Cover image for book

This was my palate-cleanser after Seth Dickinson’s grimdark Exordia. Much like her earlier book in this setting, The Mimicking of Known Successes, it’s a short novella, barely a hundred pages long. The setting and the characters are very deftly sketched, though, both coming fully to life despite the shortness of the story.

This book does flesh out the physical and historical setting a bit more, although again in very natural exposition rather than clumsy infodumps. The characters are also just lovely, fragile and tentative with each other’s fragility, and also enjoying a pot of tea and the company of a good book. This is cozy SF, despite the murder, and very definitely a book written specifically for readers, if that makes sense. It’s not just the fact that the characters themselves are readers, but also the literary Easter eggs dotted through the story. This sort of thing can be a bit thudding in clumsy hands, but Malka Older is either naturally good at it, or has very good editors and beta readers.

Maybe I should give her full-length Infomocracy a try sometime? The blurb always puts me off, but if it’s anything like these two little polished gems, it might be worth it.

🖼️  Cover image from publisher’s website