Ode to the Half-Broken
by Suzanne PalmerGenres: Fiction / Science Fiction / Apocalyptic & Post-Apocalyptic
Published on May 26, 2026
Pages: 416
Format: eBook Source: Library
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.
The Beginning:
SECURE REBOOT OF CORE PROTECTED KERNEL COMPLETE.
I don’t know that I would have picked up this book if it didn’t promise me that it had the vibes of Monk and Robot. I’m not a fan of post-apocalyptic stories even if there are talking dogs. But this book surprised me. It was very warm and also very funny.
“We have a flag,” Atticus adds, helpfully, then looks at me. “What did you do with our flag?”
“Many bombs fell on it,” I say.
“Crap. Well, we can fab another,” he says.
“We have a human in need of some medical attention.”
“Oh! Well, I have no expertise in that area,” Kite-66-Socket says, “unless your human can be fixed with welding.”
<Can we let them try?> 44-Mongoose asks me privately.
“I wish to find those who attacked me and express my displeasure with them in person, possibly via violent means for emphasis,”
The story unfolds slowly. A robot awakes up in an unknown room in a bathtub. He’s missing his leg. There is a half biological/half robot dog who he’s never seen before sitting in the room.
This starts a journey to try to find his missing leg and then to try to find out why his leg was stolen. Along the way you find out what happened in the wars leading up to this time. This is the first time the robot has been outside his home in decades. He’s surprised to see the state of things too.
“As I’ve said, Dr. Milton made us while he was angry,” I say. “We were not so much intended to be mecha of war as mecha to end war.”
“Through peace?” Tobias asks.
“Only in the way that one might consider graveyards peaceful,” I say.
Along the way he learns to decide how he wants to live now.
“I want to exist in a world of justice and compassion,” I say, already becoming frustrated with the exercise. “I want to stand in the way of those who wish to make it otherwise, and deter them from their course by whatever means are necessary and as are wise. I wish to know that my own contributions, as both quantitatively and qualitatively measured in my actions, balance on the side of good. I wish to not be bored, and to not be alone except by my own choosing, and to otherwise be in the company of those who know the whole of me, and understand and accept me. And if I had all those things, then I would just want to simply be.”
This book has elements of solar punk and dystopia. Different groups have chosen to live in different types of societies. Some of living as almost feudal lords. Some are living in cooperative societies. Robots are deciding how to live their own lives. I particularly loved the trains.
This ended up being a 5 start read for me. It was definitely more hopeful than depressing and the dog was fine all the way through!
