The Warm Machine was a lovely story that I really enjoyed. It was heart-warming and thought-provoking, I was rooting for the character from start to finish. This story blended together science fiction, queerness, and found family seamlessly.

I did struggle at times to get through certain parts of the book related to the bot’s technology and related changes. This, however, could just be because I haven’t read many books like this one.

Overall, a great read with a lovely story.

Thank you to the author and NetGalley for giving me an ARC.

The Warm Machine follows Sterling, a construction bot, who starts having feelings and thoughts that are outside of his programming. Zev, a military bot, tells Sterling he’s anomalous, and saves him from decomission. Together, they set off to find Root, a robot utopia with no humans.

This was a really sweet and unique read. I really liked Sterling, his anxiety around Zev putting himself in dangerous situations was so relatable, and his journey to put names to what he was thinking and feeling was so lovely to see. His dynamic with Zev was great. I really liked Zev’s insistance on upgrading Sterling and when he finally admitted that he liked Sterling it was such a fantastic moment. Although not explicitly a love story, in that no one says I love you, the care and gentleness that Sterling and Zev treat one another with is so heartwarming. As Zav says to be loved is to be changed, and both Zev and Sterling go through some pretty huge changes throughout the novel.

I wouldn’t necessarily call this a cozy read, as there are some pretty intense action scenes, but it was certainly wholesome.

Presenting a unique foray into the mind of a labour bot, the Warm Machine asks not only the age-old question of can artificial intelligence truly experience life, but also, can it experience love?

I loved this book. I loved it so much, I was low key devastated to reach the end, because I wanted to stay longer in the world of Zev and Sterling as they discovered all the possibilities open to them as two anomalous bots.

As a fellow writer — and a lover of science fiction — this story both soothed and rankled every urge I’ve ever had to write a queer robot-focused story. Soothed, because this was utter perfection, and so, so easy to fall into and lose myself in a rich tale. And rankled, because, wow, I will never write anything as amazing as this story.

My only tiny note is that I’d love to learn more about the world within this story. I eagerly hope there will be more in this world, and, if not, I’ll carry this story close as one of my new favourite books.

Recommended: sure
For a short dive into a calm other world, for robot characters who narrate the whole story, for connection that is subtle yet sweet

Thoughts:
I read the premise of this book as “two robots fall in love and defy their rules to be together” which is sort of accurate, but it’s a whole lot more than that. Love also feels like not the word for it, exactly. Love implies a lot of messy human emotional tangles, and emotion is at the heart (processor?) of this story. But not in the usual “romance novel” way of human love.

Let’s rewind. The story starts of more rigid and becomes flexible, following the changes in the robots narrating everything. Also yes, they do give each other names beyond FLC00201239 whatever so you don’t have to try to think that serial code as a name for more than a chapter or two (though I already had him as “Flick” in my mind by the point he got a name). There is some time and playfulness given to determining what the robot-equivalents of common phrases would be. For example the robots don’t think, the process, and they don’t sleep, they power down, etc. They don’t die, they are decommissioned. This can be a bit clunky at the start, but it gets looser as it goes on.

The story itself is fairly straightforward, and serves as a way to learn more about the robots and their world. You have to be willing to just step into it an accept that you aren’t getting all the possible backstory and lore on this, only as much as is needed and only when necessary. It’s a focus on the characters and their changes more than an active plot of discovery. This gives it a gentle feeling even though there are some fairly extreme tense / actiony scenes in it.

Overall I enjoyed this as something outside what I usually read, and it was short enough that I felt comfortable giving it a try. I am very glad I did as it was fun to think in a different way than usual, and it made me feel some warm fuzzies.

Thanks to the author and Librarything for a free copy. This is my honest review.

Really sweet sci-fi novella about two robots discovering who they are. The author did a good job of portraying the robot characters as robots (as opposed to robot-like humans, which I’ve seen in other books). Even with them not being human, they developed quite a bit throughout the story. While the characters were the strongest part of the book, their journey itself was also enjoyable & exciting. It ended quite suddenly, but it was a great read overall. I saw that this author has a another novella set in this universe that will come out soon; I’d be interested in checking that out