Hard Reboot

Hard Reboot, by Django Wexler, is a science fiction story that mixes giant mech arena battles with intergalactic diplomacy. Its main character is Kas, a junior researcher sent to old Earth on a fact-finding mission.

Trouble starts when a con artist talks Kas into betting a large sum of her university's money on the result of a robot arena fight, with human pilots inside the machines. The bet pulls her into the shady side of old Earth politics and the world of state-sponsored battle-droid prizefights. Academia was supposed to be the complicated part of her life, and she may soon wish she had stayed with her books.