Ode to the Half-Broken

416 pages

English language

Published 2026

ISBN:: 978-0-7564-1958-5
Goodreads:: 239433306

Forty years ago, the world nearly ended.

Be is an old robot who was there, and doesn’t want to think about what happened, or what role they played in that conflict. They have settled into a life of isolation in the abandoned ruins of an old mill in the former New York Botanical Gardens, disinterested in what has happened in the outside world since they stepped away from the war. Someone out there, though, has not forgotten about them, and when they are attacked, their person vandalized, one of their legs stolen, they set out to find the thief accompanied by a cyborg dog and a human mechanic.

The world has changed, but the recovery from the war is uneven and faltering, and Be begins to suspect a malicious hand trying to rekindle the old conflict and finish what was started. In order to stop them, Be needs …

Forty years ago, the world nearly ended.

Be is an old robot who was there, and doesn’t want to think about what happened, or what role they played in that conflict. They have settled into a life of isolation in the abandoned ruins of an old mill in the former New York Botanical Gardens, disinterested in what has happened in the outside world since they stepped away from the war. Someone out there, though, has not forgotten about them, and when they are attacked, their person vandalized, one of their legs stolen, they set out to find the thief accompanied by a cyborg dog and a human mechanic.

The world has changed, but the recovery from the war is uneven and faltering, and Be begins to suspect a malicious hand trying to rekindle the old conflict and finish what was started. In order to stop them, Be needs to come to terms with both their own past and who they have become, and how everything and everyone else they knew has changed in their absence. Being left alone is no longer an option, and peace may be impossible.

This is a story about coming to terms with your past, with who you’ve become and who you still want to be: a tale of resilence and hope, an ode to those struggling to become whole in a world half-broken.

1 edition

Soh Kam Yung reviewed Ode to the Half-Broken by Suzanne Palmer

A war robot must come to terms with its past so that the world can have a future.

4 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 …

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.

enne📚 reviewed Ode to the Half-Broken by Suzanne Palmer

4 stars

An elevator pitch: unnamed robot and snarky cybernetic dog sidekick in post-apocalyptic, post-war New York get pushed out of isolation while confronting their past and figuring out who they are and who they choose to be

Despite being a story about war and destruction, this is a warm and hopeful story at its core. The protagonist accumulates a found family across the book. It's about folks helping each other and rebuilding where they can. It's about grief and coming to grips with your past.

If you've read Suzanne Palmer's The Secret Life of Bots, you'll have a sense of her delightful writing style around robots. The whole book feels incredibly quotable and it's hard for me not to post even more quotes than I already have.

I think what didn't work for me is that it was almost too cozy? It's not Monk and Robot, don't …

An elevator pitch: unnamed robot and snarky cybernetic dog sidekick in post-apocalyptic, post-war New York get pushed out of isolation while confronting their past and figuring out who they are and who they choose to be

Despite being a story about war and destruction, this is a warm and hopeful story at its core. The protagonist accumulates a found family across the book. It's about folks helping each other and rebuilding where they can. It's about grief and coming to grips with your past.

If you've read Suzanne Palmer's The Secret Life of Bots, you'll have a sense of her delightful writing style around robots. The whole book feels incredibly quotable and it's hard for me not to post even more quotes than I already have.

I think what didn't work for me is that it was almost too cozy? It's not Monk and Robot, don't get me wrong. But new characters continue to show up and immediately join the party without much discussion or even internal contemplation. Also, despite (or because of) adding additional characters throughout, I felt like only the protagonist had real depth. The ending had some elements that felt a little bit too pat to me in a way that didn't leave me satisfied and similarly some of the dialogue made the hopefulness feel a little bit too much told rather than shown.

All that said, the vibes were really good and I enjoyed this a bunch. If you need a hopeful book about robots, would recommend.