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One of my favorite subgenres is one I call "WTAF?!" It is the kind of book that gives you this response and it isn't a genre with a lot of rules except for the fact that there aren't any rules. The joy of it is not ever knowing what will happen, not quite ever getting oriented. It is also a pretty male-dominated genre, probably because it has its roots in another male-dominated genre: horror. So I welcome THE SEEP (which joins another female-authored WTAF?! book I've read recently, the eerily similarly titled THE NEED by Helen Phillips) to the family. It also brings a little jolt of diversity with its protagonist: a Native American trans woman, Trina.

Trina is someone who understands the desire to change into who you really are. But in the near-future world Trina lives in, alien life called The Seep has become ingrained in human life that creates a whole new kind of change. The Seep wants only to make humans happy and gives them the power not only to heal themselves or achieve a happiness high, it also lets you transform your body and your entire life. At first this opens up vast opportunities for a better life, but as time passes Trina--a doctor whose services now mostly consist of just healing people with The Seep--grows dissatisfied. When her wife decides to undertake a particularly drastic modification, Trina is thrown adrift. But this new society does not have room for depression or grief and Trina finds herself on a kind of quest even if she doesn't know her goal.

This is a surreal and fluid story, where the rules of how The Seep works are never quite clear so the reader is constantly finding themselves in unexpected and strange situations. Like Trina, we feel unsettled and unsteady. It's beautifully weird to follow Trina's journey and you have to be willing to sit back and let it unfold. Sometimes it feels more like a new kind of performance art, and that isn't a bad thing. There's so much weirdness but the structure and prose is mostly traditional, so while it will probably appeal to fans of writers like Samanta Schweblin, it will also work for a lot of sci-fi readers who enjoy unusual alien stories and queer narratives.