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sydnapped's review against another edition
4.0
It's future Detroit, the automobile industry is rendered obsolete, biotechnology is the new commerce and the leading manufacturer is GeneSys, the world's leading producer of an artificial, organic fabric called biopolymer. This corporation also creates (and exploits) a mutant species called the "tetras"; humanoid vat divers who can live in the highly toxic liquid vats down in "Vattown" and harvest the biopolymer grown to meet the material needs of America and the world.
Strongly centering on biotechnology, this story is loaded with cyberpunk elements: designer drugs "blast", the obligatory evil megalithic corporation which overshadows the socioeconomic underclass it creates, involves genetic engineering, artificial intelligence, politics, labour unions and people (and some not really human people) existing on the fringes of a Vattown society of endless poverty, but it's also a futuristic mystery and a queer romance drawing together several coming-of-age stories, including the two main characters - scavenger Chango who survives by doing odd jobs and lives out of her car and Helix, a young, sheltered four-armed woman adopted by a research scientist who works for GeneSys and who finds herself irresistibly, inexplicably drawn to the vats...
This was a well-paced and very passionate storytelling of an interesting and original science fiction mystery set in a cyberpunk atmosphere and I really enjoyed reading it. Recommended for anyone who enjoys elements of mutants, queer romance, justice and corporate resistance!
celiaedf12's review
3.0
This is a kind of odd book cover to be reading on public transport. In Vattown, workers dive in toxic vats to harvest biological materials, while the company who runs the town experiment with genetic manipulation in order to create creatures who can dive in the vats without toxic effects. They succeed (hence our multi-armed chick on the cover), and the story gets a leetle bit crazily ambitious from there. It had some cool ideas though, and I liked the vat creatures.
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