A book that leaves you with a sense of having visited a different world, a haunting memory, and a longing to return is certainly one in which I can say the author accomplished their goal of telling a damn good story. And this book by Premee Mohamad does that. With lyrical, flourishing prose it paints a picture, sometimes one as cloying as the perfumes I imagine which linger in the hall of the capital-h House. A woman who doesn't stay dead, and upon realizing the power she holds by being outside of the societal structures, it could be an allegory for the lives of those today who choose to operate outside of the bounds of our capitalist, patriarchal society. Especially since the world of this book, the world outside of the House, definitely could be considered our own should things be allowed to continue unchecked and the people disposed of, uncared for.

I'm not sure we cheer for any of the characters, but their journeys certainly are intriguing. Their motivations sometimes fully on display and other times elusive and chameleon-like. Revenge may be a dish best served cold, but it can also taste sweet, and sometimes as heady as a rich, whiskey.

If there's one complaint I have about this title, it's that the writing with it's reliance on over-long sentences combined with the flowery prose almost becomes too much at points. And to my editor's eye, it took a couple of chapters before I quit looking at just...how...long... the sentences were and became swept up in the story. This book won a Nebula award for best novella, and I can see why, if nothing else than for the fact that it had a very literary feel to it, more atmosphere and mood, and not so much a play-by-play of the action. Which, to be fair, in this story, I'm not sure a play-by-play would be warranted.

In the end, this is a book which kept me reading and drew me into its strange and twisty world that I'm still thinking about the morning after. So while I may still be having extensional thoughts about sentence length and grammar rules, I have to say, that if the story pulls in the reader and leaves a hunting memory, do the mechanics really matter that much? The story worked. ( )

When Jewel's best friend and fellow courtesan dies at the hands of a client, the last thing they expect is for Win to come back from the dead and take revenge.

To me, this felt like Fight Club crashing into The Past is Red – but with courtesans.

The language employed in the story is poetic and floral. It's beautiful. In my head, it was narrated by Marla from Fight Club, which is part of why it reminded me so strongly of that book. But poetic and flowery language is difficult for me to connect with, so I end up feeling outside the story. But because of my inability to engage, I couldn't even picture the world on the page.

This is a bit of an odd story. It's set in a dystopian world where (it seems) the water has risen but also gotten contaminated, and lots of animals have mutated. (Though we see very little of that.) The main noticeable change is that society is even more money-focused than it is now, and the laws have changed so that only those with money get any kind of justice.

The main premise of a murdered courtesan coming back to life to take revenge on her murderer has probably been done before; in this particular case our narrator is not the dead girl herself, but one of her friends. The question of how she comes back to life is never answered, nor is it clear if or when she will ever die again. Instead, the focus of the story is what "morality" means in this society where money is literally everything, where those without money or jobs can be killed in a "cull" without any other reason at all.

While I liked the way this was told (a kind of blend of dialogue and almost stream-of-consciousness monologue) it took a little while for me to figure out much about the characters. I'm still not sure what most of them looked like... but that's okay. Other than some obvious parts—like one character who has wing implants, or the dead girl's skin being white and bloodless—it doesn't really matter what these characters look like.

This would probably not be a book for everyone; some people won't be able to get into the writing style, or will want more answers than this book provides. It's a neat story, however, and it's a nice change to see a narrator who isn't the brave hero but instead is someone who's just trying to find a way to get by. ( )

"I died," she says. "He killed me."
"Who?"
"I don't remember."
Well. ( )

In a drowned future where individuals have no value except as workers at the mercy of their employer, the courtesans of the House survive on little rebellions: friendship, grief, honouring the dead with gifts rendered useless by the act of giving. In their tightly-controlled world, the House controls everything except their love for one another.

Winfield’s murder is surprising only because she was the House’s best: the one who commanded the highest prices, the one who earned generous tips. It’s not enough for the House to seek justice from a wealthy patron shielded by privilege.

Premee Mohamed’s jagged little novella explores what happens when the overlooked and undervalued get a chance to push back against those who exploit them. The brutal challenge for Jewel is whether to believe that they can resist. I had a great deal of sympathy for her even when she made terrible choices, appreciating her perspective all the more for being unusual in a genre that typically prefers active protagonists tearing down the status quo over passive protagonists caught in its iron grip. But how do you decide what’s best when all your choices have been taken away?

I also appreciated this novella as a fuck you to all the cyberpunk novels and grim futures that casually sacrifice sex workers to show how dark and gritty their worlds are. Here, the focus is unwaveringly on the victims rather than the murderer (who is untouchably bland; not some monster, just another rich asshat) – humanising, demonising and redeeming them by turns.

Full review ( )