This is quite a short novella and therefore there’s quite a bit of rushing to get to the plot that there is. But if the worst that I have to complain about is some deus ex machina nuns, I think we’re overall pretty fine.
Did not realize that there was more fiction in this vein by Clark, I’ve read some of his pretty awesome punk sci-fi (?). There are too many authors to keep track of everyone’s new work– the tech people should stop trying to create AI apocalypse and start doing something about the state of book tracking software (yes, I know I should be using story graph but I’m wedded to this Goodreads site).
This book takes place in an alternate US where the union and Confederacy agreement armistice eight years into the Civil War. New Orleans remains one of the few free cities/ports in the South, a neat bit of historical revision that draws upon real history (namely the freeing of Haiti, except this time around they are the ones who get reparations) (fun horrible trivia fact, what’s the only country in the world who’s had to pay reparations for slavery? If you guessed any slave-owning country you would be wrong!!!). Our main character Jacqueline (Creeper) has overheard news of a terrible weapon being potentially traded to disgruntled Confederates, and she decides to do something about it — it’s the right thing to do and because it might be the thing that gets her out of her mere existing existence.
The plot flips pretty quickly through the setup to get us to the interesting pits, but in this case the World building is so fascinating that I wouldn’t have minded taking longer. I don’t think this is meant to be anything more than a stand-alone novella, and I knew that going into it, but I’m still slightly disappointed.
