Harare Review of Books

446 pages.

Expected ublication date: Oct. 10, 2023 (Orenda Books)

SFF.

An American teenager falls in love with a young woman in a future Japan, but her perfection is hiding a secret—but he has secrets too.

This is an enjoyable YA SFF read that’s not afraid to tackle exciting concepts or complicated personal issues. Among the things Michael Grothaus brings up in Beautiful Shining People*: body dysmorphia, gender, AI, the personhood of artificial people, the new Cold War (China vs the US), cyberattacks, and the dominance of multinational cyber-companies. All of this set in a futuristic, cyberpunk Japan, which he brings to vivid and colourful life with amazing world-building and complete immersion in the mechanics of how such a society would work and still be steeped in old and present Japanese tradition and culture. I commend Grothaus on how superbly this is done; this is the absolute highlight of the book.

What works less well is how drawn-out many of the scenes are—particularly the pivotal climactic scene, where I got really exasperated at how unrealistically the characters behaved. So. Much. Futile. Talking. In general, this novel suffers from an excess amount of telling, and editing could shorten it by at least a hundred pages. I would take off another half-star for this, if it weren’t for how dazzled I was by the world-building.

So, Beautiful Shining People is a very pleasant escape from real life for a while, even with its flaws. Recommend for the beautiful imagined future, and for that lovely character of the girl in the centre of the story. Oh, and the dog!

Thank you to NetGalley and to Orenda Books for the ARC.