Margins
Automatic Reload book cover
Automatic Reload
2020
First Published
3.93
Average Rating
300
Number of Pages

Ferrett Steinmetz's quirky, genre-mashing cyberpunk romance Automatic Reload a high-octane adventure about a grizzled mercenary with machine gun arms who unexpectedly falls in love with a bio-engineered assassin In the near-future, automation is king, and Mat is the top mercenary working the black market. He's your solider's solider, with military-grade weapons instead of arms...and a haunted past that keeps him awake at night. On a mission that promises the biggest score of his life, he discovers that the top secret shipment he's been sent to guard is not a package, but a person: Silvia. Silvia is genetically-altered to be the deadliest woman on the planet—her only weakness is her panic disorder. When Mat decides to free her, both of them become targets of the most powerful shadow organization in the world. They go on the lam, determined to stop a sinister plot to create more super assassins like Silvia. Between bloody gunfights, rampant car chases and drone attacks, Mat and Silvia team up to survive...and unexpectedly realize their messed up brain-chemistry cannot overpower their very real chemistry. Automatic Reload is the genre's most unexpectedly heartfelt romantic comedy with explosions, perfect for fans of both Die Hard and Mr. and Mrs. Smith. "Steinmetz has mixed fast-paced shoot-em-up violence with a compassionate treatment of trauma and mental illness to create an engaging page-turner. Like Shadowrun with a conscience."— Hugo Award-winning author Jim. C Hines "Automatic Reload is for everyone who ever wished the Transformers movies were less Michael Bay, more transformation sequences; it luxuriates in the intricate beauty that is technology, exults in the mechanics of cyberpunk. And it does all this while being a rom-com with a lot of explosions." —Cassandra Khaw, finalist for the British Fantasy and Locus Awards for Hammers on Bone

Avg Rating
3.93
Number of Ratings
335
5 STARS
27%
4 STARS
46%
3 STARS
20%
2 STARS
5%
1 STARS
1%
goodreads

Author

Ferrett Steinmetz
Ferrett Steinmetz
Author · 9 books
After twenty years of wandering desolate as a writer, Ferrett Steinmetz attended the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop in 2008 and was rejuvenated. Since then, he's sold stories to Asimov's Science Fiction (twice!), Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Shimmer, and Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, among others, and otherwise has a marvelous collection of very personalized rejection letters. He lives in Cleveland with his wife, a well-worn copy of Rock Band ("Painkiller," Expert, four stars), and a friendly ghost. Should you want more of Ferrett Steinmetz, he blogs about puns, politics, and polyamory at www.theferrett.com.
548 Market St PMB 65688, San Francisco California 94104-5401 USA
© 2025 Paratext Inc. All rights reserved