Author: C. Gockel
Date: 2018
Publisher: C. Gockel
ISBN: 9781728761176
Quote: "She would get no better job, and she should go about her work cheerfully. She shouldn't feel...trapped."
Volka is a weere, a product of gene splicing between "Chernobyl Wolves" and humans in a distant high-tech future. Weeres have human-like brains with wolf-like senses and appetites. It is believed that they can't crossbreed with humans. In fact their genome was designed to reduce their capacity to breed at all, but the reason why there are no weere-human crossbreeds running around the planets weeres inhabit is that crossbreeds and their known relatives have traditionally been killed.
At the beginning of the story Volka tries to help a cousin give birth to what they believe may be the first viable crossbreed baby. When she finds her cousin, aunt, and uncle dead Volka decides to risk her hope of spiritual salvation (her planet has its own religion) by leaving the planet in the company of a "sex'bot" who has been enhanced to the point of thinking like a human and an alien animal who is "possessed" to the point of thinking like a more than human intelligence. (According to Volka's religion, both of these creatures should be evil, but she's not found them to be as dangerous as she's just seen that her own race can be.)
Volka has had friends, sort of, who are humans, sort of, such as is possible on her home planet, and on her journey back to what's left of Earth she'll have a chance to repay their kindness, such as it was. She has been troubled with "nightmares," waking and sleeping. These "nightmares" are actually the beginning of a telepathic bond with a sentient starship, which links her story to a whole new series of full-length novels with fully developed characters. If your tolerance for trans-humanist fantasies is higher than mine you may want the whole series. I don't, but I feel confident that they'll be much better written than the average science fiction novel.
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