Awesome and well-rounded SciFi novella that features giant robot battles, high-stakes scheming, and a sapphic, scholarly protagonist.

Content warnings include: violence, death, debt, alcohol consumption, sex off-page, classism, implied negative associations with sex work, implied corruption of academic institution.

I love SciFi, and I love it even more when it features giant robots, so when I saw the cover of Hard Reboot I was instantly intrigued. Hearing that the protagonist is then not only queer but also a scholar on an academic research trip? I was so excited!

And Hard Reboot absolutely delivered on all fronts.

There’s casual worldbuilding that makes it clear that there’s so much more going on in the background. There’s plenty of details without too much in-depth information, but it was the exact right amount for a novella of this length – enough to paint a larger picture, hint at a vast universe with plenty of history, but in small enough doses as to not distract from the plot or be confusing.

The characters had an equally well-balanced depth to them. There’s two protagonists: Kas, a young scholar trying to rise in the ranks of academia despite the diadvantage of her birth station, who is also explicitly not thin, and Zhi, pilot of battle robots who just needs one more win to work her way out of a life-crushing debt.
The side characters, of which there weren’t too many, also had sufficient personality and involvement.

Plot-wise, the book was engaging from page one onwards. I read it in a single sitting – first time I paused to see how far I’d gotten I had already passed the 50% mark, I was so drawn in! I liked the mix of action scenes, high-stakes, scheming and flirting. There were the obvious robot fights, but also plenty of other intense scenes, some more physical while others were on a digital level, which I particularly enjoyed.

I also liked the romantic subplot between Kas and Zhi, especially from Kas’s perspective, as she is used to a lot more structured way of romantic and sexual entanglements thanks to the impact advancement of implants and digitalization had on all sorts of social interactions – none of which work on old earth, however. This, as well as some other things, also led to a subtle humor here and there.

I appreciated that humor, because the political background of the setting, as well as Kas and Zhi’s personal situations, are quite grim.

Overall, Hard Reboot is a well-rounded novella that has a little bit of everything and tickled pretty much all of my fancies. If you want a story that is quick to read, queer, super engaging and has giant robot battles, high-stakes scheming, complex background politics, all in front of a cool SciFi setting, I highly encourage to give it a try!

This was my first Django Wexler, and I loved it! I really wanted it to be longer—Zhi and Kas stories forever!

Zychtykas Three—Kas—is a broke mecha scholar from offworld. Zhi is a broke mecha fighter and also a broken mech fighter, using whatever she can scrape together to enhance an antique model for modern pit fights. When their lives collide, all manner of sparks start flying, although they have to risk everything to keep those sparks from burning their lives down around them.

Django Wexler is a seasoned veteran of publishing at this point, and his confidence and skill shine in Hard Reboot, a novella out May 25th from Tor.com. The setting is compelling but not overwhelmed with detail, the narrative moves along with plenty of action and character development, and the prose is by turns serious and snarky, as the story demands.

Hard Reboot has any number of clever one-offs and sarcastic observations threaded into the worldbuilding; my favorite example, “Earth’s corrosive datasphere,” is how I’m going to refer to social media from now on. Its narrators, both jaded and half-despairing at their societies’ iniquities, feed that sarcasm without making it feel entirely hopeless. Their individual and combined tenacity is a lovely counterbalance to the dark and gritty realities of their worlds, which stand (as all good sci-fi does) as a critique of our current world.

Kas is a scholar of ancient code, which in her time is something like studying Sumerian or Ugaritic would be for us. She’s passionate about archeocode, but passion matters less than prestige to her advisors. Hereditary status and wealth abound in the academy still, but Kas has neither, and is thus relegated to picking over the scraps of findings that go first to her dumber, richer peers. She just wants her shot, but it took all her meager means to even get assigned to the Old Earth trip—she’s not sure she can combat such entrenched classism.

Zhi doesn’t even have the cushion of arms-length support: she’s a scavenger on the ruins of Old Earth, scrounging for food, unsure if she can get medical care, living on credit and moxie. She’s in danger of being indentured to “the House,” a corporation-like entity that wants her to fight in the arena mecha battles for them. She needs someone to bet on her for a change, and she’s not fussy about how she gets those investments. A heart-of-gold rogue in the vein of Han Solo, she’s quick to fight and quick to give a grin, even when there’s precious little in her slums to smile about.

The ending is a little bit more fairy-tale than hard sci-fi, and call me a sap, but I’m not complaining. Hard Reboot really nailed all of its emotional beats, and I cared a great deal for Kas and Zhi almost immediately. I wanted them to succeed so badly that I almost couldn’t finish the story—so much tension!—but had to, obviously, for the same reason. Fortunately, it stuck the landing, good from the first page to the last. Also, mecha fights! Who would want anything more?

HARD REBOOT is an interesting sci-fi novella. It has a well-executed premise, some good writing and mostly good characters.

There was, however, one thing that really didn't work for me, and this affected my general enjoyment: Zhi's voice. I have a pet peeve when it comes to dialogue, and that's using accents as a crutch. The vast majority of Zhi's dialogue features "ent", "yeah?", or some form of "slag". She's the Dick van Dyke-in-Mary Poppins of sci-fi. Unfortunately, this drove me up the wall, and threw me out every time she was the focus of a scene. The rest of the cast are great, and their voices were well done. (Perhaps I have been triggered by Peter V. Brett's mid-series shift to using "ent" as a crutch in place of proper characterization.)

If you have no problem with this sort of thing, I urge you to give this a read: Wexler has come up with an interesting sci-fi setting, with some (otherwise) very good characters and a pretty cool story.

Rating: 7.0/10

Thanks to the publisher and author for an advance reading copy of Hard Reboot for review consideration. This did not influence my thoughts or opinions.

Hard Reboot is a Pacific Rim / Real Steel cocktail with a love story kicker. How can you go wrong with monolithic humanoid mechas duking it out with monstrous blades for cold hard credits? The answer is simple: YOU CAN’T.

Let’s get straight to the point: I was absolutely SOLD when the synopsis hit, but what took it over the top was that amazing cover art by John Anthony Di Giovanni.

*grabby hands x 1000000*.

After reading the novella, I have to say it is pretty incredible how perfectly Giovanni illustrated two (2) of the mechs. It is always nice when a book cover can help you more immerse yourself even more into what you are about to read / are currently reading.

As far as the writing goes, I found Django’s prose a little difficult to get on track with in the very early going but settled in nicely once the sparks were flying (in more than one way *wink wink*). This could be from trying to rack my brain around the fact that I actually had time to read for once or simply just the constant brain fog that has been addling my mind since the beginning of the pandemic. I did feel that the pacing flowed nicely, though there was a bit of a slog between beginning and end that had a nice little uptick around the half way point.

While the focus is on the obvious “Giant. Freakin’. Robots” like Mr. Neuvel has stated, there is a nice little mushy gushy infatuation going on between the two (2) mains that was enjoyable to see play out. Having said that, my one knock was that, while you get to see the story from both vantage points, it doesn’t truly add anything to the story. The characters aren’t fleshed out enough to become wholly invested in either one beyond seeing how the story ends. I think I would have rather read the story simply from Kas’ POV and kept the page count down.

All in all, this novella produces a blockbuster’s worth of entertainment in about a 1-2 hour read, depending on your speed. It is definitely worth your time if you enjoyed movies like Pacific Rim or Real Steel, or maybe the anime series Mobile Suit Gundam Wing.