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Ok so I don't love this one. It has a bunch of stuff doing on that somehow just doesn't convince me. But I like so much about it. Including what a totally unsubtle criticism of prison systems it is.

It's a story about poetry and family and friends and love and a lot of hard stuff happens and there's oppression and harassment and abuse, but it's a super beautiful story imo.

I was expecting a bit too much, but it's certainly worth reading. It's neither revelatory nor very inspiring to me, but one of those things where it's just nice to have it all said in one place to think about the connections. There's a few chapters in the middle that kinda list me, I was eager to get to the end with the bits about healing. And those I'll have to get in paper form to properly engage with. All in all I'm glad I read it.

So, it's not very scary or anything. It also has soldiers, which often makes me dislike stories. But ah. This one is exactly right for me. It has the right kind of mushrooms and queerness and feminism and I enjoyed so many little details in it.

Now I didn't, but I liked a bunch of things that it does. I enjoyed reading it, but I'm not eager to continue with the series.

A dysfunctional team of four conwomen (the boss, the hacker, the distraction, and the driver) get caught and imprisoned in Justice, an ancient spaceship whose AI goes around collecting tithes of prisoners to run it; despite their fraying relationships, the four of them have to find their footing in the cultures and towns that are flourishing on the ship, escape the eyes and hands of the AI, and run one more con to escape the ship together.

Genre-wise, there's a lot of "low tech" here, such that it almost felt like a fantasy book of towns, swords, and politics but on a space-ship. It reminded me a good bit of Elizabeth Bear's Jacob's Ladder books.

The character dynamics really drove the book. Murdock (the hacker) is the first person perspective here; her main goal is to prove herself to Hark (the boss), and she has an icy relationship with Fitz (the distraction) because of Fitz's attention from Hark. From the get go, the Justice AI creepily sticks its nose into these relationships and tries to win Murdock over to its side. The book revolves around all of these shifting relationships.

Overall, this was a fun romp if you want some conwomen spaceship escape adventures.

So, the "Before the body says no" chapter is one that I'll need to have a look at in written form. The Compassionate Inquiry journaling practice sounds like I'd like to try it, and the thing after that maybe too. I do have my small book of explory stuff that I'd like to try, and I could take notes in it while listening to this chapter another time.... but I think I'll try to get a paper copy, or at least a pdf.

I've been looking forward to reading this since the authors essay on the subject matter was released on tor.com (I highly reccomend the essay). This is absolutely a book that will stay with me for a long time and one that is worth a slow burn, or if you're like me and can't put it down, then a re-read. It was devastatingly beautiful, brutally human.

The most fascinating and compelling aspect of the book for me was the interplay between the relationships: to the multitudes of inner selves and their relation and manifestation to other selves l, and to the feedback loop that exists with all social interaction. This is a story about how we relate to others (no matter their embodiment), and how those relations are influenced by our own perspective and habituated behaviors. It's also about so many other things that are best discovered first hand.

The sheer amount of depth and nuance in such a small space is a work of art and I'm sure a result of much painstaking effort. There is a beautiful economy of words, that when constellated, emerge as something entirely new.