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Jump to navigationJump to searchThe Many Selves of Katherine North by Emma Geen (view source)
Revision as of 16:03, 29 August 2020
, 16:03, 29 August 2020no edit summary
It's not just foxes; Kit has also been a mouse and a bird, and readers follow her on her temporary transformations into a spider, an octopus, a seal and a rattlesnake. The ostensible reason behind the jumps is to better understand animal behaviour and the impact that humans are having on vulnerable populations. Thus, during her eight hours as a spider Kit picks up tips on weaving technology; her time as an octopus shows her how oil drilling is negatively affecting the species.
However, Kit's employer, ShenCorp, hopes to expand its operations. They plan on offering 'Consumer Phenomenautism'. Trips into the consciousness of endangered animals are soon to become a tourist experience. ShenCorp is even investigating creepy human-to-human transfer, too. All of this is top-secret, but presented to Kit as an opportunity for promotion. They want her and Buckley to develop the customer experience, including pre-jump testing. She'll miss the in-depth research involved in jumps and feels uneasy at the thought of using animals for financial gain, but ShenCorp makes it clear that, as an aging ageing phenomenaut (most of their employees are younger teens), this is her last and only chance.
Like a lot of speculative fiction, this debut novel combines believable technology with far-fetched scenarios. There's a lot of made-up jargon that can initially be a challenge to plough through, but once you get the hang of it you can suspend disbelief and happily follow Kit along on her jumps. All the same, the way the novel is structured makes it repetitive and disorienting. You constantly have to work out who/what Kit is now, which makes the action hard to follow. A simple date, time and location marker at the head of every chapter or section would go a long way towards clearing this up.
Further reading suggestion: Another literary work of science fiction we can recommend is [[The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber]]. If you can't get enough of foxes in fiction, you'll want to read [[Glow by Ned Beauman]].
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[[Category:Literary Fiction]]
