Less than two hours after listening to Our Opinion's Are Correct, Episode 130: What to watch and Read This Summer, I was driving home from Uncle Hugo's Science Fiction bookstore with a new copy of Counterweight, by Djuna, translated by Anton Hur. Around 16 hours later, after two sittings, I have just finished it, and am writing this review. Charlie Jane Andres and Analee Newitz were absolutely right that, and I'm paraphrasing here, this is a fast-paced novel with lots of interesting twists and turns. It is not super long, and I would have welcomed more, but I'm also not unhappy with the length.

At its heart, this is a mystery with some important (but pretty hand-wavy) science-fiction elements. There are several important non-science-fiction elements that work in concert:

1. The point-of-view character is the head of an internal "intelligence agency" within a large corporation. A spy, essentially.
2. Notably, the POV character makes it clear from the very beginning of the novel that the truth is often manufactured by their organization. There are people created by the corporation who only exist on paper. The character's own identity is their second, and one they took on when they became employed by the corporation. Also, we never learn their name.
3. To make it all the more meta, the author, Djuna, has been writing for 20 years under that assumed name, and ostensibly nobody knows their true identity.

It's all pretty fun, and I could go on, but it would get into spoiler territory. Worth a read, for sure.