In a society where humans have advanced technology so far that we can reach the moons of Jupiter, gender and sexuality is an issue. People can change physical sex however they wish, or even have the organs of both, but humanity has come much further in bioengineering than that.
On Jupiter-I, a space station in orbit around Jupiter, we find the Rounds. They are so-called true intersex, and they naturally have both male and female traits. They are humans whose DNA is different from the people who created them. However, not all are happy about the engineered humans, and now Jupiter-I is targeted by the terrorist group The Vessel of Life.
THOUGHTS
I’m by no means a fan of science fiction, but when Humble Bundle had the Haikasoru book bundle up, this was a book that really caught my attention and I decided to read it first.
And I’m glad I did.
The main theme is gender and sexuality and it makes for a really interesting story and the implementation of it was well-made. The characters are also well fleshed out and you get to see the entire situation from several points of view, which makes everyone very human and relatable, as you can understand the characters’ way of thinking. That’s a really good thing, as I feel it’s easy to lose humanity in books.
I can also give my approval of the translation. I did notice a possible editing mistake where the use of a gender neutral pronoun was inconsistent with what was later used, but it’s an easy mistake and I wasn’t particularly bothered by it. I just thought it got a little strange from the reader’s point of view when a person told another it was okay to use a pronoun, but it was later changed to something else for the rest of the book.
What I didn’t like was all the stuff that had to do with space. I’m really not a fan of stuff like that. Traveling in space or living on other planets just gets too out there and possibly not very realistic, and I like things more down to earth (no pun intended). But the only real downside is probably that I have yet to understand why the reader followed one of the characters in the book. I didn’t feel it gave anything to the book in particular, but it was a really great book with a very intriguing overall theme that makes you think about things.
I guess I need to give a fair warning though. This book does contain a disturbing scene of sexual assault, but I find it worth reading regardless.
Also, a huge thank you to Amaya who donated so I could get the book bundle. I’m really happy about that.
I know people are interested in knowing what’s going on in my life and I can tell you a little boy joined our party on October 3rd. I don’t have much time to play games or read, but manage to get a few hours in for mobile games or reading on my phone or eReader every day. But it makes sense I don’t have much time. Babies can take a lot of your time and I have to do chores every now and then as well. I will try to get reviews up though, but getting time to actually write them is hard. And of course, I need to remember to write them before I start forgetting about the book or game. Just this review has taken me lots of short periods of time when I used Evernote on my phone to write most of it and then basically copy pasted it into a post. *awkwardly laughs a little*
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All posts are unscheduled while I’m on maternal leave, but I still use tags that relate to certain series. Such tags include Mahou Shoujo Monday and Crappy Android Otome Games. Some new may appear as time passes, who knows?
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