“Ode to the Half-Broken” by Suzanne Palmer
Main Index / Reviews Index / Fiction Reviews Index / 2026 Reviews Index
Rating: 4/5 Stars.
An interesting story, mostly told from the viewpoint of a sentient former war bot, set in a world many years after conflicts and ecological disasters have ravaged the earth. Human and bots have mostly settled their differences and are working on recovery.
When the story starts, the bot has mostly isolated itself from the world but is bought back to reality when a virus shuts it down. When it wakes up again, it is missing a leg and needs the help of a passing hybrid dog (it is part machine) to get a temporary leg and then go on a journey to find out who (or what) has stolen its leg.
During the journey, the bot is joined by a human and an aerial drone. And what it discovers it that while it has isolated itself from the world, the world has moved on, but all is not well. Agricultural systems are failing, and communities of humans and droids are being harassed, and put into conflict with one another. The bot can only conclude that somehow, its former war bot comrades are still active and are, once again, trying to end the world.
As the story progresses, we are given vignettes showing what happened in the past when the war bot and its comrades were created by an expert robot designer, who is angry at what has happened to the world and believes that humanity was the cause. His solution was war bots to bring about the end of the world. But the bots transcended their programming and refused to take further part in conflicts.
But, to the former war bot, it would appear that not all its comrades hold similar opinions. So the race is now on to locate its comrades and stop them, as well as an army of humans who still blame bots for the conflicts and will stop at nothing to destroy all the bots.
The former war bot will have to come to terms with the actions in its past life. But it will have at its side fellow robots (and humans) who accept it for what it is now, and are willing to help it to stop the other war bots and to help the world to recover from the conflicts in the past.
Book read from 2026/07/10 to 2026/07/16.