Somewhere between two and three stars for me, and I’m feeling grumpy and rounding down. Very cyberpunk, but in a slow, maintenance-worker way. That’s the part I like – I can’t read stories like Snow Crash without thinking about the work spent maintaining (yes, even super cyber) roads, drones, etc. Good stuff and not afraid of the details.
But the book isn’t just that – how could we justify spending an entire book on a lowly maintenance worker? So of course Lore van Something comes from a Special Rich family (who she’s run away from) and is Special Good at her job and Special Attractive to her love interest, and I just don’t like that sorta thing. I’m also not super into the addict/sex-work/unhealthy relationship thing (though props for making her being lesbian being a non-issue), or into the Bigger Picture stuff insofar as it ties into the Special Family. Ending didn’t satisfy me either, as I recall.
This book is part of the 2022 Backlog Incident.
Plot summary
Beware: full spoilers! Also probably incomplete and possibly incomprehensible.
Lore van Something runs away from her rich special family, but of course even without riches she’s still Special. Works at a sewage plant and is Special Good at her job, while figuring out her relationship to an addict hacker-slash-sex-worker, and also conspiracies and also settling up with her family in the very end.
