Posthuman Blues

I'm getting back into my science fiction-and-coffee mode. This evening I finished "Hominids" and started "Child of the River" by Paul J. McAuley. While "Hominids" was a good book, it holds little in the way of surprise; it's essentially a "stranger in a strange land" story and shares much of that template's limitations.

"Child of the River" (the first book of the Confluence trilogy) is something else altogether. Seemingly spliced from the novels of Mervyn Peake, Jack Vance and Michael Swanwick, it has a cryptic allegorical flavor delivered in scenes that are equal parts "steampunk" and space-opera.