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I'm not usually one to pry back a narrative looking for the underlying experiences that informed it but this seems especially likely to have been a story of punk life in downtown Los Angeles in the 80s recoded as intergalactic sci-fi, and since I'm much more sympathetic to messy punk novels than middling sci-fi novels (despite the silly ultra-cool cover somehow calling me over to this obscurity in a book shop in Hawaii), this is actually completely in its favor. None of the elements see that much development, but as a palimpsest of city street life concerns (poverty, class, survival, work, exploitation, maintaining one's dignity under duress), with one of those overriding L.A. themes, real estate development, plus some commentary on racism and identity, the author's concerns here ring true, and perhaps lived. That the sci-fi context allows certain more desperate bits to be heightened into chilling brutality makes them no less believable. Enough to give this a gritty engagement despite flaws: the occasional Mary Sue elements the sci-fi context provides (how do Shade's actions really justify her importance in these events?) or glaring fails to provide (why is Shade the coolest in Deadtown? why does this matter at all?!), and a few yawning plot holes. It really feels like any weakness of the plot is a result of its actual extraneousness to the core events of one character's escape from her stifling earth-bound (read: suburban) life, attempts to make it in an unwelcoming world, extremely toxic friendship (this one has to have been lived, the characterization is so much more specific than any other and it feels almost familiar), actual camaraderie of the down-and-out, and near self-destructions.