An exception was the crew, who stared frankly at the Ariekei they had never seen before. Across the room I saw my helmsman and I saw the expression on his face. Once I had heard a theory. It was an attempt to make sense of the fact that no matter how travelled people are, no matter how cosmopolitan, how biotically miscegenated from their homes, they can’t be insouciant at the first sight of any exot race. The theory is that we’re hardwired with the Terre biome, that every glimpse of anything not descended from the original backwater home, our bodies know we should not ever see.

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Yellow light slicing across my pillow like a knife would be the appropriate simile, but it feels more like a mole digging its way into my skull through my right eyeball. There is a boy in my bed, or at least I think it’s a boy. It’s hard to judge gender by the back of someone’s head. But I have my suspicions, based on the sandy curls and the snippets of last night that my brain is starting to defrag (277).

South African author Lauren Beukes received too little attention for her excellent debut novel, Moxyland, but critics have been fawning over her follow-up, an alternate history which blends a noir investigation of the music industry with totem-animal toting lowlifes. Is it as good as people say, or are they making up for having until now missed one of the great emerging SF/fantasy writers?
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