Hard Reboot

De: Django Wexler

Narrado por: Morgan Hallett

Django Wexler's Hard Reboot features giant mech arena battles and intergalactic diplomacy. When did academia get to be so complicated?

Kas is a junior researcher on a fact-finding mission to old Earth. But when a con-artist tricks her into wagering a large sum of money belonging to her university on the outcome of a manned robot arena battle, she becomes drawn into the seedy underworld of old Earth politics and state-sponsored battle-droid prizefights.

Is it time to get back to the books, yet?

©2021 Django Wexler (P)2021 Recorded Books Inc.

predictable

too much effort spent on promoting homosexual relationships. The action in the arena was just ok.

A good scifi novella

aside from some writing complaints, nothing with the story. I found this a great story with fun characters and a super interesting world. I would highly recommend it.

Great story…

Loved the ride.. a beautiful story of love and friends that is worth a listen over and over…

Sweet sci fi novella

Old Earth with its trashed environment and malware-corrupted datasphere is an exotic tourist and archaeological study destination for ultracivilized space visitors thousands of years in the future. The visitors are entertained in a corporate arena with combats staged between repurposed warbots manned by human pilots (automated systems can't run autonomously due to said datasphere). The plot turns on a bright young scholar attached in a junior capacity to a visiting research delegation crossing paths with a scrappy young warbot pilot making a last desperate bid to win big and escape the brutal indenture of the war games. They fall for one another, but this is a mere sidebar to the daring escape plan they execute to free the warbot pilot. Both MCs are young women, and their flirtation is depicted with a light touch. Morgan Hallett's narration was spot-on.

Uneven and underwhelming

Uneven:
“F me with a neutronium strap on and leave me to dry on a throne dome pulsar.”
Yeah. The F bombs start dropping (4 in the first 10 minutes), and there are a few oddly raunchy exclamations, which play like a scratched record in this otherwise YA to kid-friendly book about a far future universe of robot gladiator gambling. The first few minutes felt like the movie Real Steel, except starring two teen girls as competing robot pilots instead of the Hugh Jackman-kid combination. I would have enjoyed this more if the author leaned into gritty, adult sci-fi or kid friendly, Real Steel B movie pulp.

Underwhelming:
This ended up being a mild FF romance with a fade to black HEA (again, oddly mismatched with the crass cussing). There’s barely any character development. The stakes don’t feel real. It was all bland as can be.

Random annoyance: there’s a recurring use of “yeah?” to end sentences, as in “we’ve got to win this fight, yeah?” Reminded me of Canadians ending their sentences with “eh” except nowhere near as charming.

For a more entertaining future dystopian epic that begins with battle bots, larger than life gals, and sharper dialogue, I recommend Jay Kristoff’s Lifelike trilogy. For that matter, this author’s YA Wells of Sorcery trilogy was an entertaining, better balanced listen, F bomb free and still girl-power-positive.