The Iron Children

I enjoyed reading this, it was what I was hoping for when requesting this, I enjoyed getting to know Asher as a main character. It had a great concept and I was hooked in this universe, it was what I expected and really had a great time reading this. Rebecca Fraimow has a great writing style and it was what I was hoping for.

"She tried subvocalizing, formulating words in the back of her throat without speaking. Ah—we fell into the ravine somewhere around there, I think? In Tvell’s body, she looked down at the great gash in the landscape below her feet; in her own, she looked up. From neither set of eyes could she see the other—at least not without leaning Tvell’s heavy body forward, which she wasn’t going to do without a much better sense of how to safely balance it. All the others are with me, except for Dirk and Baselard."

This book was a really interesting examination of autonomy. It explored the discussions I was hoping I'd see in The First Sister (which I wasn't super into) in far fewer pages, but I would be doing this novella a disservice if I only compared it to existing works. Asher and Barghest, two of the POV characters, had an interesting and compelling dynamic. (Sidenote, I loved how Asher's dialogue was written). I liked how both their individual arcs and the development of their friendship served the themes of this story. At first, I was worried that three points of view might be a lot for such a short novella, but the multi-POV format worked really well for this story, and the author did some cool stuff with POV switches in one scene toward the end. This is a really cool, richly detailed novella that I will probably reread multiple times.