This reads like a collage of (at least) Iain M Banks, Becky Chambers, Jodi Taylor, and Ann Leckie, which would normally be a slam dunk for me but the execution is disjointed -- not enough time to melt together, individual lifts still too recognizable to feel like a cohesive thought.
It may have suffered a bit in the reading; I would 100% listen to Adjoa Andoh all day every day but either she was blindsided by the layers necessary for the protagonist or she'd never listened to Zara Ramm's rendition of Madeline Maxwell, which hits similar character development notes but does it while making the character, not the reading, seem fractured.
Nevertheless! I want to know more about this universe and how it functions, I enjoyed racing the characters to the end, and I was delighted by several surprises. The treatment of disability and assistive technology was refreshing; neither rosy …
