Review copy provided by the publisher.
I can’t actually decide which thing to tell you first, that this is funny or that it’s toward the gory and horrifying end of science fictional examinations of human nature and the nature of the universe.
Because both turn out to be critically important to what kind of book this is. It’s not a slapstick, it’s not a “skidding in the pool of blood” kind of funny. The humor is wryer and better done than that, deeper than that. But also the gore is deeper, it’s not an incidental “and then one of the sidekicks was shot but you won’t have to think about it, you won’t have to think about them as a person or what shooting them really means, how it might affect the protagonist to do it.” It’s entwined like a nest of snakes.
Anna Sinjari is a young Kurdish-American whose past has left her not particularly engaged with her life as an office worker. An encounter with a disturbing alien no one else seems to see quite as she does tips a series of dominoes that puts Anna in line to try to save humanity–because her alien is not only not entirely pleasant, she is not the only alien with an eye on the planet earth and its inhabitants. And, apparently, their souls.
Because yeah, there’s a lot of guns-and-shooting SF here, there’s a lot of different-mentalities-aliens SF here…but we’re also doing shape-of-the-universe-itself-and-sentient-soul SF. It’s a big book. There’s a lot going on. Most of the SF that gets described as breathless is a bit dewy-eyed, a bit young, and this is the opposite, this is breathless because it has been running an obstacle course of varied human bullshit to get here and you will have to excuse it if that’s a *little* much sometimes. There’s a lot to juggle, but Dickinson manages the flaming torches, the chainsaws, and the bowling balls with aplomb.