I started reading and reviewing Sci-fi by Indy authors as I founded an indy label to release a bit of my own sci-fi. I want to fully connect with my peers. And so I have learned a few things. The most important thing I have learned is how humbling the talent pool is here. Flower is an exceptional writer, not a novice, not in the least. This is very sophisticated writing in terms of plot, story and character development, and the beautiful infusion of real culture with the pending rupture we face as humans in an increasingly non-human, digital world.

I keep thinking as I read Flower's work (and she is prolific, this is a standalone but she has much more available here, now!) that humans are lifeforms on/in a substrate, and our emerging silicon counterparts will be absolutely as conniving, cursed, problematic, insightful, etc. -- They will face existential crises that humans cannot or will not face themselves. The silicon substrate lifeforms will be more like angels than humans, knowing more fully how they were created and who created them (not God). And so Flower, with great incorporation of Eastern culture and thought, brings us closer to emergent digital angels, Avatars in an ancient Sanskrit sense more than Judeo-Christian angels. As entities, they are not lifeless plot points in a sci-fi cable show, but true characters with high stakes and gripping consequences.

Like Westworld, Ex Machina, etc - the reader is able to side with and root for the other as they are in many ways more human than human. The theme of humanizing robots and dehumanizing humans certainly resonates with me, but I am even more interested in what happens after we gets past all that.

All that to say, this work gets me talking more than a lot of the big-label stuff, and Flower sits on a shelf with Okorafor, Ishiguro, and Wells. And I think I'd rather run into Flower at a party.