Company Town, by Madeline Ashby

Company Town by Madeline Ashby

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I came across this refreshing piece from the 2016 Locus Awards listings. While it didn't win it was a good effort and an entertaining read. The protagonist, Hwa, has Sturge-Weber syndrome, which comes with a large port-wine stain on the affected side of the face. This comes up over and over in the book--in the narrative one gets a little tired of it, until you think about how people with facial deformities are actually viewed and what it's like to go through life with one. The central trope in the book--a "clean" protagonist in a world of highly augmented people, who overcomes odds to do better than the augmented ones--is one we've seen several times in SF. So are highly stratified oligarchies and, well, company towns. This book doesn't break a lot of ground there, and the ending is somewhat weird and contrived, but in between there's a lot of good gritty humor. Hwa has learned how to grind her way through life, and it makes the people around her like her and want to help her more than she knows. This gratitude element is very subtly carried off and makes it worth getting through the somewhat spare narration and plot softness. I enjoyed it all the way through.



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