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This was my first exposure to Tidbeck. I knew nothing about her or the book before I started it. I had just gone on vacation and when I realized I was reading something rather bleak and Scandinavian I almost put it down. It didn't seem like the right fit. But there was just enough weirdness in those early chapters to get me to stick around.

Dystopia is popular these days, and this is certainly a speculative dystopia. But I enjoyed it immensely. While reading it I kept commenting about it to my traveling companion, I spent the first third saying how I really didn't know what was happening and I wasn't sure how I felt. And then I spent the last third saying whoa it got really good and whoa what is even happening right now. It is rare to read a speculative novel that feels like it's doing something different. Of course, it also reminded me of a lot of great early sci-fi, especially those set on a bleak and sparse Mars, which feels an awful lot like the setting here in Amatka.

I don't want to tell you much at all about the society it's set in because finding all that out is part of the joy of reading it. And even when you feel like you've got a pretty good handle on how things are run and you're wondering why you're reading a memo about the ingredients in soap products, you realize that there are a few little things that are just not quite right but you don't really know why yet. I kept reading for the answer to that why, and often when I've read a book that nags at me like that the eventual reveal isn't worth the buildup. But not this time. That feeling that maybe you've got this figured out except still maybe not ends up leading to a few pivotal and crucial reveals about the world the book is set in that feel new and deep with meaning.

This is also not one of those let's-wrap-all-this-up-in-a-big-bow novels. It will not all be explained. It will not all make total sense. But the last few chapters leave a searing vision in your mind. If you're at all like me you will talk about it for days. I really must find more Tidbeck.