This book was really excellent, and a bit of relief to read after two rather dry hard SF type novels. The book is a fairly intense story of one character, "Jackal" Sagura, who starts off as the celebrated "Hope" of Ko Corporation, and falls from grace rather badly. The highlight of the book is way it portrays the strong emotions of many of the characters, particularly Jackal.

There's not much in the way of subplots or complication, but it's nicely written and very interesting, though the first part of the novel is mostly setup, and the good parts come later, particularly in the middle section.

This appears to be the author's first published novel, so it'll be interesting to see what she comes up with next.

Trivia: She is the partner of another excellent SF writer, Nicola Griffith, whose novels I've also enjoyed.