A very sad SF novel about the obligations of culture, family, and situational necessity, set in a future Morocco. Hariba is biologically programmed to be an indentured servant; Akhmin is an artificial person bred to serve humans. They're drawn to one another, but even if they can find freedom, it's difficult for either of them to distinguish love from obligation.

I read McHugh's short story "Nekropolis" years ago and adored it. The prose is spare and beautiful and the characters are alive on the page. The novel, with its multiple points of view, is bleaker but more complex. Akhmin emerges as the most interesting character; his perspective is brilliantly alien, yet we empathize with them during his toughest decisions.

Additionally, I have now read a few romances featuring androids, cyborgs, etc. (hint: have written one) and I was so relieved that Akhmin had a complex inner life and was not merely an object on which our oppressed protagonist projects her fantasies of desire and control. (Obviously he's that too.)

The plot has the trademark McHugh elements of structural oppression, prolonged suffering, bad things getting worse, and characters muddling through to a possibly but not necessarily brighter future. It's probably her darkest novel, and I can't say I found the end totally satisfactory, partly because of the shape of the story. We never return to Akhmin's perspective, and the story felt incomplete without it.

Alas, I have now read every novel by one of my favorite writers! Someone pay this lady to write another book. ( )

A servant-girl from an oppressive Islamic-like country falls in love with a *harni* or artificial person, like a Blade Runner replicant. Each chapter ripples out showing the effects of her decisions her family and friends, and on the *harni* himself. Well-written, the book examines the divide between rich and poor, real and artificial persons, and the life of a refugee. ( )

I read the short story version of this in one of the Tiptree anthologies, and immediately ordered the novel. However, after finishing the full-length novel, I think that it was stronger and more satisfying to read the short story. ( )

This book, set in a future Morocco, shows that, regardless of advances in technology, the basic human experience often changes very little. Her main character, the young Muslim woman Hariba, has voluntarily sold herself into servitude; her loyalty to her employers assured by chemical/biological means. However, when she falls in love with Akhmim, a lab-created biological "AI" who seems all too human, the two escape their employer/owners, risking jail or death...
Regardless of the book's exotic tech, Hariba's experiences are those shared by all too many refugees, poltical and otherwise, today. McHugh speaks delicately and effectively about the realities of life in an oppressive regime, the fact that even those who are extremely conservative can fall afoul of the law in such situations, about the difference in perception between well-meaning liberals with high political ideals and the priorities and concerns of those they are trying to help, about the difficulties faced by those who have left others behind to face the repercussions of their rebellion.... ( )

Well written and powerful, but I stalled out after it told the stories of several characters, and kept finding new ones, to whom bad things kept happening. I do want to finish it sometime. ( )