The city is water-logged Merovingen, on the world of Merovin, a human-settled planet now isolated and planet-bound after an alien war.The person is Altair Jones, daughter of Retribution Jones, walking a fine line between isolation and degradation. Altair Jones, who survives because she's a light sleeper, who runs deliveries on her small skip and has been alone since her mother's death when she was twelve. Getting by, trusting little, barely keeping herself whole.Altair Jones, who used to rescue kittens out of the stinking water. All the kittens would die, but she would still fish them out. One time she fished out someone's baby. He died too.This time Altair Jones fishes out a man. And he doesn't die.Mondragon, fine and full of secrets, hunted by faction after faction in a political tangle seemingly impossible to unravel.The story is full of boat-hooks and fire-bombs, desperate races by water, and the slow build of trust between two people of completely different backgrounds, with so much against them that it's clear from the start just how impossible they are.The book is the best damn thing I've read all year.
