Review by Crisetta MacLeod.

Here’s a must-read for science fiction addicts. Stephenson uses familiar tropes in unfamilar ways—protagonists who discover they are the hopeless victim of unrealised destiny; tales of genetically or mechanically modified humans; but especially, stories about humanity’s probable future, told in grim, no-holds-barred, ‘repent now if you don’t want us to end up like this’ terms. For example, the eponymous protagonist dies trying to believe in the prayers of an organisation which sent him on what is clearly (to the reader!) a suicide mission. Or there’s the woman, wooed into bearing a genetically modified, fast developing warrior baby, who somehow avoids being ground up as expendable after giving birth.
Mostly, the protagonists are doomed. Mostly, the stories leave you feeling helpless and even angry. The last paragraph in the book belies this—“a small flame of hope had appeared in his darkness.” Small hope indeed, but the warrior baby grows up in freedom, secretly, and sets out to defy her destiny by going against the never-ending warlike society for which she was bred. Nurture defies nature?
This gritty collection will make you think!