Thank you to Erewhon Books for sending me an advance copy of The All-Consuming World for review!
Decades after their disastrous final mission, the Dirty Dozen, a crew of broken, diminished outlaws, must get back together to rescue a comrade they thought was dead. But they aren’t the only ones in pursuit; the AI controlling the galaxy will do whatever it takes to keep humankind from coming out on top. The reunited but still fragmented Dirty Dozen must battle their own demons and the AI that want them dead to settle their affairs and bring their own home.
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First thing’s first: I had no idea going into this one that the cast of The All-Consuming World was nearly immortal cyborgs/clones. Queer criminals, yes. Up for one last heist, sure. But I sure didn’t know that their last mission took place 40 years ago! Second thing: I’ve been waiting for this book for what feels like forever.
Thankfully, it was so much more than I anticipated! Cassandra Khaw’s debut is a bloody, science-fictional and fantastic take on the heist story, and I’m thrilled I got the chance to dive right in.
Readers get the story of The All-Consuming World mostly through Maya, a cybernetically-enhanced mercenary prone to violence and intense swearing. Maya has died and come back countless times over the years, often painfully. She considers herself a living gun for Rita, the terrifying yet charismatic leader of the Dirty Dozen, to aim and use.
Maya was chemically altered to be unhealthily devoted to Rita. She’s the last member of the crew to remain by her side after everything. Maya’s perspective is the perfect way to experience the damaged world and characters Khaw created.
I can’t talk about this book without mentioning Khaw’s fascinating writing style. It’s delightfully dense, mixing poetic description and gleeful profanity. Anachronistic slang and technical detail appear seamlessly side by side. There were even a few words I had to stop and look up.
The rhythm and strangeness reminded me of Tamsyn Muir’s The Locked Tomb series (starring my all-time fave Gideon Nav). Despite the complexity of the prose, the story still moves along at an incredible pace.
Read The All-Consuming World if you’re looking for page-turning science fiction, queer cyborg mercenaries and the question of what it means to be human. This journey is both dark and tons of fun, with a huge cliffhanger of an ending waiting for you.
The All-Consuming World comes out on September 7 from publisher Erewhon Books. You can preorder the book now from your local independent bookstore or Bookshop.org.
TW: abusive/co-dependent relationships, amputation, gore, suicide, surgical procedures, violence
This article was originally published on 8/11/21.
https://www.geekgirlauthority.com/gays-in-space-6-queer-sci-fi-books/
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