I liked this book a lot less than I expected to. It's won a lot of prizes and got some great reviews, and touches on a lot of subjects I generally enjoy, but in the end I was disappointed. The setting is interesting - sort of post-environmental collapse future, where genetic engineering has clearly caused terrible plagues as well as being a potential savior. Some reviews described it as cyberpunk, but it isn't really; futuristic and high tech yes, but I don't get all the comparisons to William Gibson.

Anyway, without too many spoilers, the plot loosely revolves around a genetically modified woman called Emiko who is considered sub-human and soulless because she was created rather than being "natural". She isn't the clear central character but most of the other characters and the plot are ultimately somehow affected by her actions in one way or another. She could have been a much more interesting character than she actually is and could have told a much more compelling story about the fight between engineering and training vs free will and determination, but instead she seemed to be used simply to forward the plot and for cheap effect and I was kind of left feeling that the author had just used her and treated her as badly as most of the characters in the book do.

Most of the book is actually about the convoluted schemes and political machinations of various groups of mostly unsympathetic characters, many of whom just seem to die or disappear without explanation by the end with no real satisfactory conclusion. There are too many plot threads that just taper off and never come to anything, and the ending of the book itself just kind of drifts away. I enjoyed the novel's setting, in terms of the futuristic plague-scarred world, but I was left unimpressed and unsatisfied by the characters and plot overall.