Company Town by Madeline Ashby

[lightreads]

Company Town

2/5. Scifi about the rare unaugmented woman hired as a bodyguard for the child of her town's new corporate owners.

This book may have made more sense? At some point? Before a lot of explanations and connective tissue was edited out, maybe. As it is, it's a whole spaghetti of ideas – some of them interesting – splatted at a wall, and I . . . think? I have a general grasp on what happened.

The whole thing is messy and undercooked, and I include in that the treatment of the main character's disability. There are interesting elements here – such as the augmented eyes of almost everyone skipping over her because the computers don't recognize her face as human (or maybe because disabled people are deliberately edited out? This, as usual, is entirely unclear, even by implication). But I found the general treatment of her view of herself to be predictable and uninteresting. Spare me from the self-hatred mines, and also the effects of the love of a good (able-bodied) man, sigh.

Comments

[readerjane]

Was the woman chosen as a bodyguard *because* sure was Invisible to most? Seems like, if one needed a bodyguard for one's child, a show of deterrence might be more effective than someone who might spot a kidnapper unseen, but had no ninja skills to fight them with.

[lightreads]

Yes, she was, though she also had combat skills. But as with much of this book, a clear explanation was not forthcoming.