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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....

Dragons Within: Guarding Her Own - Anthology

A truth-seeker becomes imbued with the power to tip the scales of justice.

A headstrong privateer tempers her courage in the heart of a violent storm.

A pair of mittens leads to a family history rich with dragons.

Sparks fly when a chronically single pilot finally meets her match.

Enter the world of Dragons Within: a place where woman and dragon are one in the same: reigning strong, fierce, and free. Forging bonds with the world of mankind, these unconquerable beings discover a love for the vulnerable, the fragile, the broken.

A pregnant goddess seeks refuge for her children during war. A telepathic soldier finds the courage to claim her humanity. A dragon in human form uses her gifts to protect abuse victims in need. A girl chases a soldier through a desert wasteland to find her missing brother.

Featuring twelve new and emerging speculative fiction writers, this power-driven book delves deep into the journey from treasure hunter to guardian, mercenary to savior, fire-breather to martyr. Transforming rage into righteousness, the women of Dragons Within claim their people, pledging their lives to...guard their own.

TITLE: Dragons Within: Guarding Her Own 
AUTHOR: Celosia Crane, Kimberly Gail, Hayley Green, Kristine Haecker, Shannon McRoberts, Finn O'Malley, Leo Otherland, D. Marie Prokop, Jess Reece, Theda Vallee, Deana Rose Wilson, and Amanda Mills Woodlee. Introduction by Dorothy Tinker. Cover Art by Eben Schumacher.
PUBLISHER: Balance of Seven
YEAR: 2019
LENGTH: 194 pages
AGE: Adult
GENRE: Fantasy, Science Fiction
RECOMMENDED: N/A

Partial Queer Rep Summary: Genderqueer/Nonbinary Main Character(s).

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

DNF 51 pages in (26%).

The stories shared a style that I didn't like but don't know how to describe. Since this is an anthology I thought maybe I'd like some stories better than others, but partway through the fourth one I tried, I stopped. The stories tended to gesture at deeper backstories but leaned overly on telling what cool stuff happened before, without letting any of that happen in the present narrative. 

One of the stories contains a graphic depiction of pregnancy and I wasn't able to handle much more after that, so I stopped shortly thereafter.

“Fire Dance” - CW for cursing, misogyny, sexual harassment (brief), fire, torture, death.

“Last Scion” - CW for ableism, genocide (backstory), violence, parental death (backstory), death.

“Rebirth” - CW for pregnancy (graphic), violence, murder, death.

“Fire Legacy” - Partial CW for ableism, misogyny.

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A red dragon and two people stand on a cliff overlooking a river through green fields leading to a shining white castle in the distance


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