Catfishing on Catnet, by Naomi Kritzer

[mrissa]

Review copy provided by the publisher. Also the author is a personal friend.

This. This book is so good. It is so wholesome and so loving. Scary things happen in this book, but there is a constant stream of friendship and support--not flawless, but loving human support. And, not at all incidentally, loving inhuman support. Because this is a book about a young AI finding its place in the world, figuring out its possibilities and limitations. It is very much, very literally, a teen AI novel.

So. A young AI and a teenage human have formed strong internet friendships with some additional humans. They're both dealing with a lot of stuff. The AI: what are the bounds of ethical interaction, how does friendship work, where can I get more cat pics. The human: ordinary high school stuff is far worse when your mom has kept you moving from town to town multiple times a year to keep your abusive father from finding you. Together they fight crime! Sort of! And also make art and friends and take care of animals and--

Look, this is a very hard review for me to write, because basically this book made me incoherently happy start to finish, and it is going to be SO HARD waiting to post this until a sensible time close to the release date instead of just collaring strangers at the bank and the post office and telling them to READ IT.

REEEEEEEAD IIIIIIT.

I honestly don't know if I've ever encountered fiction that portrays the nature of close (core!) internet-mediated friendships this accurately before. This is an emotional reality of my contemporary life that feels completely untouched by most fiction. And it is so great.

Comments

[oracne]

This sounds GREAT.

[gwynnega]

Ordered!

[sartorias]

LOVED it.

[jesse_the_k]

Ordered, thanks for letting me know!

[davidgoldfarb]

Pre-ordered months ago, but glad to hear that someone whose taste I respect likes it. (I have one of her earlier fantasy novels on Mt. Tsundoku, but no clue when I'll get to it.

[quiara]

This sounds really, really good. I find a lot of my fave books in YA these days — and I think part of it is because a lot of queer/female/femme authors are shoved into YA whether they technically belong there or not. It’s got some amazing offerings.

[mrissa]

I think that's definitely true in reviews/assumptions, sometimes true in publishing itself and sometimes not. (Example: Valerie Valdes's book is published by an adult imprint and is very much an adult book, so her publishers know that this is not YA, while reviewers...vary.) This is a case where the book definitely belongs there--it is YA of the very best kind.

[quiara]

Oh, yes, I was talking mainly about the way reviewers treat those categories more than anything else. It’s just generally assumed by the public and a substantial number of reviewers that if the author is queer/woman/femme, it’s YA — especially if it touches SFF.

[lydy]

I loved this book. I also loved the way the relationship between the protagonist and her mother. It's got its problems, some of them just normal teen stuff, some of the stress-induced, but it's clear that there's a genuine love, there. And her mom, rather that being the normal sort of terrible, is someone who is making hard choices in difficult circumstances, not all of them entirely wise.

Man, I need to read it again. It was water in a dry land.

[mrissa]

Too often either the parent or the child in a fictional relationship is an archetype rather than a person, and in this one they are both people and it's so good.

[abracanabra]

OMG the moment when her friend was like, "My gas tank is full, because I planned in advance."

<3 <3 <3

I accept that I may be the only one for whom that was such A Thing.

[mrissa]

No, I was also pretty psyched about that.

[abracanabra]

:)