I don’t have a lot to say about this one. It grabbed me with the prologue and didn’t let go. The plot twists nicely, the characters are complex and engaging, the world is viscerally real in the best of the gritty space opera tradition. There was a point where I was annoyed with the book because the bad guys were doing stupid things just to be bad guys, but then when we started talking to the bad guys about why they’d done those things, they made perfect sense, so I was retroactively not annoyed with the book at all. This book was badass in all the right ways, subtly creepy where appropriate, and did space travel so well and compellingly it makes me feel guilty for playing with FTL.
This, of course, means I rather hate the book, because I need to go have an anxiety attack about whether to vote for it, or for Embassytown. Stupid quality.
Anaea Lay 