Robots are not meant to have feelings or fall in love. If they do they are considered anomalous, putting them at great risk. But that is exactly what FLC0776 and AZR4700 do. And they like it. They decide to try flee to Root, a safe haven for robots like them, so they can live safely as themselves.

This was a very sweet book. It took me a bit longer to read than expected but I suspect that this is because it is maybe a bit more on the cosier side of things (although there is definitely still some action and I’s definitely say the stakes are pretty high for the characters) and these do tend to go slower for me. But ultimately I enjoyed it. I liked the way the author got into the mind of how a robot would think about the world (and how it changed with time) and all the nods to robotics (like the binary chapter numbers) and scifi more broadly.

Loved the nods to old sci-fi stories and current technology.
I liked this book. Being a software developer and an old-school sci-fi guy, there were some excellent nods to both of these fields. The characters were well-designed and you got the feel that the robots were more than just mechanical devices.

Robotics deftly handled and seldom thought about.
THE WARm MACHINE is deep and wide, touching and exciting, and so deeply&delicately researched that the “mechanics” of it comes off as common knowledge, esp to us.
WELL WORTH YER READ.

The Warm Machine is a delightful read with characters that warmed my cold, metal heart. I would read a sequel in a heartbeat. A sweet and thoughtful queer love story which takes time to examine the logical consequences of itself. What is sentience? What is life? Who can decide that you matter? Written with skill and intention, it suffers only slightly from some strange pacing towards the end. Though, as this is a debut, I’m more than happy to look past that. I hope that this author gets the resources and publishing she deserves, and I hope you read this book.

They’re robots, they’re in love, what more do you want.
It was a pretty good book. The style is interesting because the author really tried to stick with the progression of the bots discovering and expanding their own sentience. I think it was more convincing for me than similar books dealing with artificial lifeforms’ sentience. That said there were a couple things that I found a little weird. Like we just brush off the weirdness of Zev assimilating bots after a while. I feel like that should have been explored more especially in relation to how humans deactivate bots. Also the book ends really quickly. Without giving anything away it just felt like all this build up to just be told what happened second hand. It works in the narrative, but it felt a little disappointing to me. I felt like sometimes the whole of Sterling’s character was dependent on what Zev told him.

Overall pretty enjoyable.