Extremophile

“No laws on corpo land, they can do what they need to do to protect their IP – that kind of enhanced freedom is the kind of incentive the government offer to try and bring the corpos here. Come to England, they say. Where you can do what you like in the darkness, as long as you bring profits in the light.”

This book gave me a vibe not dissimilar from Neuromancer, but on the other hand I don’t remember much of that, for me life-changing at age 20-something book, besides the first line. One difference I am pretty sure of is that while that book was about cyberspace in dystopia, this book is about gene editing in dystopia. Also, this book has obfuscated the gender of, Charlie Raith, our (main) narrator. We know that Charlie’s romantic partner uses them/their but our text manages not to drop any pronouns attached to Charlie: that’s a silly gimmick in my opinion.

However, the rest of the book is a decent enough heist caper with a several good “special effects” (err plot devices). I especially enjoyed character background of Mole, a girl who thanks to advanced gene editing and (I assume) surgical techniques, has been transformed into a literal human-mole.