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The Warm Machine by Aimee Cozza

When a robot built for construction work first sees an angular, sleek prototype military robot slink onto the base he's working outside of, he immediately falls in love. The problem is, only anomalous bots understand the concept of love, and the lowly laborbot has not deviated from his default programming once. So he thinks, anyway. When the laborbot is scheduled for decommission, the military bot cannot possibly live without him, and the two bots set out on a path to find the fabled anomalous robot utopia Root. COVER ARTIST: Aimee Cozza PUBLISHER: 9mm Press YEAR: 2024 LENGTH: 196 pages  AGE: Adult GENRE: Science Fiction RECOMMENDED: Highly Queer Rep Summary: The main characters are robots, likely closest to aro/ace but those terms aren't quite applicable. Gender is also not an important factor. THE WARM MACHINE plays with ideas of friendship, connection, and searching for utopia, all through the lens of a construction robot who falls in love at first sight with a military bot....

Even If We Break by Marieke Nijkamp

FIVE friends go to a cabin.

FOUR of them are hiding secrets.

THREE years of history bind them.

TWO are doomed from the start.

ONE person wants to end this.

NO ONE IS SAFE.

Are you ready to play?

TITLE: Even If We Break
AUTHOR: Marieke Nijkamp
PUBLISHER: Sourcebooks Fire
YEAR: 2020
LENGTH: 336 pages
AGE: Young Adult
GENRE: Mystery, Thriller, Horror
RECOMMENDED: Highly

*I received a free review copy in exchange for an honest review of this book. 

Queer Rep Summary: Lesbian/Sapphic Minor Character(s), Gay/Achillean Minor Character(s), Bi/Pan Main Character(s), Genderqueer/Nonbinary Main Character(s), Trans Main Character(s).

Spooky and horrific, Even If We Break uses LARPing and a no-longer-quite-so-close friend group in a fancy cabin in the woods as the basis for a bloody introspection on privilege, jealousy, class, disability, fairness, and terror. 

It uses rotating narrators (divided by chapter) and explores friendship, betrayal, and privilege through LARPing and a “cabin in the woods” style spooky mystery. I love this, I’m here for it, but it’s so full of those elements that if you don’t like them you probably won’t have a good time. All the narrators are differently unreliable in a way that comes together to give a picture of what literally happened without invalidating any of their personal experiences. 

I like the interstitial narration, it makes it feel like there’s a GM for this weekend. It starts out feeling like the one that was planned by one of the characters and then slowly twists into something much more sinister and truly deadly. The way things get bad is a little predictable in spots, but how the characters react makes the story truly gripping. The ending is fantastic, I love all of it, it’s twisted and creepy and completely fits the rest of the book while also being surprising.

I appreciate the way it handles all the little things around class and casual wealth (or lack of money) which can add up to create small tensions and splinter friendships. Not every character focuses on it, and that’s part of the point; some of then don’t have to (they have cabins which are available anytime for a weekend getaway with friends) while others weigh every decision around whether they’ll be able to afford their next meal. There’s also a lot of focus on disability, both physical disabilities and neurodivergencies, especially when in a terrifying situation where the nearest road is a long walk away. Some of the characters are casually ableist but the book clearly portrays this as a bad thing. I can’t speak to whether the disability rep is good because I don’t have the relevant experiences, but it’s nuanced, complex, and seems to be filled with care on the part of the author. 

This was a stressful book to read, and I'm glad I read it in daylight because it created and sustained a creepy mood with a sense of danger and uncertainty. My threshold for spooky books is pretty low, so if you're a horror aficionado I don't know where this would fit. A lot of the horror is more psychological, enhanced by the rotation of narrators which allowed for continuous story without giving things away.

CW for ableism, transphobia, panic attacks, addiction, car accident (backstory), blood, violence, murder, gore, animal death (backstory), major character death.

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Five white porcelain masks on a black background, the bottom one is cracked.

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