I'm not going to lie, I found this book kind of troubling.What I think it accomplishes well is the sense of setting. Not the setting itself, because I feel like what we had from this work wasn't so much an exploration of a place or how a culture as presented in the novel could come to be, but more impressions of things. The clash of creole and a sort of Huck Finn and a sort of Antebellum slavery lifestyle was very different, not at all what I was expecting when I picked this work up.That said, I think Brooke would have been better served deciding a few things from the get go, because I think they very much change what his novel is saying. As much as science fiction can be a great place for commentary without attaching too many stigma of discussing real world events and opinions or accusing anyone of being wrong, I think there are elements related to the 'science' of work that confuse any commentary the author was trying to make.Namely, the core concept itself: Your genetics can be manipulated by any number of sources in this setting. One moment you own a number of 'pups' or the very much slave race of this setting, your own land and have a clan name, the next you are a pup yourself with essentially no rights and no way to advance yourself other than escape in hopes of finding a society of your own kind who live on their own terms. In case you weren't sure exactly where this was coming from in American history, the method to do so is called the "Harmony Road" and has very opaque suggestion that it is referring to the Underground Rail Road as a concept.That in itself would be no problem. The problem is that pups are genetically predisposed to docility, obeying true humans no matter the punishment they've taken from them, and lack of intelligence. This isn't just if you've been born a pup, but implied to take place if you're changed into one by the many infection vectors of this setting. It's to the point that changing, as one character does, from a violent slave owner to a very docile pup seems to have erased his memory, and that many who are changed over in such a way often 'lose themselves.' An exception to this is one of the main characters.So, slavery is wrong. This book is not written with the intent of justifying slavery I would certainly hope, I don't know what exactly Brooke may have been thinking while writing this work but I'm pretty sure that isn't one of them.However, I do feel this book has a theme of mutable identity, which is a concern often linked to slavery narratives. This I feel is where the book is letting us down. Some characters, for some reason, seem to become a total tabula rasa when making any kind of genetic change, as though they've suddenly forgotten everything about themselves, while others seem as though they're barely affected by the changes. Some have this startling midpoint: they now speak the pup-creole and are significantly docile around pure humans, etc. What I really want to know is should this be interpreted as a product of the genetic transformation that occurs or a product of some kind of mental... I'm not sure, trigger perhaps? That is totally a product of the mind attempting to cope with what's happened? That or we'll just have to take the narrative at face value... which is hard when it's making very clear indications of linking itself to actual occurrences in human history.Not to say this is an overtly bad book or anything. I just feel that this problem was key to my experience, so distracting that no matter the other merits of the writing escape me for the most part. While I don't say it's a bad read, I do say it's a very interesting concept that given more decisive writing in certain places could have been stellar.
