I still think Passenger's m/m ship was awkwardly done and would have worked much better platonically Winger, of course, pulled a Bury Your Gays Grasshopper Jungle was perhaps the closest Smith came to creating a character who reflected my sexuality with Austin Szerba, but even then he kinda relied too much on the Cheating Bisexual trope. As well as you can expect given that Smith is literally the original "Keep YA Weird" guy, though over the years, as Smith's books have actually helped me accept my own bisexuality, I've felt that he's not had as great a handle on the subject as he thinks he does. Then there's Smith's usual incorporation of queer male sexuality, which, as always, comes off as more than a bit weird. Hell, in the very first chapter, "spirit animal" gets appropriated in dialogue, which is sure to rile up a lot of people - even if Billy, the appropriator in question, goes and takes it back upon seeing that the animal he liked so much is an incongruously carnivorous giraffe. That same meta-humor might get the book in trouble with certain online types because Smith has stated that a lot of the cannibalistic chaos of the robots on this doomed space cruiser was inspired, somewhat, by people who came down on him for problematic behavior at times in the last couple of years. The story here is more cohesive than The Alex Crow and the Marbury Lens duology, and it feels more meta-humorous than Grasshopper Jungle. It's been a bit since I read an Andrew Smith novel, and after picking up this ARC at work (luckily a second one came someone else took the first one before I could), I'm pretty glad I took another chance on his latest.
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