bang bang bodhisattva
Dec. 18th, 2022 02:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ursulaAubrey Wood's Bang Bang Bodhisattva is set ten years from now in a California city that doesn't exist. Its aesthetic is equal parts black-and-white noir movies, cyberpunk, and Tumblr. There's a trans girl hacker who keeps getting stuck debugging smart toilets! An alternately charming and terrifying them fatale! Gender exploration, MMORPG edition! Casual body modification at different price points! The bearish member of our heroine's polycule flirting with the detective by means of a pot-enhanced therapy session!
Wood is a New Zealand writer with a UK publisher, so her New Carson can feel like the American equivalent of Ruritania. I enjoyed the book most when I thought of the setting as a movie set, rather than a literal attempt at prophecy: it's full of wisecracks, adventures, and commentary on what it's like to be not-quite-thirty now (as opposed to ten years from now).
(I read this book as a Netgalley ARC.)
Wood is a New Zealand writer with a UK publisher, so her New Carson can feel like the American equivalent of Ruritania. I enjoyed the book most when I thought of the setting as a movie set, rather than a literal attempt at prophecy: it's full of wisecracks, adventures, and commentary on what it's like to be not-quite-thirty now (as opposed to ten years from now).
(I read this book as a Netgalley ARC.)