Sisilla, the narrator of Kraus\u2019 first foray into SF, is a Niffakoq, one in a line of golden children selected for special missions, their brains enhanced with six \u201cniks,\u201d small implants that bestow deeper reserves of intelligence and empathy. These are effectively suicide missions\u2014Niffakoqs traditionally die before their teens. But of course Sisilla isn\u2019t traditional, starting with her deliberate (and gory) removal of one nik from her eye socket to quell a headache. Whether she\u2019s strengthened or weakened by one fewer nik is the open question this brash, if overlong, novel strives to answer. Sisilla is tasked with heading to the planet F\u00e9m on behalf of a \u201ctrigov\u201d to learn why it\u2019s gone incommunicado. Assisting her is a literal motley crew that hews to space-opera type: A security guard named Murder 005, a buxom engineer named Jayne Mae Marilyn Bardot, and a captain who may be Sisilla\u2019s father. But Kraus, who\u2019s cut his teeth on horror novels, lets the ickiness abound: Their ship, The Sickness, is made of a squishily organic material, deaths tend to arrive in spectacularly bloody fashion, and the internet is so troll-infested that even a moment\u2019s search means exposure to violent, traumatizing imagery. Kraus seems to have borrowed heavily from both Ender\u2019s Game and the Alien franchise for worldbuilding purposes, though he adds a few of his own peculiarities\u2014his vision of F\u00e9m, a \u201cmetal planet\u201d where the waters resemble oceans of chains, is inspired. Still, much of the (convoluted) story alternates between the gross-out and the whiz-bang, obscuring the deeper themes of parentage, womanhood, and mythology that Kraus explores. Le Guin covered similar territory more smoothly, with less need for stomach-churning digressions.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sisilla, the narrator of Kraus\u2019 first foray into SF, is a Niffakoq, one in a line of golden children selected for special missions, their brains enhanced with six \u201cniks,\u201d small implants that bestow deeper reserves of intelligence and empathy. These are effectively suicide missions\u2014Niffakoqs traditionally die before their teens. But of course Sisilla isn\u2019t traditional, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":6647,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6646"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6646"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6646\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}