The Iron Children
by Rebecca Fraimow
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Pub Date 12 Apr 2023 | Archive Date 05 Apr 2023
Rebellion, Solaris

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Description
Asher has been training her entire life to become a Sor-Commander. One day, she'll give her soul to the gilded, mechanical body of the Sor and become a commander to a whole battalion of Dedicates. These soldiers, human bodies encased in exoskeletons, with extra arms, and telepathic subordination to the Sor-Commanders, are the only thing that's kept the much larger Levastani army of conquest at bay for decades.
But while on a training journey, Asher and her party are attacked, and her commander is incapacitated, leaving her alone to lead the unit across a bitterly cold, unstable mountain. Worse, one of the Dedicates is not what they seem: a spy for the enemy, with their own reasons to hate their mechanical body and the people who put them in it.
To get off the mountain alive, Asher and her unit will need to decide how much they're willing to sacrifice -- and what for.
Available Editions
EDITION | Paperback |
ISBN | 9781786189882 |
PRICE | £12.99 (GBP) |
PAGES | 150 |
Available on NetGalley
Featured Reviews

I enjoyed reading this, it was what I was hoping for when requesting this, I enjoyed getting to know Asher as a main character. It had a great concept and I was hooked in this universe, it was what I expected and really had a great time reading this. Rebecca Fraimow has a great writing style and it was what I was hoping for.
"She tried subvocalizing, formulating words in the back of her throat without speaking. Ah—we fell into the ravine somewhere around there, I think? In Tvell’s body, she looked down at the great gash in the landscape below her feet; in her own, she looked up. From neither set of eyes could she see the other—at least not without leaning Tvell’s heavy body forward, which she wasn’t going to do without a much better sense of how to safely balance it. All the others are with me, except for Dirk and Baselard."

This book was a really interesting examination of autonomy. It explored the discussions I was hoping I'd see in The First Sister (which I wasn't super into) in far fewer pages, but I would be doing this novella a disservice if I only compared it to existing works. Asher and Barghest, two of the POV characters, had an interesting and compelling dynamic. (Sidenote, I loved how Asher's dialogue was written). I liked how both their individual arcs and the development of their friendship served the themes of this story. At first, I was worried that three points of view might be a lot for such a short novella, but the multi-POV format worked really well for this story, and the author did some cool stuff with POV switches in one scene toward the end. This is a really cool, richly detailed novella that I will probably reread multiple times.