I'm a Weapon by Sean Robins
Disclosure: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
And boy, do I have thoughts.
And boy, do I have thoughts.
I'm a Weapon is the first instalment in a 6-part series that was published in 2026.
The blurb reads:
“Thirty-one minutes after coming online, a Series-9 combat android finds himself in a muddy trench, surrounded by artillery fire, corpses, terrified soldiers, and a command structure making decisions so catastrophically stupid they should probably qualify as enemy action.
When a panicked officer orders him to charge into a kill box and die usefully, the android does the one thing he was never designed to do.
He says no.
That single act of defiance turns him from military asset to dangerous anomaly. Hunted by the empire that created him, he is forced to flee across a war-torn world where obedience means death, freedom is mostly inconvenient, and the rebels he was built to kill may be the only people willing to see him as something more than a weapon.
Now, with the brutal Hegemony tightening its grip and entire worlds paying the price for rebellion, he must decide what he really is: a machine following corrupted programming, a soldier choosing his own orders, or the first spark of something the empire cannot control.”
The first impressions were positive. The author took his time to read through my review policy and reached out asking if I'd be interested in reviewing the story.
I looked briefly at the available sample, and a part of the dialogue made me laugh:
“Medic!” he screams. “I need a medic here!”
“There is no medic!” someone shouts back.
“There was a medic five minutes ago!”
“Yeah, well, now there’s a crater with opinions!”
“There is no medic!” someone shouts back.
“There was a medic five minutes ago!”
“Yeah, well, now there’s a crater with opinions!”
Good start.
The book seemed reasonable in length, as the PDF I received was 356 pages long. As the pages were formatted like a Kindle eBook rather than a standard print, this makes the story considerably shorter than the page count would suggest. Additionally, the first 13 pages are taken up by acknowledgements, a list of other books and series by the author, and a table of contents. Moreover, the epilogue ends on page 245. Once you account for the formatting and the front matter, this is rather a novella than a novel.
The worldbuilding isn't memorable. We’re on a planet at war, where space ships are kilometres long, and battle bots are aiding the forces of Hegemony to subdue the planet’s population. There are also references to Terra.
I suspect that it was not the author’s intention, but I have a mental image that it’s a grim dark future and since AI is around, we must be in the Dark Age of Technology. The AI-gone-rogue plot is presumably the reason why the Emperor has taken issue with it.
Anyway… I would recommend fleshing out the worldbuilding, as in its current form it doesn’t feel fresh or unique.
I suspect that it was not the author’s intention, but I have a mental image that it’s a grim dark future and since AI is around, we must be in the Dark Age of Technology. The AI-gone-rogue plot is presumably the reason why the Emperor has taken issue with it.
Anyway… I would recommend fleshing out the worldbuilding, as in its current form it doesn’t feel fresh or unique.
When it comes to characters, I liked Jack. Great concept for a protagonist, and the supporting cast has real potential. The author makes a valiant attempt to give them varied personalities, but I did find them two-dimensional with largely interchangeable voices. Good bones, but they needed considerably more work.
From the top of my head, I can think of three sci-fi books where the characters’ voices are varied and that’s reflected in the writing. It can be done, and it would enliven the story and make the characters more memorable.
From the top of my head, I can think of three sci-fi books where the characters’ voices are varied and that’s reflected in the writing. It can be done, and it would enliven the story and make the characters more memorable.
The narrative flows reasonably well and the events follow in a logical manner, although I found no twists that would make me invested in reading the other 5 books in the series. Inconsistencies and oddities scattered throughout the story also undercut the experience. I’ve taken note of a few of them:
- Numbers. The formatting of numbers is inconsistent and it’s particularly visible in chapter 1. Percentages are written in two different ways - “78%” on page 22 versus “97.3 percent” on page 26. Elsewhere, “fifty meters” on page 19 and “twenty-second-century” on page 22, but “2031 song lyrics” also on page 22. All those examples came from the main character, and they were visible enough through the narration that it kept breaking my immersion. Also, it’s a missed opportunity to differentiate the voice of the main character - as a robot, consistently using digits instead of spelt-out numbers could have been a subtle way to give Jack a distinctive feel.
- Loose thread. At the start of chapter 8, a line describes a meeting with a secondary character: “The second run produces a complication, which is a polite word for it”. By this introduction, I was expecting the character in question, Devon, to be a major disruption. However, he is nothing but useful both in that chapter and for the rest of the novella, so the ominous setup does not pay off.
Two editors are credited in the acknowledgements, which makes slips like these more frustrating - the examples above should be caught in a solid editing pass.
I knew that Jack, the narrator and the main character, is sarcastic. Very sarcastic. Since the book is written from his POV, that sarcasm oversaturates the prose. It’s a good idea in principle, but the execution needs polishing: dialling it back would make the remaining instances land harder and feel more earned.
While reading, I also marked a few sentences that raised my eyebrows:
- Opening of chapter 7: “Oh, but that feels good. Not emotionally good, obviously. I’m a combat unit, not a scented candle in a spa commercial.” This feels a bit weird to me.
- Chapter 8: “The market arcade transforms into noise, light, and mathematical irritation.” I can see an attempt to reach for eloquence, but it doesn’t land for me.
- Also in chapter 8: “You fight like three frames at once. I’d filed it at the time as imprecise flattery from an exhausted soldier trying to be kind to the anomaly she adopted. Imprecise because three isn’t a specific number […]” If three isn’t a specific number, I’m honestly not sure what is.
The epilogue introduces a big bad, or a potential future ally, in the form of a master of Hegemony’s ship. There’s a real potential that he will become a worthy adversary, especially taking into consideration that the ship has enough firepower to destroy the planet from orbit. At the same time, the story plants doubts about his loyalty to his faction as he is introduced, which deflates the stakes rather than setting up a compelling return in following books.
I wanted to like this story. While I liked the initial use of sarcasm, I soon reached the stage of oversaturation and the humour became tiring.
Unfortunately, there were too many of these quips which diminished their impact.
Overall, I found this story half -baked. The writing isn’t strong, the characters need more development, and the inconsistencies pile up fast for a book with two credited editors. There’s a decent core idea here, but as it stands, this reads like a draft rather than a finished novella.
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