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There's a lot of sex in the first 31% (according to Kobo) of this book and I have to put it down because writing that makes sex this tedious ain't for me.

So far, Merry Gentry:

• gets a microphone implanted in her bra with a roomful of men, many of whom leer because it's just polite to harass a faery
• goes undercover and we get a magically caused but still lustful rape including a mysterious magical faery occluded in a darkened mirror and spiders
• a near orgy when being questioned by skeptical police
• magical sex that restores a seal faery's ability to become a seal again
• an exhibitionist shower scene for the benefit of the boss
• a boring ass chase scene on Sepulveda Blvd where unseen monsters poke holes in the side of a van
• and an I'll show you mine if you show me yours scene with a stomach snake faery

None of them make much sense and drag on with how sexy and good at sex faeries are because eye color and auras and somesuch

I gave up.

Osaji feels stifled by life on Benn, a water planet where humans live in biological arks that float beneath the surface and which supply their needs in the water environment. Benn is very polite, and people are not adventurous. Jack Halliday is an offworlder stuck on Benn for some reason which I've forgotten, and he feels even more stifled.

A disaster strikes the cluster of arks, and Osaji, her grandmother Mota, and Jack find themselves on a disconnected ark outside the protected gulf where everyone lives. They get to go on an adventures, reconcile their differing viewpoints on life, and along the way get to view the unknown life that populates the wilder parts of the Bennite ocean that noone has ever encountered.

Solid hard-SF novella. Everyone has a personality, even if they are a bit archetypical. Fun imagining of a human society and its biological support that could be on an underwater world. That everyone lives in one protected area and noone has surveyed the rest of the planet seems a little contrived in order to tell a story of exploration & adventure. But I've also seen worse setups.

Right away I realised that this was not my usual type of book, and if I'd actually read the entire jacket before before starting, I probably would not have given it a shot. But I'm glad I did.

The protagonist has all the hallmarks of being one of these unrelatable characters that has all these gifts (beauty, wealth, normativity) while still feeling sorry for themselves, but if I was ever annoyed at Oona it was because the writer wanted me to be, and even then it didn't last for long.

The characters are so fun and physically present. The chapters/sections are a nice, medium length. The plot moves along at a great pace, and each "leap" brings about an exciting paradigm shift that has you excited to keep reading.

I wouldn't recommend it to everyone, but if the premise sounds tantalising to you, you should at least read until the second chapter.

Also the last lines of the book put forward a terse little thesis that would be the perfect thing for a book club to discuss.