A second strong traditional SF thriller from Palmer in the last week or so, following ‘Fly Away Home’ in Interzone #251.
Like that story, this features a strong female central character, evil corporations, spacesuits and threat, with Cjoi the sole remaining child of over a hundred kidnapped, or bought, genmod and used as expendable resources in mining the upper reaches of a gas giant.
There are some good stylistic touches, decent dialogue, and only a little bit of infodumping in order to get the background across. Me, I’d have sent it back and asked to have the story at greater length, to avoid having to have a lecture theatre presentation to get the background in (and also in order to have the pleasure of reading a longer story).
