Cameron Reed

The hardest books to review are the ones I love like kin. This is the first e-arc I finished and then immediately read again. That's the highest praise I can give. I also went and bought Reed's debut. I feel like What We Are Seeking follows in the careful treads of Le Guin's, The Dispossessed (which is my favorite book).

I resonated deeply with the outsider on a planet full of people with strange moral convictions that feel unkind and restrictive. This book feels like it teaches us all how to show more communicate, as if we are the aliens with each other. I literally went from the first reading of this book and had a conversation with my husband that healed a hurt we'd been having. I was still in the book-speak, and it felt like a template to understanding and compromise.

This is not a utopia. There are hard things happening to good people. There are fights still to come. There are bigots. What happens to John at the very start is shockingly awful. What happened to Iren is worse than a crime. And yet...I still felt hope. It means something to me to see people (yes, characters but I felt these were people!) being so compassionate with one another despite the pain. Being found family in a way that instructs us all. I love the idea that there is an entire world full of nonbinary people (just like here!) living their best lives, and they want to bring that best to other worlds--even if it means fighting old fights again. The selflessness paired with boundaries in this book is astonishing for a reader of our times.

The world-building is original and bizarre. The AI situation is even stranger--and I hope there's a second book somewhere (anywhere!) in this universe that goes into that more. I'd also love to spend more time on John's home planet. The very first page when "the summer captain would be laid to rest beneath the stars" made me gasp with its beautiful prose. Just talking about it here makes me want to read it a third time.

This felt like someone holding a skein of yarn they'd plied, slowly and lovingly letting the strand go as it curled into a perfect heart. Not a fist, not a palm, but a clasped hand holding me gently as it showed me love.

Thank you to NetGalley and Tor Publishing Group for an e-arc in exchange for an honest review. show less

Earth humans have given themselves over to the aiyi, with godlike powers to destroy that they use on other groups of humans who commit disfavored acts. Other humans live on spaceships with substantial modifications and a fair amount of contempt for the planet-bound. A doctor from a culture that doesn’t have marriage is dumped by a ship, along with a translator who’s had his brain modified to communicate with aliens, on a planet with strange biology that might include intelligent life. show more The human colonists there are under threat from Earth and divided among themselves, coming from two different patriarchal cultures. I’m not even done with the setup, but it’s a brilliant exploration of different kinds of culture clashes, cultural changes, and how one kind of openness can close off others, as well as of how people make lives even while being harmed by their cultures. The characters all have different perspectives and jump off the page; the one who says “If you try to leave me here alone I will cut your throat to have your corpse’s company” could say nothing else and no one else in the book could say it. show less

I don't believe it.

I just realized that I haven't updated my top ten book list in my own mind for almost a decade. I certainly haven't modified my top three in over 25 years.

What I have just read has just supplanted number three. Perhaps even number two.

For the moment, I feel like it might have supplanted number one.

I cried like a baby when I closed the book, and even now I can't believe what I just read. It was lyrical and it unpacked with a density of a rushing locomotive. It was full of show more heart and soul, and it was smart, smart, smart in its choices.

It is a double tragedy. Raphael Carter, as far as I can tell, never wrote another novel. I will likely be a lifelong devotee to this novel, and I'll be rereading it soon. I'm already missing it and I just finished it.

Maybe it's a triple tragedy, because the book is out of print. I was lucky enough to find it used. As far as I can tell, the novel is the greatest unknown mystery of the world. So few people even know about it. Hell, I need to shout out its praises to the world and not let this beautiful work ever be forgotten. And yet, it is. I only picked it up because Jo Walton praised it from her mountaintop as a work that should not be forgotten, and I can't thank her enough.

What is the novel, you ask? It's the soul of humanity as sung from the soul of the last whale. It's the redemption and utter loss of ghost girls and cyborgs. It's the chains that we bind ourselves with, whether in our heart or our minds or everyone else. It's hope. It's horror.

It's recalling, for me, the most heartbreaking moments of V for Vendetta, a movie I've seen a dozen times so that it brings me to tears. It takes the best traditions of cyberpunk and pushes it through the meat grinder, showing us what despair can lie behind the eyes of telepresence ratings.

It's about same-sex true-love and mind rape.

Too much for a novel of 288 pages? Hell no. The writing carries it all and a lot more, effortlessly. This is what I want to make when I grow up.

And it hurts, almost unbearably, that so few people will ever have the chance to experience this novel. If there is justice in the world, then everyone would have the chance to cry over it.

288 stars out of 5. show less

It reads like a long philosophical conversation on the topics of sexual customs, transitioning, tolerance and choice. In a good way -- I liked that, and I liked it. It's a bit didactic at times, and I'm honestly wondering if the ending will change before publication -- I can't tell if that's where it's meant to end. It makes sense in some ways, and not in others.

All of that aside, the world building is fascinating and the characters are excellent. I'm particularly intrigued/freaked out by show more the possibilities of AI in this imagining. Long, but I kept wanting more time with it, and it's staying with me. Lots to think about. I also really loved how much care and attention is given to food preparation and enjoyment. I love the gravitas that food has when the eaters are more appreciative of how central it is to survival.

Advanced Reader's copy provided by Edelweiss. show less