Reviews
4 stars. It's a superb compliment for a debut author to receive a byline from Yoon Ha Lee for their first novel, and I am happy to say this book lived up to the compliment! There are few story tropes that I go ape for, and heists are one of them. A heist in space? My body temperature is rising and I'm beginning to fan myself. A heist in space with morally grey genetically-engineered criminals trying to find meaning in their existence? I AM PASSING OUT I also want to say that this is the first time I've read a sci-fi story that is so genuinely Canadian. I got the same emotional vibes from this as I do reading an Inspector Gamache novel (which is to say, comforting in a Canadian way--idk it's hard to describe). This is also the first sci-fi universe I've experienced where French is one of the dominant languages of stellar humanity; just bless you Derek Künsken this is so adorable. When you have Venus colonized by Quebec separatists of course there would be a ship named for Jacques Parizeau. This book would have benefited from a better editor, as there were a number of weird grammatical issues sprinkled throughout. Solaris/Rebellion Publishing have had a number of extremely talented genre authors on their slate, so I have to wonder how something so basic as this slipped through the cracks. I had to take a star off for that, the number of errors was simply baffling in an otherwise superbly written book. Bonus points for Künsken being a local Ottawa author! Given the shape of the book that I received from the public library and the immense hold time I had to endure before I got it, a popular one too :)
