*received for free from netgalley for honest review* this was not as good as i had hoped, mostly because it was so scifi (probs my bad for not reading about it lol" but wasnt bad just took me a little longer to read

Creative, imaginative, and unique. Not the greatest science fiction book I have ever read but I enjoy unique books that take some chances. Recommended.

Thanks to Netgalley and Macmillan Audio for sending me an arc audiobook copy of this title.

2.5

Wow, I have very mixed feelings about this book. To start, this is definitely a sequel to Last Tango in Cyberspace, though without having read the first book it did seem that they filled in enough of the previous plot that I wasn't confused, just more detached from certain character relationships than I might have otherwise been.

Lion Zorn is an empathy tracker, which basically means that his sense of empathy is off the charts which allows him to communicate with dogs (other empaths imprint on whichever animal was closest to them during their inciting event) and that he can sense patterns in cultural shifts. I think. To be honest, there was just a lot going on here and it was near future enough that some of our current technology was still relevant but in their version of the future it's meaning or use was just different enough to be sort of confusing, especially with the amount of pop culture references. Like the empathy drug is called Sietch Tabr and in the book they talk about how it got its name and there is a man called Muad'Dib and the author specifically calls out that it's all from Frank Herbert's Dune. Also there is a joke used at least twice where Siri (or an equivalent) is explaining a concept when the user says "oh nevermind" and then Siri goes on to say something like "Nevermind is an album by American punk band Nirvana". And there is a character that inexplicably only speaks in quotes from the movie All the President's Men? All that to say, there got to be a point where the pop culture references became too much for me.

That being said, I liked a lot of the concepts explored here. There's talk about environmental exploitation and human nature and consumption under capitalism and genetic engineering and a whole host of other things. There was even a scene where Lion was in Seattle and they talk about how it became the first privatized city and had been broken up into the Amazon, Starbucks, Microsoft, etc. zones and there was a protest/homeless encampment of sorts on the Space Needle, and given the current state of Seattle it seemed eerily prescient.

Lastly, as I did receive an advanced audio copy, I will call out how excellent I found Ryan Vincent Anderson's narration. I don't believe I've listened to a book he has narrated before, but I will definitely be looking out for his next work.