This book seemed longer than 92k words? I must be slowing down.
Larson really has stood out in the Clarke's Years Best Sci Fi collections, of which I have read the 1st 6, bringing me up to 2020. This is Larson's 2nd & most recent novel. I guess if I want to read more of his stuff I will have to go back to the Year's Best collections.
Ymir is the frost giant of norse creation myths. In this book, it is an icy planet with lots of yummy minerals. The mining corporation is as nasty as you would imagine. The corporate enslavement technology is chilling. [Sorry for the bad pun.]
I guess that this is a riff on Beowulf. In this universe, there is advanced technology left behind by a disappeared alien race. Some of that are cyborgs - organic & machine components - very hard to kill. Of course they are called grendels. When a mining operation is attacked, the corporation calls in a grendel-killer. Our horribly flawed protagonist is a native of Ymir, and had noped to never return. He is really, really not popular.
Larson's writing often reminds me of Gibson's Neuromancer & its horribly flawed protagonist Case. This is high praise from me, the run at the end of Neuromancer is 1 of the most memorable action sequences in modern sci fi.
Anyway, I enjoyed the book. I still wonder why it felt more like 400 pages to me? The pacing was brisk. Hmmm, not a problem worth spending any time on. Moving right along ...
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