Welcome to the world of Sparks Will Fly! A sports romance for nerds, Sparks Will Fly revolves around combat robotics. While shows like BattleBots and organizations like the National Havoc Robotics League (NHRL) are popular, they’re a relatively new setting for a romance novel. Only one other romance book (at the time of writing this) has combat robotics as part of the setting, My Mechanical Romance by Alexene Farol Follmuth.
Sparks Will Fly takes place in a world all its own, where the biggest combat robotics competition is Circuit Smack, a televised competition with a huge cash prize. And more importantly, Mari’s chance at saving her family.
What is combat robotics?
Combat robotics is a sport consisting of building and fighting robots against other robots. Robots range in size from under a pound to up to over 250-pounds. Robots fight each other, trying to knock out their opponent, or score the most points in aggression, damage, and defense.
Shows like BattleBots and RobotWars popularized the sport for the 250-pound heavyweight bots, and organizations like the National Havoc Robotics League lead the sport in smaller (but no less thrilling) robot categories.
What is Circuit Smack?
Circuit Smack is the fictional combat robotics competition in the book Sparks Will Fly by Laurel Holl. In Holl’s book, it’s the longest running and most prestigious combat robotics competition in the world. It features heavyweight bots similar to the real life BattleBots and RobotWars competitions, and uses rules similar to the general standard rules across competitions of all sizes.
Circuit Smack consists of three subcompetitons—the Championship qualifiers, the World Championship, and the Last Shot Bot Trot. Split into different groups to right round-robin style, thirty-five teams and their robots fight against each other for their shot at getting into the world championship. They are assigned points based on their wins, and the top two from each group automatically advance. One spot is left open for the winner of the Last Shot Bot Trot, an alternate qualifier for teams that didn’t do well enough to automatically advance.
The world championship features a $250,000 cash prize for the winning team.
Who are the teams competing at Circuit Smack in Sparks Will Fly?
There are 35 teams at Circuit Smack. Many of the bots are inspired by real life robots, but are unique in their own right. ZetaMax is Mari Williams’—Sparks Will Fly’s female main character— robot. Kilowatt is the robot of Jacob Moore, Mari’s love interest.
- Kilowatt*
- ZetaMax*
- Byte Club
- Brave Little Crusher
- All Byte No Bark*
- Rob Bot & Rob Oto
- Pixel Pioneer
- Hamburger Hurter*
- Flatapault
- Ankylosaurus*
- Havoc*
- Hot to Bot*
- Ball Bearing Buster
- Non-Binary Berserker *
- Rage of the Machine*
- Macrowave
- Italian Dunker
- Captain Spork*
- C3P-KO*
- Harder drive*
- Blade roller*
- Rollercoster
- Florida man
- Ginger snap*
- Mach 37
- Hype-potinus*
- Hydrogen baby + coughing bomb
- Glitterbomb*
- Flipnado
- Calysto’s Revenge*
- Situationship*
- Crush Hypothesis*
- Doomsdaisy
- Big Iron
- TechNova*
*Mentioned on page.
What is Sparks Will Fly?
Sparks Will Fly is a sports romance for nerds. This rivals to lovers slow burn features a disabled plus-size heroine, a missed-connections romance, robot fights, and an underdog story full of heart. Perfect for people who wish BattleBots had kissing and fans of Ali Hazelwood.
Sparks Will Fly features tropes and topics like
- Forced Proximity
- Plus size female main character
- Hurt/Comfort
- Rivals to lovers
- Slow burn
- Disability/chronic pain representation
- Queer repersentation
- It’s always been you
- Robot fights
- Lovable side characters
- Open door
Where to read Sparks Will Fly
Sparks Will Fly is available on paperback from Laurel’s store, Barnes & Nobel, Bookshop.org, Amazon, and many other online bookstores + you can ask your local bookstore to stock it. You can read it on KindleUnlimited or eBook from Amazon. It’s also available to request from your local libraries both in print and eBook.
