JJ Rossanno, $3.99
Sci-fi Romance, 2023

Right away, my eyes narrow the moment I read the second paragraph of the opening chapter of JJ Rossanno’s One of My Kind.

How could they forget? They were also victims of the infamous Directive 66—the one that took all kinds of convicts and lowlifes and turned them into cyborg soldiers for the great WEIR Republic. Even though they knew where they had come from, their memories started the day of their activation. Their previous life and their previous personalities—some bad ones, as they say—were erased.

One, how is it that these convicts and lowlifes are the victims here? It seems to me that the whole program is a pretty economic way of repurposing degenerates and menaces to society for something actually useful.

Two, why do they need to use people to make cyborgs? Can’t they just make tin-can solders from scraps? Considering how these people’s memories are wiped out during the tin can process, it’s not like human memories are the selling point here. One can argue that fully robotic soldiers can move faster, last longer, and are not prone to human errors, so by right they would make far better soldiers than these whiny cyborgs with victim complex.

Anyway, our hero is one such whiny cyborg, H207. He thinks that he’s doing a bad, bad thing, shooting at civilians because that is a cruel thing to do. Soldiers should be petting kittens and cuddling puppies, after all. 

Our heroine Melanie tries to kill him while his guard is down, but since she is a romance heroine and hence useless by default, she fails miserably without making much of an effort to appear even halfway competent, and now she’s his unconscious baggage to do as he pleases.

I suppose throwing her off a cliff is out of the question?

H207’s favorite leisure activity was to wander through the wild forest. He would explore it and find some new wonders every time. The tall fence was no problem for his enhanced artificial body to leap over. He just needed a small push during the leap, so he grabbed the top of the fence, and, in no time, he was on the other side. Having extra weight with him today was no problem, either. He just had to send more power to the servo motors that controlled his legs.

The cyborg jumps over a tall fence, people, what a dramatic accomplishment. Everyone, stand up and clap!

The extra weight is the unconscious heroine, by the way. 

When the heroine comes to, she claims to have amnesia. Hmm, is she stalling for time, or has she really lost her memories?

This one makes me laugh, in a good way. It’s pretty cheesy and can be unintentionally hilarious at times, but its Baby’s First Sci-fi Romance overtones evoke fond memories of those sci-fi romances published by Zebra, LoveSpell, and Leisure back in those days. Some of them were also pure cheese with a little spice occasionally sprinkled all over, so really, those were the days indeed.

It helps that this one boasts some solid pacing that keep things going even when things can get quite cringy. The whole thing is an engaging read that is quite hard to put down, and despite the naïve “Violence… bad! Hugs… good!” nonsense contrasting starkly with the violent setting and thus making the main characters look like kids playing at being philosophers, I find myself warming up to the hero and even the heroine. 

Furthermore, the hero is capable, and the heroine doesn’t overstretch herself and hence avoids driving my blood pressure past healthy limits, so yes, they are alright with me.

All in all, this one is a pretty entertaining read. It’s more cheese than sophistication, yes, but I’ve had fun, and that’s a good thing.