A love story in a somewhat (but not completely) dystopic world with fantastic (literally) world building, deep characterization, plenty of action, and utterly absorbing (to me) philosophical meanderings into the nature of life, consciousness, connection, and alien (both literal and figurative) understanding.
Cora is a rorqual pilot — and the depiction of the rorqual “species” and Colibri — the specific rorqual connected to Cora — is worth the whole price of admission. My favorite aspect of science fiction — and Chambers has always excelled at this — is exposing us to new kinds of beings: the way they work, the way they interact, and the way both individual and group level relationships with them function. Signy is a botanist who illegally designs and prints medicines that aren’t necessarily approved for those she helps. Their love story — a beautiful one told in two converging timelines before and after an event — is really the primary point of the story. But the substrate of the story — a world, a system, a set of restrictions, a wiggly compliancy, competing desires, and most of all connection — is magnificent. And I really, really loved the scenes with Colibri in them.
It could have been a little shorter in my opinion, but I have to admit that I was entranced reading about life in this very different world under very different expectations. Unlike her Monk and Robot series, only one or two minor characters use the “they” pronoun so I’m (happily) able to read the whole book without undue cognitive stress for which I’m quite grateful!
Looking forward to book two!
