"The vivid, unusual, stirring characters make it a piquant and often enjoyable read despite the pointed bleakness of the setting...It's structurally and thematically daring and manages to include a little bit of hope while leveling a devastating critique at racism and fascism."
--Los Angeles Times, recommended by Malka Older

Included in Los Angeles Review of Books's Reading the Rainbow: A Pride Reading List (Blue + Violet)

Included in the American Library Association's GLBTRT 2019 Over the Rainbow List

Included in Hypable's list of book recommendations related to Captain Marvel

Included in BuzzFeed's 20 Books to Read if You Want to Get Into Black Sci-Fi and Fantasy

Included in NBC News's Harry Potter alternatives: Trans-inclusive fantasy and sci-fi books

"This novel from an exciting new voice follows Aster, who lives in the slums of a spaceship that is escorting the last survivors of humanity to a Promised Land--a journey that has taken decades so far. The vessel is segregated and cruel, and as she tries to escape, she starts discovering dark connections between her own mother's death and the fate of the ship's sovereign. Solomon has already been called a successor to Octavia Butler, rightly so."
--Elle UK

"Rivers Solomon's debut science fiction novel is cunning, dark, and unapologetic; atmospheric and visceral; the kind of story that pulls you in and doesn't let go. Aboard the HSS Matilda, a spaceship in the future, Solomon and her characters deftly tackle race, identity, sexuality, gender, poverty, and discrimination, all with thoughtful insight and thrilling intensity. This is a difficult work that pays off; the rare kind of book that stays with you for years. You should read it now--I plan to read it again."
--Shondaland

Selected by Montreal's Drawn + Quarterly for their Strange Futures Book Club

"This book thoughtfully explores race, gender, and much more, while delivering a story that you won't be able to put down."
--Bustle

"This is a dark book in which the characters are treated brutally, but also a powerful one. For me, the nuances of how Aster's peers deal with mental illness, neurodivergence, and trauma are especially fascinating."
--Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog

"An Unkindness of Ghosts is a debut of a powerful new voice in science fiction, and a must-read for fans of Ursula Le Guin, N.K. Jemisin, Octavia Butler, and Margaret Atwood."
--BookRiot, Included in 8 Great Reads to Get Into Afrofuturism

"Perfect for: Readers who are looking for a space opera that tackles themes surrounding identity in thoughtful and fascinating ways."
--Bookish, included in 4 Space Operas to Celebrate May the 4th

"With an Afrofuturist premise grounded in a queer neuroatypical worldview, An Unkindness of Ghosts is the post-Butler novel many of us have been waiting for."
--Strange Horizons

"My recommendation for today is to check out An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon, which made all kinds of sci-fi and fantasy 'best' lists of last year. It's about a stratified society aboard a spacecraft, and it is intensely thought-provoking."
--LeVar Burton Reads (podcast)

"Because the unjust society of the generation ship Matilda--divided by race, class, and religion--is deeply detailed, and uncomfortably close to home."
--Barnes & Noble

"Solomon's evocation of this society is so sharply detailed and viscerally realized, the characters so closely observed, the individual scenes so tightly structured, that the novel achieves surprising power and occasional brilliance...Aster [is] one of the more memorable characters in recent SF, and it's enough, in the end, to make An Unkindness of Ghosts among the most provocative and fiercely passionate of recent generation starship tales, and Solomon among the most distinctive new voices to emerge this year."
--Locus

"Solomon's big, unflinching and poetically detailed sci-fi debut tells the story of Aster Grey, an orphan raised on the slavery deck of a starship called the HSS Matilda as she searches for answers to her mother's death and the mystery of the forces who control the starship. Aster is both neuroatypical and queer, and these elements of her characterization work seamlessly and nonexploitatively into a plot that mirrors so many of our own world's greatest injustices, probing at our ideas about classism, racism, abuse and tyranny. A stunning first novel by a writer I can't wait to see more from."
--Them, included in 10 Books That Stole Our Queer Hearts in 2017

Included in a roundup of the Reading Women Podcast, Must-Read Fantasy Novels by Women

"This striking debut novel, set aboard a generation ship where white supremacists enslave black laborers, combines sharp allegory with poetic metaphor. Aster Grey, a literal-minded medic, hopes to undermine the ruling Sovereignty with the help of notes left by her mother, but decoding them is an almost impossible challenge. Solomon addresses numerous daunting topics with incision and insight in this stunning achievement."
--Publishers Weekly, Best Book of the Year, Science Fiction/Fantasy

"Harrowing and beautiful, this is SF at its best: showing the possible future but warning of the danger of bringing old prejudices and cruelties to that new world. While a story about enslaved people in space could be a one-note polemic, the fully rounded characters bring nuance and genuine pathos to this amazing debut."
--Library Journal, Starred Review

"Aster was born on the lower decks of the USS Matilda, a space vessel searching for a habitable planet after an ecological disaster on Earth. Only Aster grasps the means of melding science, tradition, and spirituality to heal from generational trauma so the ship can return safely."
--Library Journal, from a February 2019 feature on Afrofuturism

"Solomon's distyopian fantasy stars quietly rebellious Aster, whose family has lived for generations in the hold of the creaky HSS Matilda, putatively carrying the last of humanity to a Promised Land."
--Library Journal, Included in Barbara Hoffert's Debut Novels spotlight

"Solomon debuts with a raw distillation of slavery, feudalism, prison, and religion that kicks like rotgut moonshine...Stunning."
--Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

"Infused with the spirit of Octavia Butler and loaded with meaning for the present day, An Unkindness of Ghosts will appeal to a wide variety of readers. Solomon's impassioned, speculative, literary book is sorely needed on library shelves."
--Booklist

"Rivers Solomon is a bold new voice in speculative fiction. This startling debut delves into issues of class, race and gender on a futuristic spaceship whose society mimics the antebellum American South...Though shaped like the past transported into the future, Solomon's narrative seethes with underpinnings of the present carried to the extreme, a police state where women have lost reproductive rights and people of color face servitude and constant brutality. Complex and prophetic, An Unkindness of Ghosts will have readers cheering Aster as she fights for her freedom."
--Shelf Awareness

"With An Unkindness of Ghosts, Rivers Solomon inarguably shows themselves to be a literary child of genre leader Octavia E. Butler...Suffused with the past, the present, and the future of human experiences in its events, An Unkindness of Ghosts launches the career of a brilliantly gifted and important new writer in science fiction."
--Foreword Reviews, Starred Review

"The HSS Matilda is a well-crafted world, and...the diversity of the people who inhabit it--their various sexual and gender identities, physical abilities, and psychological burdens--is refreshingly visible and vital even as they face brutal discrimination for their differences. An entertaining novel that does not neglect the vitality of its story while probing society’s assumptions."
--Kirkus Reviews

"The HSS Matilda is a generation ship organized much like the antebellum South. Embroiled in a grudge with a brutal overseer and sowing the seeds of civil war, sharecropper Aster learns there may be a way off the ship if she's willing to fight for it."
--Publishers Weekly; included in Fall 2017 Adult Announcements, Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror

"A Generation Ship story like no other...Remarkable."
--Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog

"Transposing the cruelties of a Southern plantation to outer space, this book was the best debut I read this year. The white people on the massive spaceship Matilda's upper decks live in luxury and keep the black people on the lower decks enslaved. Aster is black, neuroatypical, ambiguously gendered according to her society's mores, and an orphan of the lower decks. While an outsider in her social groups, she is also a medical genius, and with the support and friendship of a light-skinned surgeon from the upper decks, she navigates Matilda's horrors to bring succour and healing where she can."
--NPR, Book Concierge Best Books of 2017

"In Rivers Solomon's An Unkindness of Ghosts, a generation starship has left the ruined Earth behind: the senior crew are all white supremacists, while dark-skinned people are kept below decks as slave labor. In this unflinching debut Solomon invites comparisons with Octavia Butler."
--The Guardian, Best Book of the Year / Science Fiction and Fantasy

"Solomon's strong characters, led by Aster herself, make this a deeply affecting tale that is far more than a simple allegory of injustice."
--Chicago Tribune

"Solomon's work earns comparisons to some of the biggest names in literature: Octavia Butler, Colson Whitehead, and even the lyricism of Toni Morrison."
--The Thread (Minnesota Public Radio), Recommended by Nialle Sylvan from Iowa City, IA's The Haunted Bookshop

"Rivers Solomon's debut makes for a stellar gift for readers looking for an intensely thoughtful meditation on race, class, and humanity's future."
--Bookish, Best Books to Give in 2017

"This debut novel will absolutely take your breath away."
--Bustle, Best Fiction Books of 2017

"Here is a novel that puts non-binary and multiracial identities at the forefront of a violent future we may all too easily recognize today...Solomon's fascinating and deeply realized novel joins the imaginative ranks of Octavia Butler and Nalo Hopkinson, each of whom carved out unique places in the largely white male world of sci-fi as black women writers. Solomon, who is non-binary, enters the world of sci-fi with their own revolutionary debut, which should appeal to avid and first-time sci-fi readers alike."
--Literary Hub, Included in "15 Books You Should Read This October"

"In this debut, Rivers Solomon transports readers to a spaceship bound for a new world but very much trapped in the past. When the Earth began to die, humans decided to flee. It's been over 300 years since the original group boarded the HSS Matilda, and in that time a white-supremacist cult known as the Sovereignty has seized power. Aster Grey was born on the ship and into slavery, but a new discovery leads her to believe that she might be able to break free."
--Bookish, Included in "Best Book Club Picks for October 2017"

"A debut work of speculative fiction features a spaceship with a white supremacist cult at the helm, making a generations-long trip to a new world via the labor of a group of enslaved black people living belowdeck."
--The Millions, Included in "October Preview: The Millions Most Anticipated List"

"An Unkindness of Ghosts brings the burden of our history to an imagined future and makes us bear the weight. A speculative page-turner, Afrofuturist dystopica, slave (spaceship) narrative, reconciling character study, queer noir, and more--this novel achieves an otherwordly wonder that's all too painfully of this world."
--Community of Literary Magazines and Presses, citation for 2018 Firecracker Award for Fiction

"A truly extraordinary and compelling read from cover to cover, An Unkindness of Ghosts showcases author Rivers Solomon's impressive flair for originality and master of the science fiction genre. A simply riveting read from cover to cover, An Unkindness of Ghosts is a 'must' for the personal reading lists of dedicated science fiction fans."
--Midwest Book Review

"For people who are tempted to dismiss science fiction as one-dimensional or superficial, An Unkindness of Ghosts digs deep into issues of race, class, gender and human connection."
--The Thread (Minnesota Public Read Newsletter), a Must-Read

"An excellent science fiction novel and debut by Rivers Solomon, An Unkindness of Ghosts is able to touch on today's racial issues by dipping into the past to create a story set in the future without sounding like it's a lecture on morality."
--San Francisco Book Review

"Following in the footsteps of Asimov and fellow science fiction writer Octavia Butler, debut author Rivers Solomon also considers what it means to be human--or not. Written from the perspective of a gender non-conforming, neuroatypical, and preternaturally brilliant protagonist, this novel tells the story of humans fleeing their trashed Earth in a generation ship that recreates many of the worst excesses of the world they've left behind, including racism, slavery, and creeping pollution."
--Georgia Tech Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts, included as a Science Fiction Day 2020 Recommended Title

Included in San Francisco Public Library's More Than a Month--Afrofuturism selection for Black History Month

"An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon takes the classic space vessel saga and updates it by seamlessly interweaving a cast of diverse characters and confronting many of the social issues we face today."
--Vernon Area Public Library

"The 2017 book deals with plantation life in a futuristic setting, and its bisexual, black, intersex protagonist, Aster, has the opportunity to dismantle it all. The story is riddled with characters of marginalized identities, like that of Aster, but what makes An Unkindness of Ghosts stand out is that the characters' queerness is not the central part of the story, nor does it feel tokenistic--it just is."
--Study Breaks, included in 5 Works of Queer Contemporary Literature for Your Pride Reading List

"Solomon's writing is so absorbing, her eye for detail in every aspect of her storytelling so keen that it would take way too much time explaining everything impressive about it. It's in the little observant touches, such as each deck having its own dialet, even its own language, that the world building achieves a criterion of realism. And by all means, give me a broken, flawed, angry, often aggressively unlikable but still brave and committed protagonist...The ultimate peace [Aster] works her way towards is that much sweeter because of everything she wasn't afraid to fight to get there."
--SFF180

"Solomon's exploration of a futuristic yet all too familiarly repressive society is highly recommended for anyone interested in the ever-growing field of SF which is invested in engaging with race, gender, and sexuality as an integral part of any vision of the future."
--IndiePicks Magazine

"The sci-fi debut by Rivers Solomon takes place aboard a spaceship named Matilda, and features a teased and taunted main character named Aster, described as 'odd-mannered, obsessive, withdrawn,' who is on a mission to discover the potential connection between the deaths of her mother and the Matilda's potentate."
--Bay Area Reporter

"Slavery, racial segregation, and resistance, all set in outer space."
--Nylon

"This hard sci-fi novel that parallels our history in post-Civil War America, but is set aboard a spaceship. The Earth can no longer support life, and survivors fled aboard a spaceship. That ship, the Matilda, is now a colony, and segregation is a way of life. Anyone with dark skin is a laborer, while those with light skin are upper class. From what I've heard about this book, it's hard to read, but I think it's an important story that needs to be told."
--SyFy Wire

"Rivers Solomon uses the generation ship setting to craft a challenging narrative of inescapable racial prejudice. In an explicit rejection of sci-fi's typical futurism, Solomon transposes the antebellum plantation system on to her novel's setting, the spaceship Matilda."
--New Scientist

"A powerful story...An Unkindness of Ghosts is the novel every queer geek of color (and ally) has been waiting for."
--Black Girl Nerds

"Amazing, heartbreaking, yet it still gave me the hope that some good people will be able to endure and survive no matter what...A favorite for me."
--Monlatable Book Reviews

"This book may technically be science fiction, but like all good sci-fi/dystopian stories, it draws its themes from our world: slavery, oppression, classism, gender, and sexuality...If you're at all a fan of sci-fi or dystopian stories, you must read this book. Solomon is a seriously unique voice and this is a masterful debut novel. I can't wait to see what they write next...5 stars."
--Chelsea's Bookshelf

"Rivers Solomon's debut, An Unkindness of Ghosts, reworks the generation ship in a way that feels almost miraculous, putting slavery in space to remind us that no act of dehumanisation can truly extinguish the human spirit."
--Strange Horizons

"Through this debut, Solomon proves themself a bold and unapologetic bringer of truth and knowledge, a forbearer of wondrous new possibilities in speculative black fiction...If I need to say it plainly, I will do so now: buy this book. Let it fill you with its vengeful ghosts and hollowed out living humans. Let it hurt you and try to break you and then, when you are spent, let it lift you up and carry you forward. Let it guide you home."
--Women Write About Comics

"Fans of Octavia Butler and China Miéville--both socially aware and critical science fiction writers--will adore this debut, as will any reader eager for a blending of genres and story."
--Read It Forward

"I loved this book and I truly hope you do too."
--The Black Bibliophile Podcast

"I am so thrilled about An Unkindness of Ghosts, because Aster is the powerful sci-fi lady that I've been waiting for...An Unkindness of Ghosts is a science fiction book that deserves to be on 'must read' lists for feminism in sci-fi."
--Hedgehog Book Reviews (blog)

"Amazing, hopeful, strikingly incisive. It brought me back to my feelings ranging from quiet grief to breathtaking rage. It was one of the high points of literature...It was brilliant, and it spoke for me."
--Bogi Reads the World (blog)

"This book contains the best disability representation I have ever read in fiction...Check out this book to read a desperately necessary story featuring intersectional characters, respectfully depicted. You won't regret it."
--Tonia Says (blog)

"Hands down one of the best science fiction novels I've read."
--The Illustrated Page (blog)

"Sci-Fi worthy of Octavia Butler...An Unkindness of Ghosts is a fascinating study of our own society and an exciting new work of science fiction. Solomon has created an intense, brutal world within the walls of the Matilda."
--Mom Read It (blog)

"Rivers Solomon pulls you through a difficult journey that is shockingly real, while being utterly engaging as science fiction...It's refreshing to read a new writer who can manipulate such well known motifs, while churning out a story that still instigates a contemporary discourse, one that dares to remind the reader that the past doesn't always stay buried."
--Geeks OUT

"An Unkindness of Ghosts absolutely blew me away...A must read on so many different levels and needs to be on your reading list."
--Utopia State of Mind (blog)

"Incredible...It is what I wish every book could be: an exploration of the best and worst parts of society in a literary setting."
--Red Hen Book Shop's Talk & Peck Blog

"A stunning debut novel of a colony ship traversing space...I hungered for this and it was done amazingly."
--Bogi Reads the World (blog), included in Hugo & Nebula Award recommendations

"Thanks to the more-than-a-few brilliant moments scattered throughout the book, the captivating (and important) metaphor at its core, and the natural depiction of diverse characters, I'd recommend An Unkindness of Ghosts, and I especially look forward to what Solomon does next based on such an ambitious first book."
--Fantasy Literature

"An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon is a fantastic science fiction novel. It never stumbles into the pitfalls other debut novels too often do. This is one of the best sci-fi novels involving generation ships I've ever read, and I cannot wait to see what else Rivers Solomon has in store for us."
--Looking Glass Reads (blog)

"Solomon's masterful debut...is a powerful story about oppression, racism, gender non-comformity, and the role of trauma in society and peoples' lives."
--New Books Network

"Immediately immersive and sophisticated...This is a phenomenal piece of work."
--Lee Child, author of the Jack Reacher series

"An Unkindness of Ghosts marks the debut of a wildly talented writer. Rivers Solomon has put together a heady science-fiction novel that speaks directly to some of the most pressing political and social concerns of the modern day. And yet for all that it remains deeply humane, and it's even quite funny at times. This is a book you'll want to read now so you can tell your friends you read it first."
--Victor LaValle, author of The Changeling

"Welcome to the Tarlands aboard the space vessel HSS Matilda--home of the poor and rejected--and the setting of Rivers Solomon’s powerful debut novel. Imaginative in the vein of Colson Whitehead, Samuel R. Delany, and Octavia E. Butler, this novel explores the struggles of slum dwellers aboard a spacecraft sadly reminiscent of our own world: rife with poverty, caste, and discrimination as told through the Looking Glass. With outstanding world-building and an unforgettable protagonist in Aster, An Unkindness of Ghosts is a notable debut by an author whose work I look forward to reading for years to come.”
--Tananarive Due, author of The Living Blood and Ghost Summer

An Unkindness of Ghosts

Akashic Books

Aster removed two scalpels from her med-kit to soak in a solution of disinfectant. Her fingers trembled from the cold, and the tools slipped from her grasp, plopping ungracefully into the sanitizer. In ten minutes' time, she'd be amputating a child's gangrenous foot. This shaking and carrying on would not do.

Was this winter?

Dim light — chemiluminescent reactions of peroxide, orange dye, and ester — suffused the makeshift operating room. Starjars, the T-deckers called their improvised lanterns. Aster wondered where they'd gotten the peroxide to work them, let alone the phenyl oxalate ester.

"All you got to do is give one of them a shake and the stuff inside gets all mixed up," said Flick, rotted foot propped atop two stacked trunks. "Look! You looking?"

Of course Aster was looking. Couldn't Flick see her eyes?

A pile of faded comics lay next to the child on a flipped-over wicker basket, The Reign of Night Empress #19 on top. Its cover depicted a woman named Mariam Santi in a beige trench coat carrying a cylindrical device made of metal and wood. When she pulled its tiny lever with her index finger, a silver ball shot out of the tube, wounding her enemy.

"Rifle," Aster whispered, her lips splitting at the corners where the cold had pasted them shut. As a child, she'd called them ripples for the way they had of changing everything in a story. And because she'd misread the word the first time around, finding that f's and p's looked similar to her untrained eyes.

Issue 19 of Night Empress had been one of Aster's favorites when she was a girl, and she'd read it along with every other Mariam Santi adventure available aboard Matilda. Old comics circulated wing to wing, deck to deck.

"Look how it blows up inside when I jostle it! Boom! Boom! Boom!" said Flick as she — he — no, they — shook the starjar. Aster regretted the error. She was used to the style of her own deck where all children were referred to with feminine pronouns. Here, it was they. She'd do well to remember. "Explode! Explode!" Flick continued, tossing the starjar into the air before catching it. "Except not really. If it was a explosion there'd be fire, and if there was fire it'd be hot." They spoke in that matter-of-fact tone native to children who believed they knew everything. "My great-grandmeema say there was blackouts before too, but they was just passing through. After one week they stopped, and lowdeckers never even had to have no energy rations to stop them. No cold," said Flick, dark-brown skin lit bronze under the meek glow of the starjars.

If there was a chance he'd respond — and there wasn't — Aster would radio the Surgeon. He'd write her a pass to transport Flick up to his clinic on G deck or somewhere else warm. He'd sign it in his looping cursive and stamp it with his fancy gold seal. Aster didn't know every guard on Matilda, but the ones she did wouldn't dare deny a pass issued by Heavens' Hands Made Flesh.

As it was, the Surgeon hadn't spoken to Aster in three and a half weeks, not since the start of the blackouts. No Surgeon, no access to Matilda's upperdecks. No upperdeck access, no heat.

"It's like a star, see?" Flick said, shaking another lantern, setting off its chemical show.

Aster looked at the lantern, then at Flick, then at the lantern again. "I'm afraid I don't."

"A star's a bunch of little things coming together to make light, yeah? Chemicals and all that. And our little special jars here is a bunch of little things coming together to make light too. Also chemicals. Agree or disagree?"

"Agree," said Aster, familiar with the basic chemistry from studies in astromatics.

"So, they the same. Chemicals plus more chemicals makes magic," Flick said, tongue sticking out.

Aster admired the child's sureness if not their utter wrongness. "Your model lacks specificity and is therefore useless," she said, speaking more harshly than intended. This close to the end of the day, she lost the ability to modulate her naturally abrupt manner for the comfort of others. "According to such a theory, a suitcase would be no different than a bomb. Sugars and synthase react to make the cotton of the luggage. Oxygen oxidizes gunpowder to make an explosion. Chemicals plus more chemicals makes magic describes both scenarios rather well, but, of course, we know a suitcase is nothing like a bomb."

Flick blinked obstinately, and Aster searched for a child-appropriate explanation.

"You're arguing that a person is identical to a dog because they've both got bones and blood."

"Guards be calling Tarlanders dogs all the time," Flick said, hand on hip.

Aster twitched at the sound of the familiar word; she hadn't heard it in ages, but it still stirred a sense of belonging. Tarlanders were the inhabitants of P, Q, R, S, and T decks, and it was as close to a nation as anything on Matilda.

"The guards are hardly a compass by which to measure right and wrong," said Aster.

Flick's eyes flashed open in what was presumably mock shock. "You gonna get struck down for saying that, woman. Don't you know that Sovereign Nicolaeus is the Heavens' chosen ruler? And that the guards are Nicolaeus's soldiers and, by extension, soldiers of the Heavens? A spurn to them is a spurn to the Heavens direct," Flick said in a high-pitched voice.

"Well, let's hope the Heavens exact vengeance after I've amputated your foot. I wouldn't want you — righteous defender of the moral order that you are — negatively affected by my sacrilege." Without meaning to, Aster smiled.

"How about if you promise to do my surgery up good, I'll write a letter to the Guard begging they spare you? I been practicing my vocabulary and I already know what I'm gonna say. Want to hear?" Mischief drew Flick's face into a sly grin.

"Dear Sirs," Flick began before loudly inhaling, "On account of there being no heat down here on account of there being no electricity on account of the brand-new energy rations so thoughtfully and nobly and honorably imposed on the steerage decks by Sovereign Nicolaeus on account of the blackouts — Aster fell prey to a brief fit of hypothermia-induced delirium and spoke out against you in her maddery. She's healed up now so you don't have to worry about it happening again. Yours humbly, deferentially, meekly, and respectfully, Flor 'Flicker' Samuels." Flick erupted in laughter and took a bow. "Opinions?"

"Your sarcasm reveals clear disregard for the sanctity of the Sovereign's Guard, which I appreciate," Aster said, blowing into her cupped palms before vigorously rubbing them together. As much as she enjoyed the banter, their conversation proved a distraction against resolving the matter of the cold.

"You can have my mittens if you want," said Flick. They set down the starjar they'd been holding and showed off their wrapped hands. "They'll warm you up good so you can cut, cut, cut me up, no problem. Slice into me like a festival ham if you want."

Aster's eyes made uncertain contact with Flick's. "I cannot discern whether or not your offer is in earnest. It should be obvious I cannot perform an amputation in mittens. Are you joking again?"

"Aye," Flick said, having the decency to look a little bashful about making fun. "But they is warm. Lined with rabbit fur. My great-meema skint it herself back when there was rabbits aboard Matilda. Real rabbits. When was the last time anybody saw one of those?"

Aster assumed the question was rhetorical, as she couldn't very well ascertain when the last time in the entirety of the universe someone had seen a rabbit. "I didn't think the moments preceding an operation were particularly well-suited to humor, but it's characterized a large portion of our interaction," she said. Aster was always memorizing new ways of being with people.

Flick shrugged, the gesture causing the blanket wrapped about their shoulders to fall. "I like to do the exact opposite of what's suited. We got a saying here in Tide Wing: Should is for weaklings. Why would we care about such a thing when already nothing is how it should be on this cursed ship? Should won't make it so you don't got to cut off my foot, will it? It sure won't turn the heat back on, or kill the man who thought to turn it off in the first place. Should disappeared three hundred years ago when our old home went gone. There's no such thing as supposed to in space. Didn't your meema never teach you that?"

Breaths glided like exorcized ghosts from Flick's mouth. Aster recognized the puffs for what they were, condensed molecules of H2O, but she reached out to touch one of the vagabond forms anyway. She imagined each foggy sheaf as an Ancestor, even though the Ancestors were dead, swallowed into the past alongside the Great Lifehouse from which Matilda had fled.

"My mother killed herself the day I was born," Aster said. "Though it's possible she attempted to impart a distaste for should in me before passing, newborn infants lack the neuro-capacity to process language or form memories, so if she did, I don't recall."

The way Flick pursed their lips, they looked on the verge of whistling. "My great-meema says I'm always stirring up old wounds. Forgive me," they said, eyes intent on Aster. Yet the wound of Lune Grey felt quite fresh and untended, no stirring from Flick required.

Aster blamed the blackouts. The last time Matilda experienced ship-wide power outages was twenty-five years ago, and every conversation she overheard seemed to revolve around that sum. I thought they fixed this twenty-five years ago, someone said, and, It may have been twenty-five years but I remember it good as yesterday, or, Twenty-five years. Couldn't they have bought Matilda more time than that?

These grievances were innocent enough on their own, but to Aster they were reminders. Twenty-five years her mother had been dead.

"Talk about a woman with no care for should," said Flick, "leaving her baby 'fore it had a first sip of milk."

"What?" Aster replied, aware Flick had spoken, but clueless as to what they said. Thoughts of Lune had increased to the point of distraction, interfering with her work. She gulped her tea, hopeful the bitterness would focus her enough to deal with this cold. "Do you have isopropyl alcohol?" she asked.

Flick scrunched their brow, poked out their plump lips. "Great-meema!" they called, then louder, "Great-meema!"

A woman appeared after Flick's fifth call. "What?" she asked, hand clamped around a fabric idol. She'd been praying.

"Ole girl say she need alcohol," said Flick.

The woman, young to be the mother of a mother of a mother, turned to Aster. "We don't got nothing pure, yo'wa, " she said, and it took Aster a minute to parse that particular form of address. Where Aster lived, folks said yongwa. Soft o, then a g sound. It meant young one in the language of the Tarlands. "I do got something that might do. One moment," the woman added.

Flick read The Reign of Night Empress as they waited for their great-meema to return. Aster saw it was the same copy she herself had owned fifteen years earlier. The lemon curd she'd spilled on it as a child still smeared the top left corner. There was more on page eleven, covering the tip of Night Empress's rifle.

"This good?" the woman asked as she returned, handing over a jar.

Aster unscrewed the lid, flecks of orange rust peeling from the age-softened metal. She gagged upon smelling the contents and slammed the lid back on. "Booze?" she asked.

"More or less," said the woman. "What you need it for? I suppose if you have a drink it'll warm you from the inside. I wouldn't recommend it. Couldn't pay me a new pair of shoes to drink that piss." She pinched Aster's cold-nipped ears, but they were too numb, and Aster didn't feel the pressure.

"It is fuel. For the stove I'm going to build. I'll need that can too," said Aster, pointing to the large cylinder in the corner of the cabin labeled:

MAMA LOU'S BAKED BEANS BROWN SUGAR, MAPLE, BACON FAMILY-SIZE 6lbs 5oz

Aster emptied the odds and ends from inside. A few thimbles, a spool of thread, buttons, two packets of pop-pyserum, razor. "Now socks, shirts, anything," she said. Two other women hustled to gather the materials, stuffing them into the can as Aster directed. When it was sufficiently packed, Aster poured in the entirety of the jar of rotgut Flick's great-grandmeema had procured.

A teenager pointed to the lighter in Aster's hand. "Can I do it?" they asked.

"Go ahead," said Aster, handing over the lighter. Smiling, the girl grabbed it and held it to the can, the alcohol igniting.

"How long will this burn for?"

"Several hours," Aster said, surprised that the same women who rigged the starjars had never built an alcohol stove. It was Matilda's geography, she supposed. What people had known for two generations on R deck had yet to be discovered on V, and so on. Twenty thousand lowdeckers and almost half as many different ways of life. That was the nature of a ship divided by metal, language, and armed guards. Even in decks as linked as the Tarlands, information had a way of staying put.

"How come there's no smoke? I never seen fire with no smoke," said a woman wrapped in a small afghan.

"Alcohol's good fuel." Aster didn't have time to elaborate and returned to the operating area. There, Flick already sat, their great-grandmother next to them. "Lay on your side for me," Aster said. "I am going to lift your nightgown for just a moment. Acceptable?"

Flick lifted the gown themself. Aster scrubbed their back with a sponge, pinching the skin where she'd insert the needle.

Not necessary, but she'd picked up the habit from times she'd watched the Surgeon. She'd learned most body-cutting craft from other Q deck healers, but the Surgeon's tricks stuck with her most. "You'll feel a small nip," she said, then injected local anesthetic into the child's intervertebra. Flick whimpered and grabbed their great-meema's hands. "You'll feel heavy pressure in three ... two ... one." Aster inserted the larger needle into Flick's spine. Then she dragged her stool down to the bottom of the cot and pinched the gangrenous skin above Flick's metatarsals.

"Is it gonna hurt much once that stuff you put in my back wears out?" asked Flick.

"Yes."

A tear formed in the corner of Flick's eye, but they wiped it away with the collar of their shirt before it could fall.

Aster pressed her stethoscope to Flick's talus bone and listened. The steady pulsing of blood signaled viable vessels and circulation, and she drew a line in ink where she planned to make the incision. Preserving the anklebone would make fitting a prosthesis easier.

"It feels good," said Flick.

"Hmm?"

"The cabin," Flick clarified. "It's like being on the Field Decks, Baby Sun on my back." They squeezed their eyes shut, and for the tenth time this week, Aster thought of her mother. This time, it was the talk of Baby that summoned her. Lune had worked as a mechanic on the miniature star that sourced Matilda's power.

"Are you certain this is the only way?" Flick's great-meema asked. "I heard you make potions, medicines so strong they regrow skin. They say you got a secret lab with tinctures that cure anything." She squeezed her left hand with her right, kissed each knuckle prayerfully.

"I don't have a secret laboratory," Aster lied. "But if I did, and it had the cures you speak of, I wouldn't keep it from you. This is the only way."

Aster took her scalpel and made a decisive slice into Flick's epidermis, through to the muscle, a line going all the way around, creating a flap of skin that she would later suture to form a nub over the bone.

"May retribution come to those responsible for this," said Flick's great-meema, fists balled into her apron.

Aster cut away the rotted flesh and muscle of Flick's foot, gratified by the falling off of blackened and corrupted limb, shiny white bone revealing itself underneath. There was no sense mourning that which no longer nourished.

By the time Aster finished, Flick's arteries sufficiently ligated, skin repatched, it was only a little over an hour to curfew. She placed the foot into a cooler. She had to hurry if she wanted to deposit it in her botanarium — or secret laboratory, in Flick's great-grandmeema's words — before retiring to her quarters for the night.