Finder Library Volume 1

Weird, pretty wonderful, slow, frustrating, did I say weird? WEIRD. I missed weird. This book brought weird back. Thanks, book!

We're dropped in media res into a far future weirdo landscape; to make matters worse, the plot is circuitous, characters ambiguous and complicated and ever-changing, and GOD THERE IS SO MUCH CHATTERING MUSIC PLAYING. I could have done without the music. But this was a slow-burn of frustrated “wtf”-ness that then, finally, sublimated into something exciting and fun and strange. There are heaps of endnotes. I'll get to them, maybe.

I kind of DON'T want to explain the plot, since I think the confusion is part of the sell. But this is a fun, very-1990s counterculture super far future sci-fi piece. The author/illustrator/everything-er, Carla Speed McNeil, calls it “aboriginal sci-fi”? Somewhere? Citation needed. It does have lots of mysticism, but also lots of grungy jeans and cigarette smoke. We follow sexy dude, Jaeger, a half-“Ascian” (Native American?) “Finder” (scout, though he feels like a woodsy private eye) as he flits around the weird dome city of Anvard. We meet a family of three sisters and a shell-shocked, traumatized mom, hounded by their abusive, unsettling shell-shocked dad. There are lion people. There was a raccoon guy. There are “clans”, which feel like castes, and waaaay too much inter-clan homogeneity, seriously, people, genetic diversity is a good thing. There was some AI. But mostly the world was a broken down mess, kinda post-apocalyptic, and very critiquing of late capitalist USA!USA!USA! It's not really dark, the tone feels mostly cheeky.