Obsessive and withdrawn, Aster lives in the low-deck slums of the space vessel HSS Matilda. When the autopsy of the ship's sovereign reveals a link between his death and the suicide of Aster's mother, she begins sowing the seeds for civil war, and learns there may be a way off the ship if she's willing to fight for it.
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[Aster removed two scalpels from her med-kit to soak in a solution of disinfectant]***
(@AkashicBooks, 18 September 2017, 289 pages, ebook, #popsugarreadingchallenge 2020, a book by a trans or nonbinary author, borrowed from @GlasgowLib via @OverDriveLibs)
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I'd never heard of the author before so I had no expectations for the book. I decided to read it because I loved the title and the cover. I made a great choice. This is a great book and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. I'm a fan of dystopian fiction and this is a great example of one of my favourite genres. There are so many good things about this book. This is dystopian slave fiction which I've never read before. Aster and the other people living on the ship are brutalised by those in charge, often for no reason. Things get increasingly darker as the book goes on and the Lieutenant in charge seeks increasingly brutal ways to show he's the big man in charge. The world building is impressive and I felt like I could clearly picture the ship and everyone stuck there. This really bought the book to life. Aster is a great character, she seems to be the only person on the ship who sees the harsh truth and this makes her resilient, angry and unwilling to jump through the Lieutenant's hoops which constantly get her in trouble. She's a great heroine. The book gets darker in tone but in a good way. I loved it.
