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I recently watched the show Dark Matter, where some alternate universes are just a hair's divergence from ours, and this racist, hyper-patriotic, child-separating, book-banning reality with Handmaid's Tale and Fahrenheight 451 vibes almost looks like yesterday's news (and as the author points out in the afterword, historically it is). Despite the story being a heartfelt cry of rage, the tone is measured, beautifully written with some nice turns of phrase and some passages that just flow, almost compelling us to persevere.

Noirish and somewhat grisly, but with a compensating sardonic and lighthearted, even romantic tone, great dialogue (with banter!) and the smudgy, scratchy yet colorful art is a perfect match.

I've read a lot of great books in the science fiction section that I wouldn't really call science fiction, but this is science fiction in all the right ways. Fun characters (human and non - I found myself wishing for a listing of aliens, I was having trouble keeping track), deep thoughts on society and politics, plenty of action, and cool science - a key character in its own right and not just window dressing. Plenty of digs at AI, too, which, considering this book was published twenty-five years ago, shows good scifi stands the test of time.