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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....

Clear Your Shit: Helping the Witch (Final Boss Battle)

We have the Wizard cornered now! Literally. He's backed himself all the way into the far corner of the tower between two colossal shelves. Heather flanks him on the right, waving the feather in his direction. The wizard rolls his eyes and turns cautiously to me. I hate to admit I'm starting to agree with him. I don't think feather Heather has been toting around with her has any sort of power. She is at least keeping him from escaping in that direction, so I focus on him. As I'm trying to decide the best plan of attack without hurting that poor, innocent witch another book falls. I notice it moments before the Wizard, who's forced to separate from the witch to not have it crash down on his silly pointed hat. Heather quickly jumps in and pulls the witch to safety. Perfect! I come at him, swinging my club... and miss him completely. Instead, I clip the corner of the shelf, and an avalanche of books pile on the Wizard. He's knocked out cold. The witch inches back in his direction and nudges him with a booth before giving a satisfied nod.

"Thank you! The Kingdom's guards can take it from here. He has a lot to answer for." She smiles sweetly but begins pushing us in the direction of the door. "Now. I still have a lot of books I need to organize and send." Just before she slams the door on us she grabs the book that helped her escape, looks it over briefly, and thrusts it at me. "This is yours." The door slams shut and I'm pretty sure I heard a lock slide into place. I look down at the book in my hands. Valiant by Holly Black. This is mine? There's a small scrap of paper sticking between the pages with my name on it. It must be another of my orders. When did I get this again? Heather shrugs at me, also at a loss as I slip it into my bag. We stand outside of the tower for a moment, unsure where to go next when Heather points up smiling happily. It takes me a moment to realize what has her so excited. The books. Or the lack of books really. It seems the witch is getting the rain of books under control. I listen for a moment and notice the sporadic thumbs and books from inside the tower has almost disappeared as well. Whaddya know? That was a lot of work for a very simple solution.

We set off in what is hopefully the direction back home.


Narrated by Alu. Follow her on Twitter and check out her website: Tome Reader Reviews.

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