Dark Water's Embrace

I really like the anthropology in Leigh's novel, and the characters were well-developed and sympathetic, and the premise of the novel was pretty interesting, describing the parallel fall of an ancient alien civilization and of a highly inbred human colony struggling to survive. The stories interweave in some really cool ways.

I have low tolerance for novels that portray LGBT (or, in this case, intersex) people as merely victims, which this one could easily have done. However, the main character was so well developed, intelligent, and had such believable agency that I wasn't upset when she got shunned. The aliens were pretty cool, too. The plot was well-constructed, though I found it predictable because I had been spoiled for it all by show more Pearson's article.

The only thing I didn't like was the use of the word "hermaphrodite", which is considered somewhat insulting by intersex people nowadays. This book is ten years old, however, so I cut it a break. There wasn't a whole lot of consciousness out there at the time over the use of that word, and the portrayal is very sympathetic toward the intersexed, so. show less

A surprising good book with a clever idea. I like the characters and the premise and look forward to reading the second book.

The main reason I liked this is that it led to a series of interesting conversations with a friend. A good 'conversation catalyst'

preachy