A novella, definitely. A snapshot of a snapshot. Lunar colony, years beyond. A great experiment to reach zero state, a newly purchased lot of 420 frozen head corpsicles and new politics with a reason to cover things up.

It's short, it's rather simple, but there is nothing wrong with that. Bear has a good sense of the human touch without having to describe molecular interactions. His books as far as I've read are comfort reads within a sci-fi realm. Not bubble gum, but I don't hit Wikipedia every other page because my physics is below passing.

This book covers some interesting characters, a bit of rambunctious naivety and how aging strips us of much of these things for traded hard wisdom. Then a moment happens, and this is really all just a reflection--but we knew this all along. What happened, something.. something that is not really good at finding vocabulary to encapsulate, and that's ok. I liked the characters in the time I briefly knew them.

Curious where his next "series" number goes. These all seem so very disconnected. Same universe but vastly different perspectives within time scale of events. I'd really hazard at this point there is no reason to read in any order.