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Your next favorite book
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by Suzanne Palmer
In the abandoned New York Botanical Gardens, forty years after the world nearly ended, a worn-out robot is attacked, and realizes old evils are stirring.
Wrestling with themes of loneliness, connection, and purpose, this hope-punk sci-fi is for fans of Becky Chambers's Monk & Robot duology—featuring a cyborg dog!
Thirty years ago the world nearly ended.
Be was there, but the old robot has since settled into a life of isolation in the abandoned New York Botanical Gardens, determined to forget their role in that cataclysmic conflict.
But then they wake up in a bathtub. And their leg is missing. And the only one to ask for help is a very chatty cyborg dog. Be may want to forget the world, but it seems the world hasn't forgotten them.
Forced out of solitude, Be embarks on a quest to reclaim their leg, accompanied by that talkative (read: smart-ass) dog and a human mechanic with nightmares of her own. Their motley crew soon discovers that recovery from the war is uneven and faltering, and Be begins to suspect a malicious hand trying to rekindle old conflicts. In order to stop them, Be needs to come to terms with both their own past and who they have become. Being left alone is no longer an option, and peace may be impossible.
A tale of resilience and hope, this is an ode to those struggling to become whole in a world half-broken.
"Palmer's vision for how society might reshape itself after massive conflict is inventive, but where the tale truly shines is its captivating characters and the ways in which they're willing to work together. The result is a refreshing ray of hope in the darkness." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"The chase will keep readers riveted...highly recommended for lovers of robot/mech/AI stories, as it combines the journey and perspective of Adrian Tchaikovsky's Service Model with the hybrid human/AI dystopia of Faith Hunter's Junkyard Catsand the interspecies cooperation of Annalee Newitz's Automatic Noodle. All the while, the story reaches for a brighter future, recalling Becky Chambers's A Psalm for the Wild-Built." —Library Journal (starred review)
"Readers will quickly get pulled into the setting, love the characters, and root for the good guys. Fans of dystopian sf will find something to enjoy in this book." —Booklist (starred review)
"Full of wit, charm, and electrifying post-apocalyptic adventures. If you're a fan of Murderbot or Fallout (or if you've ever really wanted to know what your four-legged best pal was thinking), hop on the bus with Be and their ragtag band of bots, 'borgs, and biologicals—its a heck of a ride!" —L.M. Sagas, author of Cascade Failure and Gravity Lost
"A symphony to all life and all thought sharing a future, sorely wounded Earth.... From toaster to train, from squishy biolife to that of steel, this story brings us together and demands we be our better selves, or else. A magnificent, transformative accomplishment in every sense." —Julie E. Czerneda, author of To Each This World
This information about Ode to the Half-Broken was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Suzanne Palmer has been nominated for the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award and the Eugie Foster Award. Her short fiction has won reader's awards for Asimov's, Analog, and Interzone magazines, and was listed in Locus Magazine's Recommended Reading. Her work has been included in numerous anthologies, including the 35th Annual Year's Best Science Fiction, edited by Gardner Dozois and volumes two and three of The Best Science Fiction of the Year, edited by Neil Clarke.
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