The Many Selves of Katherine North
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- $17.99
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
When we first meet Kit, she's a fox.
Nineteen-year-old Kit works for the research department of Shen Corporation as a phenomenaut. She's been "jumping"--projecting her consciousness, through a neurological interface--into the bodies of lab-grown animals made for the purpose of research for seven years, which is longer than anyone else at ShenCorp, and longer than any of the scientists thought possible. She experiences a multitude of other lives--fighting and fleeing as predator and prey, as mammal, bird, and reptile--in the hope that her work will help humans better understand the other species living alongside them.
Her closest friend is Buckley, her Neuro--the computer engineer who guides a phenomenaut through consciousness projection. His is the voice, therefore, that's always in Kit's head and is the thread of continuity that connects her to the human world when she's an animal. But when ShenCorp's mission takes a more commercial--and ominous--turn, Kit is no longer sure of her safety. Propelling the reader into the bodies of the other creatures that share our world, The Many Selves of Katherine North takes place in the near future but shows us a dazzling world far, far from the realm of our experience.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In a near-future setting with dark undertones, teen Katherine "Kit" North works as a phenomenaut, projecting her consciousness into the bodies of various lab-grown animals to study how they experience their natural environments. Together with her trusted partner, Buckley, who monitors her original body and vital signs in the lab, she has projected steadily for seven years, becoming the world's most experienced phenomenaut. But when she is shifted from research to the tourism department, which lets novice phenomenauts inhabit the minds of wild animals, Kit begins to have serious doubts about the ethics and intentions of her company. The descriptions of animal projection are detailed and intriguing, but the story devolves into a dizzying morass of paranoia and animal instinct as the plot loses coherence. Readers of literary novels may enjoy the psychological aspects, but SF fans will be disappointed that the speculative elements are little more than background.
