I wasn’t sure what to expect of this book. The first book of the series is all about a ships’ crew, and this book takes one of those characters, as well as a side character, and brings the action down to a planet. And I wasn’t sure I wanted to follow that journey – it’s all about the ship’s AI learning to adjust to being in a body, instead of the ship. (The whys of this make a lot more sense if you’ve read the first book.)
I really shouldn’t have worried about it – this book is just as cozy as the first, and has some lovely thoughts on what it really means to be a person. It’s interspersed with the back story of that side character, which turns out to be very interesting indeed. I was following along more to see how Jane became Pepper than necessarily how Sidra learned to cope with passing as “normal”. Granted, the beauty of this story is that it really asks, what is normal?
Definitely don’t read this if you want hard sci fi, but if you want a feel good story in sci fi guise, it’s great.