Skip to main content

Featured

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....

Hexed - Anthology

Four of the bestselling names in romance and fantasy come together in this collection of thrilling novellas featuring powerful women who know how to handle a hex or two.

TITLE: Hexed
AUTHOR: Jeanne C. Stein, Allyson James, Ilona Andrews, Yasmine Galenorn
PUBLISHER: Berkley Books
YEAR: 2011
LENGTH: 336 pages
AGE: Adult
GENRE: Fantasy
RECOMMENDED: Yes (3.5)

Queer Rep Summary: No canon queer rep.

All four stories in HEXED are part of ongoing series and contribute to those stories to various degrees. 

“Magic Dreams” takes place before the fifth Kate Daniels book and stars Dali and Jim at the start of their romantic relationship. It establishes enough of the setting to make sense to someone who hasn’t read the main series, as well as clearly indicating what’s happening elsewhere at the time. From having read the main series I have a sense of just how much information was left out, but it would have been confusing extra stuff even though it’s true about the world. I appreciate how succinctly just the important parts were told. I particularly enjoyed Dali’s insight into Kate’s troubles with technology. Highly Recommend.

“Ice Shards” is part of an ongoing series and has a lot of backstory to convey in order to set up this particular story. Unfortunately it makes it feel like a string of nested infodumps and a blur of names. Much of it is flashbacks for things which happened earlier in the main character’s life. This seems like a story which has very little action and a bunch of lore for fans of the main series, but holds little attraction for me. I also dislike the way infertility is wielded as a punishment, with restored fertility as a reward. Not recommended.

“Double Hexed” is set before the third book in the Stormwalker series, and it does a good job of giving enough background to make sense without being overwhelming. The fact that early on the characters become trapped in a building helps to keep the cast small and avoid being just a parade of names. Recommend.

“Blood Debt” is part of the Anna Strong series and takes place after book six, CHOSEN. The plot makes sense even though I haven’t read anything else in the series, and gave me enough of a sense of the main characters to let me decide whether I’d want to read the rest of the books. Recommend.

“Magic Dreams” - CW for ableist language (brief), cursing, racism (brief), mental illness, kidnapping (graphic), confinement (graphic), fire/fire injury, vomit (brief mention), excrement, blood, gore, violence (graphic), body horror (graphic), torture, car accident, self harm (brief), death.

“Ice Shards” - CW for pregnancy (not depicted), infertility, rape (brief mention), cannibalism (brief mention), torture (graphic), war (backstory), death (backstory).

“Double Hexed” - CW for sexual content (explicit), ableist language (brief), alcohol (brief mention), blood (graphic), violence, body horror, genocide (brief mention), death.

“Blood Debt” - CW for sexual content, kidnapping, confinement, blood (backstory), violence, injury detail (brief), car accident (backstory), cannibalism, rape (backstory), war (backstory), murder (backstory), death (backstory).

Bookshop Affiliate Buy Link

Add this on TheStoryGraph

A woman in blue and black leans against a stone door with large circular symbols on it000


Comments

Popular Posts