I was just not vibing with this at all. The narrative was so irksome, and I found myself repeatedly not wanting to pick it up. I plowed on for 30% but then DNF'd.

This feels like the sort of thing I ought to like. Can't go wrong with a fiction book whose epigram is a description of lambda functions in Python (although it links to w3schools, which is a downside). But this is not a book about programming: it's a story. The wry tone with multiple voices is interesting -- there are chapters which purport to be parts of an EULA for eye-tracker software which is seemingly providing the story to me and to which I "agree" in order to continue -- and it's got an intriguing premise.



So I don't really get why I bounced off this, which is disappointing. It just... failed to keep my interest. I got about a third of the way in and I thought, I don't know why I'm really reading this. I'm not invested in the story at all. So I stopped. The author seems to have reasonable technical chops both at writing and in tech, so I'd consider another of theirs, but... not this one. Sorry.



Thanks to Netgalley for providing a proof of this for review.

Great characterisation, funny dialogue, and a brilliant premise. This is going to be a huge hit.

I found this book incredibly moving.

Even though as a whole it is a pretty interesting/engaging novel, I was distracted by the cheeky/playful style of narrative (which I was able to appreciate at the start, but found it a bit exhausting after a while). I think this could have worked a lot better if it was chopped up into shorter pieces - and reformatted as a collection of interconnected short stories? And by doing so, the each character in the book would have more space to develop? And that would somehow create more 'layers' to the plot as well? And also make the dialogues much less confusing and 'lifeless'?

I like my 'sci-fi' with a lot of dark humour and transgressive elements. I think Musgrave's novel accomplished that (more so of the former than the latter). It's a cute but creepy sort of novel, but it lacks the kind of complexity that Japanese 'sci-fi' writers seem to create so well (notably Sayaka Murata; and Yukio Mishima's Beautiful Star that I'm currently reading; or even Terminal Boredom: Stories that I read some time ago). Also, I find the ending a bit anticlimactic (which isn't always an issue, but for some reason this bothered me). Perhaps I'm not reading Musgrave's book from the right 'angle'? Despite that, I am still keen to read any future Musgrave novels.

David Musgrave introduces us to a world that initially seems very much like our own, the most obvious difference being the presence of lambdas. They are small , aquatic creatures, though genetically human, and take up low-paid jobs. As Musgrave makes their presence plausible, he slowly reveals that the world has actually become very different.

He introduces new police officer Cara Gray to make it easy for us to negotiate this increasingly strange society and we begin to understand the lambda and empathise with Gray.

But in the final third or so of the book, it becomes increasingly difficult to fight out what’s happening and why - it’s as if one nodded off during The Matrix.

Three stars because of such interesting world-building.