Review: The Many Selves of Katherine North by Emma Geen

Disclaimer: I received a digital copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

The Many Selves of Katherine North by Emma Geen

Published June 7, 2016

Plot Overview

We follow Kit, a nineteen-year-old phenomenaut for ShenCorp, a company that specializes in projecting a person's consciousness into that of a lab-grown animal. This technology proves crucial to understanding different species' environments, experiences, and general biology. Kit has been 'jumping' as a phenomenaut for ShenCorp for seven years, fulfilled by the idea that she is helping the company understand animals' motives and needs so that humans and animals can coexist peacefully. ShenCorp has the ability to project Kit, and other phenomenauts, into many different species including but not limited to birds, fish, and large mammals. Despite her seemingly successful, and abnormally long, experience with ShenCorp, Kit starts experiencing strange and unexplained anomalies during her jumps. No longer sure if her employer has the same goals as her, Kit has to decide if she will pursue her suspicions or continue to play along with ShenCorp's new business model.

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My Review

This book has a slightly confusing, slow start, but man does it really catch you. Personally, the free copy I received was a little strange when it came to format, but considering the general science-y vibe that comes along with this story, I wasn't entirely sure if it was intentional or not.

Thriller. I wasn't expecting this book to move at such a fast pace once I got into it, but considering the mysteries and company secrets that Kit comes to uncover, it can only be expected that she must be on her toes in order to not be discovered. I felt that as the reader, I was successfully made to side with Kit in her discoveries of suspicious information via her phenomenaut jumps.

Science!! Almost constantly, I felt as if the author must have truly done a great deal of scientific research in the writing of this novel, or possibly even had some sort of Biology degree. The science of phenomenautism is extremely well thought-out and detailed. Not only that, but the different species that are encountered are so greatly varied and described at such length that I immediately took Kit's experiences in their bodies as truth and fact. I'm not 100% sure if all of the things that she experiences were truly how different species exists, but I guarantee that you will agree: Emma Geen really has an eye for describing the environment from unexpected perspective.

I truly enjoyed my experience with this novel and I'm excited that it will be in print very shortly! I would definitely recommend this to readers who enjoy the more science-centric science fiction, not only the existence of something artificial or theoretical, but the true, very convincing descriptions of how something could exist. This novel was written with a critical reader in mind who is no stranger to the scifi genre.

My Rating: 4/5 stars