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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....
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Light From Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki

Shizuka Satomi made a deal with the devil: to escape damnation, she must entice seven other violin prodigies to trade their souls for success. She has already delivered six.

When Katrina Nguyen, a young transgender runaway, catches Shizuka's ear with her wild talent, Shizuka can almost feel the curse lifting. She's found her final candidate.

But in a donut shop off a bustling highway in the San Gabriel Valley, Shizuka meets Lan Tran, retired starship captain, interstellar refugee, and mother of four. Shizuka doesn't have time for crushes or coffee dates, what with her very soul on the line, but Lan's kind smile and eyes like stars might just redefine a soul's worth. And maybe something as small as a warm donut is powerful enough to break a curse as vast as the California coastline.

As the lives of these three women become entangled by chance and fate, a story of magic, identity, curses, and hope begins, and a family worth crossing the universe for is found.

TITLE: Light From Uncommon Stars
AUTHOR: Ryka Aoki
PUBLISHER: Tor Books
YEAR: 2021
LENGTH: 384 pages
AGE: Adult
GENRE: Science Fiction
RECOMMENDED: N/A

Queer Rep Summary: Lesbian/Sapphic Main Character(s), Trans Main Character(s).

*I received a free review copy as part of voting for the 2022 Hugo Awards. 

DNF 20% in.

The backstory involves a deal with hell and also aliens, then (at least in the first fifth of the book) it's a contemporary story about a trans kid who has run away from home, with hints of what feels like a slow burn sapphic romance. To me, it feels like the skipped the (extremely interesting) hell story, involves the most mundane bits possible on the alien story, and I'm not in the right headspace for a transphobia story. The combination as a whole doesn't fit what I want to read right now, so I stopped. I only tried reading it because of the Hugo nomination, since the description alone was enough to tell me this probably wasn't going to be a book I'd like.

Partial CW for sexual content, transphobia, homophobia, racism, emotional abuse (backstory), physical abuse (backstory), domestic abuse (backstory), panic attacks/disorders (brief), drug use, alcohol, excrement (brief), suicidal thoughts (brief).

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A white fish with a large red spot on its head swims in a field of stars


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