Sci fi. Centuries ago, humanity fled Earth on generation ships. The ship at the centre of this book has survived because it came upon a herd of massive, vacuum-living space beasts. Originally, the beasts were just a source of resources, killed and harvested, but for many generations now the humans on this ship invade a beast’s body, take it over, intensively adapt it, live inside it, keep it alive as long as they can – a decade, perhaps – and then move on to the next beast in a process they describe as ‘exodus.’ In this vastly different environment, an intricate, highly class-stratified society has taken shape, with social, gender, and sexual norms very different than ours but no less strictly enforced. The story begins in the early stages of inhabiting a new beast, following the daughter of the current matriarch – whose rule is somewhat precarious – and the daughter’s dearest friend, a girl of the same age from this society’s equivalent of the ‘respectable’ working-class. Annnnd…things go sideways. The story is a wild ride. Like, to the extent that, if it hasn’t hooked you, I suspect there will be twists and shifts that break your suspension of disbelief. Thankfully, it did hook me. There were some pacing issues, particularly later in the book, and some things that the main characters didn’t know (to keep the reader from knowing them too soon) that it felt likely they would’ve known. Also, there was enough story in here that the author could probably have written a considerably longer book telling it all. But I think it’s good that she didn’t – the book would’ve lost some of the over-the-top character that made it fun. I’ve read one other by this author, Temper, which I was pretty so-so on, but I definitely enjoyed this one.
Originally posted by Scott on Goodreads.