Ode to the Half-Broken by Suzanne Palmer

There are plenty of great books around about robots navigating a post-robopocalypse world. Recently we have had TJ Klune’s In the Lives of Puppets, Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Service Model (which was shortlisted for the Hugo Award), and Robert Cargill’s Sea of Rust. Suzanne Palmer takes a little bit from all of these to develops her own engaging scenario and a story delivered with a great cast of characters in her latest novel Ode to the Half-Broken.

An unnamed military robot wakes up in a bathtub, covered in electromagnets that interfere with his systems and with one leg missing. With the help (and with a promise of food) of a passing cyborg dog called Atticus he manages to get moving and the pair set out to try and recover his stolen leg. Along the way he learns that the world, which seemed to be settling after a period of conflict, is becoming more dangerous and is asked to try and discover why. In doing so he will pick up additional companions but will also have to reexamine his own past as an agent of chaos.

The world of Ode to the Half-Broken is not quite post-apocalyptic but it is not in good shape after conflicts between humans and between humans and mecha (perhaps half-broken is the best description of this world). These conflicts seem to be in the past and people now live in a kind of harmony with sentient machines. But the spread of old, manufactured diseases, and the destruction of crops seem to point to a growing conflict. And the fact that there are agents out to kill the protagonist (unnamed for a lot of the tale but who eventually takes the name Be) who has become a force for good in the world push him and his friends to take action.

Ode to the Half-Broken is a book full of fun, discovery and danger. Be’s colleagues include Atticus the cynical cyborg dog, Murphy a human engineer, sentient trains and a loyal drone. All have a part to play as Be gets closer to discovering the truth about what is going on and the situation becomes increasingly dangerous.

Ode to the Half-Broken may be set in a post-war era but it is a book that is shot through with hope and an understanding that everyone can change for the better. This puts it in the current tradition of authors like Becky Chambers and TJ Klune (who as mentioned has already been down this path). Like her characters, Palmer has successfully taken some slightly worn parts, shined them up and constructed something new and engaging out of them.

Ode to the Hlaf-Broken by Suzanne Palmer

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