Winnipeg seems to be a black hole in terms of getting Naomi Kritzer books. The Winnipeg Public Library has two older UA novels currently but the copy of her book of short stories, Cat Pictures Please, that I took out in 2018 seems to have been deleted. Neither of the two independent bookstores that I patronize has any of her books although they would order them. Fortunately for me, friends in Minneapolis went to the signing of this book and got me a copy. (They are really good friends because they found out that the cost to mail it to me was almost as much as the cost of the book.) It was wonderful to read the first book of what promises to be a very interesting series.

Rebecca (who prefers to be called Beck) lives on a seastead with her father. The seastead is an manmade archipelago in the Pacific Ocean composed of constructed platforms and old ships. Like an archipelago, there are individual islands most of which are joined by bridges but a few can only be reached by boat. The seastead was started by libertarian separtists who didn't want to be subject to government interference in their lives so, of course, there are few laws. Beck and her father moved to the seastead from California after her mother's death. Beck receives tutoring along with the handful of other teenagers on her island but she still had time to get a part-time job. She works for a store that specializes in finding hard to acquire objects and it turns out Beck is good at finding things. When she finds the sparkly high-heeled sandals that some customer wants they are the property of a debt slave i.e. a person who moved to the seastead for work but had to borrow money to get on the islands and has to work that debt off. This debt slave, Debbie, came with her sister Lynn but her sister has been missing for 3 weeks. Debbie wants Beck to find Lynn in return for the sandals. Beck may be young but she's smart and she knows her way around the seastead. Her father is also quite influential but Beck has to tread carefully in terms of letting him know what she is doing. While Beck does succeed in finding Lynn she also finds more than she expected. It turns out that her mother is very much alive and has been trying to communicate with Beck by sending letters to the American consulate. When Beck takes Lynn there to get her legal assistance she is handed a letter from her mother. Quite a shock for Beck which leads her to wonder what else her father might have hidden. His work involves genetic manipulation of diseases so there's quite a scope for secrets. Can you imagine the potential for chaos if a new disease is unleashed on the seastead? The plot whizzes along, taking the reader with it.

Kritzer has done a great job of world-building. I could easily picture all the places that Beck took us. I just hope it's not too long until the next book in the series is out. ( )

I read this young adult work as part of the Nebula Award/Norton packet. I found it to be a breezy, intense read, genuinely interesting from page one. I think my only issue was that it was clear that different segments were published separately, as the sections still felt somewhat disjointed. A fabulous work, though. I've really enjoyed everything I've read by Kritzer. ( )