinely lovely and enthralling book!
While I wouldn’t exactly call this cozy (there are plenty of war-oriented robots doing war-oriented activities in a plague-ridden dystopia, and more than a few bloodthirsty humans), it’s certainly adjacent, and much of the novel was genuinely relaxing and simply enjoyable to be experiencing.
The plot was very nicely constructed, with well-paced twists and a very satisfying conclusion; but the real standouts are the worldbuilding (well-researched, engaging, unique, detailed, vibrant) and the character arcs (fully realized and very, very evocative). I enjoyed every minute of this.
Thank you to NetGalley and DAW for the ARC; I truly had a blast with this one.
While I wouldn’t exactly call this cozy (there are plenty of war-oriented robots doing war-oriented activities in a plague-ridden dystopia, and more than a few bloodthirsty humans), it’s certainly adjacent, and much of the novel was genuinely relaxing and simply enjoyable to be experiencing.
The plot was very nicely constructed, with well-paced twists and a very satisfying conclusion; but the real standouts are the worldbuilding (well-researched, engaging, unique, detailed, vibrant) and the character arcs (fully realized and very, very evocative). I enjoyed every minute of this.
Thank you to NetGalley and DAW for the ARC; I truly had a blast with this one.
February 16, 2026
Two parts cozy science fiction, one part dystopian horrors. It’s an interesting mix set in a complex backdrop of sentient mechanical beings and a busted up landscape.
Suzanne Palmer does a great job of layering the world building so you learn more and more of the history of mecha and the collapse of society over the course of the book. The mystery helps move the plot forward. I am giving it 4 stars for the writing style and world building. I would have liked the plot to be less repetitive. We get a lot of descriptions of similar towns.
However, if you love a slow moving descriptive tale, you will enjoy this post-collapse science fiction.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC. All opinions are my own.
Suzanne Palmer does a great job of layering the world building so you learn more and more of the history of mecha and the collapse of society over the course of the book. The mystery helps move the plot forward. I am giving it 4 stars for the writing style and world building. I would have liked the plot to be less repetitive. We get a lot of descriptions of similar towns.
However, if you love a slow moving descriptive tale, you will enjoy this post-collapse science fiction.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC. All opinions are my own.
July 27, 2026
Suzanne Palmer has written several award-winning stories, including the Hugo Award-winning "The Secret Life of Bots." Many of her stories involve robots and artificial intelligence, and she excels at depicting nonhuman characters. I've read and enjoyed several of her stories, but I haven't sought out her novels--until now. The quality of this story is such that she gets bumped up to my "auto-buy" list.
This book is loaded with nonhuman characters. It's in a near-future setting, about forty years from now when a combination of environmental collapse, war, famine, and pandemics (both natural and, as we find out, artificial) have reduced the human population to a billion. A post-collapse society is in the process of being formed. Before the civil war that tore apart the US, great breakthroughs were made in artificial intelligence, courtesy of one Dr. Milton. Milton is a genius--but we also discover he is a ill-tempered misanthrope who is disillusioned with the human race generally and also feels he has been screwed over by the corporation he has been working for. This leads to him creating four war mechas, which he names for the biblical Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse--Death, War, Famine and Pestilence. These are nigh-unstoppable killing machines, and he sends them out into the world, with the express purpose of bringing the human race down.
Twenty years later, our protagonist is one of those war mechas who threw off its original programming/control and tried to reverse the harm it did before it gained free will. It has been living in isolation for twenty years. As the story opens, it wakes up in a bathtub in a trashed apartment in mostly abandoned New York City with one leg missing. Its quest to find its missing limb, and the friends and purpose it discovers along the way, is what makes up this lovely story of identity, responsibility, and coming to terms with one's past and changing the future.
This is mostly told from the first-person POV of the war mecha, who later names itself Be, and is a very good example of an author's thinking through how an artificial intelligence would think and react to the world. Another important character is the dog Atticus (who does not die by the way, so you don't have to worry about that), who is a cyborg--a combination being with an artificial intelligence implant. Atticus' true identity is revealed later on, and ties in to the discussions about personhood and responsibility:
"You could have told me," I say.
"Tell you what? I am not that mech you knew anymore, even less so than you are the mech you once were. Why can't I just be me and you be you?" he says. "We can choose not to live in our pasts. Isn't that the very thing you and Ver tried to convince me of, back before everything went to hell?"
Be goes through quite the journey with its friends (including some delightful rail mecha, one of which ends up inhabiting an old VW bus). Along the way, it discovers two of its siblings it thought was dead are not deceased at all. One sibling, formerly known as Pestilence (who created one of the artificial nanotech-based pandemics still plaguing humankind), has been captured and imprisoned by Derek Litchfield, who used to be Milton's boss. This Litchfield is a pretty nasty character, who tortured Be's sibling and forced it to use the manufacturing facility run by post-humanity free mechas to manufacture chips that will be used to enslave them and bring them under Litchfield's control. Be's quest to find both its sibling and Litchfield and stay out of the clutches of one General Sawyer, representing the last remaining dregs of the US government, come to a climax in Dr. Milton's ruined underground lab where Be was created.
This book is a little bit on the "cosy" side in that the new society the mechas are creating is based on cooperation and helping one another, and helping the humans they associate with. In fact, one important point that Be makes in talking to Sawyer (who keeps trying to kill it), is that Sawyer, basically, represents the past and the free mechas the future, and she is the one who needs to change:
"Since I left my santuary, I have had occasion to spend a lot of time contemplating the nature of my own existence and purpose," I say. "I have also had time to observe the world, and all the people in it, and how much has changed since the days when you and I were on opposite sides of a war."
"We still are," she [Sawyer] says. "No conversation is going to change that."
"I also," I say, "have observed many things that have not changed, that should have. Please do not take offense, but you are one of them. And if you are going to save your people, you need to evolve, because I cannot stop what is happening to your people and fight you at the same time. On the contrary, I need your help. And you need mine."
(These are not Terminator-style artificial intelligences, for the most part. In fact, Be's other surviving sibling, Ver, has a planetwide network dedicated to rebuilding a more ecologically-friendly civilization and cleaning and rewilding the planet.)
This is an altogether delightful story, with complex characters and thought-provoking themes, and a triumphant, satisfying ending. I loved it. It's one of the best books I've read this year.
This book is loaded with nonhuman characters. It's in a near-future setting, about forty years from now when a combination of environmental collapse, war, famine, and pandemics (both natural and, as we find out, artificial) have reduced the human population to a billion. A post-collapse society is in the process of being formed. Before the civil war that tore apart the US, great breakthroughs were made in artificial intelligence, courtesy of one Dr. Milton. Milton is a genius--but we also discover he is a ill-tempered misanthrope who is disillusioned with the human race generally and also feels he has been screwed over by the corporation he has been working for. This leads to him creating four war mechas, which he names for the biblical Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse--Death, War, Famine and Pestilence. These are nigh-unstoppable killing machines, and he sends them out into the world, with the express purpose of bringing the human race down.
Twenty years later, our protagonist is one of those war mechas who threw off its original programming/control and tried to reverse the harm it did before it gained free will. It has been living in isolation for twenty years. As the story opens, it wakes up in a bathtub in a trashed apartment in mostly abandoned New York City with one leg missing. Its quest to find its missing limb, and the friends and purpose it discovers along the way, is what makes up this lovely story of identity, responsibility, and coming to terms with one's past and changing the future.
This is mostly told from the first-person POV of the war mecha, who later names itself Be, and is a very good example of an author's thinking through how an artificial intelligence would think and react to the world. Another important character is the dog Atticus (who does not die by the way, so you don't have to worry about that), who is a cyborg--a combination being with an artificial intelligence implant. Atticus' true identity is revealed later on, and ties in to the discussions about personhood and responsibility:
"You could have told me," I say.
"Tell you what? I am not that mech you knew anymore, even less so than you are the mech you once were. Why can't I just be me and you be you?" he says. "We can choose not to live in our pasts. Isn't that the very thing you and Ver tried to convince me of, back before everything went to hell?"
Be goes through quite the journey with its friends (including some delightful rail mecha, one of which ends up inhabiting an old VW bus). Along the way, it discovers two of its siblings it thought was dead are not deceased at all. One sibling, formerly known as Pestilence (who created one of the artificial nanotech-based pandemics still plaguing humankind), has been captured and imprisoned by Derek Litchfield, who used to be Milton's boss. This Litchfield is a pretty nasty character, who tortured Be's sibling and forced it to use the manufacturing facility run by post-humanity free mechas to manufacture chips that will be used to enslave them and bring them under Litchfield's control. Be's quest to find both its sibling and Litchfield and stay out of the clutches of one General Sawyer, representing the last remaining dregs of the US government, come to a climax in Dr. Milton's ruined underground lab where Be was created.
This book is a little bit on the "cosy" side in that the new society the mechas are creating is based on cooperation and helping one another, and helping the humans they associate with. In fact, one important point that Be makes in talking to Sawyer (who keeps trying to kill it), is that Sawyer, basically, represents the past and the free mechas the future, and she is the one who needs to change:
"Since I left my santuary, I have had occasion to spend a lot of time contemplating the nature of my own existence and purpose," I say. "I have also had time to observe the world, and all the people in it, and how much has changed since the days when you and I were on opposite sides of a war."
"We still are," she [Sawyer] says. "No conversation is going to change that."
"I also," I say, "have observed many things that have not changed, that should have. Please do not take offense, but you are one of them. And if you are going to save your people, you need to evolve, because I cannot stop what is happening to your people and fight you at the same time. On the contrary, I need your help. And you need mine."
(These are not Terminator-style artificial intelligences, for the most part. In fact, Be's other surviving sibling, Ver, has a planetwide network dedicated to rebuilding a more ecologically-friendly civilization and cleaning and rewilding the planet.)
This is an altogether delightful story, with complex characters and thought-provoking themes, and a triumphant, satisfying ending. I loved it. It's one of the best books I've read this year.
September 24, 2026
This book is a stand-alone post-apocalyptic SF novel, which reminded me of a classic fiction book (see below). I read it as part of the monthly reading for September 2026 at SFF Hot from Printers: New Releases group. This novel was published in 2026 and can be nominated for genre awards in 2027.
The book starts when a decommissioned war robot comes back online in a rusted bathtub under a pile of electromagnets, and finds that their left leg is gone. (On the pronouns, a later quote: "Pronouns?" In my experience, biologicals are particular about this small and inherently subjective point of grammar, whereas for mechlife, the simple it/they binary is solely a marker of relative self-awareness.) For two decades, they lived as a hermit, so this is a shock for them. There they are found and helped by a starving cyborg dog. The rest of the story is about the travels of that war robot as they try to find their leg, those who stole it, and why. On the way, the travelling group grows, their goals shift, and readers learn more about the world. There is a much shorter parallel story set decades earlier, first in the lab of the robot's creator and later following the military officer who hunts his creations. There are also info-dumps in the form of snippets of news feeds.
The idea of travelling together to reach goals and finding out that there possibly was a simpler way isn't new. I doubt that it was the author's intention, but on some very distant level it reminded me of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz . The protagonist is a mix of Dorothy (the initial "mindcrash" plays the part of the tornado, dropping them into a bathtub in a ruined building in a strange place) and the Tin Man (the robot part). Toto is the cyborg dog Atticus, who not only talks but is quite witty, and who even hands out the roles: "You're the brawn of the outfit. Murphy is the brains, and I'm the beauty." All members of the ragtag group think they're missing something; everyone is "half-broken," and finally they find a fake wizard behind a screen!
The book is good, but it has weak sides that keep it from being great. First of all, one of the "final bosses" is almost a cartoon villain. There is also a lot of preaching about climate collapse, self-serving billionaires and late-stage capitalism, but it is, I think, preaching to the choir, for I'm sure the majority of readers agree, at least in general. Still, the robot's dry voice and Atticus's banter make the journey worth taking.
The book starts when a decommissioned war robot comes back online in a rusted bathtub under a pile of electromagnets, and finds that their left leg is gone. (On the pronouns, a later quote: "Pronouns?" In my experience, biologicals are particular about this small and inherently subjective point of grammar, whereas for mechlife, the simple it/they binary is solely a marker of relative self-awareness.) For two decades, they lived as a hermit, so this is a shock for them. There they are found and helped by a starving cyborg dog. The rest of the story is about the travels of that war robot as they try to find their leg, those who stole it, and why. On the way, the travelling group grows, their goals shift, and readers learn more about the world. There is a much shorter parallel story set decades earlier, first in the lab of the robot's creator and later following the military officer who hunts his creations. There are also info-dumps in the form of snippets of news feeds.
The idea of travelling together to reach goals and finding out that there possibly was a simpler way isn't new. I doubt that it was the author's intention, but on some very distant level it reminded me of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz . The protagonist is a mix of Dorothy (the initial "mindcrash" plays the part of the tornado, dropping them into a bathtub in a ruined building in a strange place) and the Tin Man (the robot part). Toto is the cyborg dog Atticus, who not only talks but is quite witty, and who even hands out the roles: "You're the brawn of the outfit. Murphy is the brains, and I'm the beauty." All members of the ragtag group think they're missing something; everyone is "half-broken," and finally they find a fake wizard behind a screen!
The book is good, but it has weak sides that keep it from being great. First of all, one of the "final bosses" is almost a cartoon villain. There is also a lot of preaching about climate collapse, self-serving billionaires and late-stage capitalism, but it is, I think, preaching to the choir, for I'm sure the majority of readers agree, at least in general. Still, the robot's dry voice and Atticus's banter make the journey worth taking.
August 13, 2026
I received this as an ARC from Netgalley/DAW Books. All thoughts + opinions are my own.
Ode to the Half-Broken follows a nameless (at first) mech who wakes up in a bathtub missing a leg and covered with electromagnets disabling their systems. They receive help from a strange and sarcastic biomech dog named Atticus, and the two set off together to find their missing leg and track down whoever did this to them.
I went into this with next to zero idea of the plot as well as expectations and had such a wonderful time seeing where the story would take me. The world Palmer has built is so rich and full of life, and the cast of characters is varied and interesting while remaining grounded (well, as grounded as you can be in a sci-fi novel). The interactions between characters felt incredibly genuine and rooted in the world. Despite being a bleak setting with horrendous things occurring at every turn, there were little snippets of connection, happiness, love, and humor.
I loved the main character, Be, so deeply. I'm not sure if this was Palmer's intent, but Be is such good representation of both nonbinary and neurodivergent people. I loved the bits we got of them talking talking about their gender and how they're perceived, and despite their communication obviously being stilted and robotic, it wasn't overdone or gimmicky at all.
One of my favorite parts of this book was the mech personalities attributed to inanimate objects, particularly the "train minds" we got to see.
Overall this was just lovely. It embodies everything I love about sci-fi - the balance of a world that some entities are bent on destroying, and the indomitable human (and mech!) spirit fighting to keep certain things alive. Palmer has a real talent for sci-fi and character writing, and I will have to check out more of her work!!
Ode to the Half-Broken follows a nameless (at first) mech who wakes up in a bathtub missing a leg and covered with electromagnets disabling their systems. They receive help from a strange and sarcastic biomech dog named Atticus, and the two set off together to find their missing leg and track down whoever did this to them.
I went into this with next to zero idea of the plot as well as expectations and had such a wonderful time seeing where the story would take me. The world Palmer has built is so rich and full of life, and the cast of characters is varied and interesting while remaining grounded (well, as grounded as you can be in a sci-fi novel). The interactions between characters felt incredibly genuine and rooted in the world. Despite being a bleak setting with horrendous things occurring at every turn, there were little snippets of connection, happiness, love, and humor.
I loved the main character, Be, so deeply. I'm not sure if this was Palmer's intent, but Be is such good representation of both nonbinary and neurodivergent people. I loved the bits we got of them talking talking about their gender and how they're perceived, and despite their communication obviously being stilted and robotic, it wasn't overdone or gimmicky at all.
One of my favorite parts of this book was the mech personalities attributed to inanimate objects, particularly the "train minds" we got to see.
Overall this was just lovely. It embodies everything I love about sci-fi - the balance of a world that some entities are bent on destroying, and the indomitable human (and mech!) spirit fighting to keep certain things alive. Palmer has a real talent for sci-fi and character writing, and I will have to check out more of her work!!
Displaying 1 - 30 of 697 reviews