Maureen F. McHugh

A very sad SF novel about the obligations of culture, family, and situational necessity, set in a future Morocco. Hariba is biologically programmed to be an indentured servant; Akhmin is an artificial person bred to serve humans. They're drawn to one another, but even if they can find freedom, it's difficult for either of them to distinguish love from obligation.

I read McHugh's short story "Nekropolis" years ago and adored it. The prose is spare and beautiful and the characters are alive on the page. The novel, with its multiple points of view, is bleaker but more complex. Akhmin emerges as the most interesting character; his perspective is brilliantly alien, yet we empathize with them during his toughest decisions.

Additionally, I have now read a few romances featuring androids, cyborgs, etc. (hint: have written one) and I was so relieved that Akhmin had a complex inner life and was not merely an object on which our oppressed protagonist projects her fantasies of desire and control. (Obviously he's that too.)

The plot has the trademark McHugh elements of structural oppression, prolonged suffering, bad things getting worse, and characters muddling through to a possibly but not necessarily brighter future. It's probably her darkest novel, and I can't say I found the end totally satisfactory, partly because of the shape of the story. We never return to Akhmin's perspective, and the story felt incomplete without it.

Alas, I have now read every novel by one of my favorite writers! Someone pay this lady to write another book.… (meer)