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What We Are Seeking
From Cameron Reed, the acclaimed author of The Fortunate Fall, comes a soaring novel of queer hope and transformation, perfect for readers of Ann Leckie and Amal El-Mohtar.
On the planet Scythia, plants give birth to insects, trees can drag you to your death, and armies of animals graft native plants into human crops.
John Maraintha has been abandoned here, light-years from the peaceful forests that he loves.
The desert is harsh and the people in thrall to a barbaric custom called marriage.
He must find some way to make a life here.
But on Scythia, survival means transformation―and not everyone is willing to accept change.
On the planet Scythia, plants give birth to insects, trees can drag you to your death, and armies of animals graft native plants into human crops.
John Maraintha has been abandoned here, light-years from the peaceful forests that he loves.
The desert is harsh and the people in thrall to a barbaric custom called marriage.
He must find some way to make a life here.
But on Scythia, survival means transformation―and not everyone is willing to accept change.
341 pages, Hardcover
First published April 7, 2026
About the author
Cameron Reed
3 books35 followersAuthor previously writing under the name Raphael Carter.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 122 reviews
October 30, 2025
I'm not entirely sure how to review this novel. It was wonderful, it made me feel emotions that I cannot possibly describe. I read it too fast, I need to read it again to absorb everything I missed. I can't wait to listen to it as an audiobook. The summary is so simple and it explains the novel and also explains nothing of the novel. The characters are layered and complex and I love them. I love the world building, the details, the density. It throws you into the world and expects you to keep up, and I love that about a speculative fiction novel. It's about identity, gender, sexuality, and the various spectrums they take. It's about colonialism, the damage it does, the ways it can be repaired or not. It's about religion and religious truama, it's about how we carry cultures with us and how they intersect with so many aspects of our lives. It's about family and the shapes family can take.
I highly suggest picking this up, the marketing has a good go of it. If you like Leckie, Le Guin, and similar authors, I think you'll enjoy this.
Update: the audiobook is delightful and was such a gut punch to hear.
I highly suggest picking this up, the marketing has a good go of it. If you like Leckie, Le Guin, and similar authors, I think you'll enjoy this.
Update: the audiobook is delightful and was such a gut punch to hear.
June 24, 2026
I wasn’t sure what to expect but I was pleasantly surprised by this one!
The social and political unrest in the human colony on the planet Scythia reminded me of Ann Leckie's Imperial Radch series. The intricacies and complexities of different cultures needing to cohabitate but also survive in the same hostile world was really well done.
The exploration of how would gender and relationships look like in such a distant future were also reminiscent of Ann Leckie's work, and Ursula Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness.
The book also touches on alien linguistics and how the way a society perceives the world can shape its language, which is a theme I really enjoy in sci-fi.
The plot went in a direction I wasn’t expecting at all but overall this was an excellent read. I highly recommend it if you enjoyed some of the other books I mentioned.
The social and political unrest in the human colony on the planet Scythia reminded me of Ann Leckie's Imperial Radch series. The intricacies and complexities of different cultures needing to cohabitate but also survive in the same hostile world was really well done.
The exploration of how would gender and relationships look like in such a distant future were also reminiscent of Ann Leckie's work, and Ursula Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness.
The book also touches on alien linguistics and how the way a society perceives the world can shape its language, which is a theme I really enjoy in sci-fi.
The plot went in a direction I wasn’t expecting at all but overall this was an excellent read. I highly recommend it if you enjoyed some of the other books I mentioned.
Read
September 3, 2025A planetary romance with deep thematic resonance, this is a book about accepting the inevitability of change and transformation, even in ourselves and those we love.
June 9, 2026
4.5 stars
I loved this.
If you are a lover of plot driven stories, this book probably won’t be your cup of tea. The plot here is really the setting, and the characters and the changes they must endure, both voluntarily and through necessity, is the heart of the story. Because of this, it’s a bit hard to describe what the book is about?
Reed touches on so many things, but the main theme is that of intolerance and fear of change, and how that impacts every aspect of people’s lives. There are no easy ways to live; one must find a way to adapt and bear the costs, to discover a path that feels right and true to who you are.
What We Are Seeking provides a window in time where we see a group of people try to make a place for themselves, but it’s more a snapshot of a moment in the history of the colony and in the lives of a few people rather than a story where we get to see the end result of the struggles. The struggle never ends as long as life goes on.
I loved this.
If you are a lover of plot driven stories, this book probably won’t be your cup of tea. The plot here is really the setting, and the characters and the changes they must endure, both voluntarily and through necessity, is the heart of the story. Because of this, it’s a bit hard to describe what the book is about?
Reed touches on so many things, but the main theme is that of intolerance and fear of change, and how that impacts every aspect of people’s lives. There are no easy ways to live; one must find a way to adapt and bear the costs, to discover a path that feels right and true to who you are.
What We Are Seeking provides a window in time where we see a group of people try to make a place for themselves, but it’s more a snapshot of a moment in the history of the colony and in the lives of a few people rather than a story where we get to see the end result of the struggles. The struggle never ends as long as life goes on.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
Highlights
~all the cool things are out of sight
~bugs that are mammals that are plants
~killing a tree makes you hetero
Here is the description this had on Netgalley when I requested it (and still has at the time of this writing);
Having now read it, What We Are Seeking is not a book I would describe as one of ‘queer hope’. And I am so tired of books promising that and just delivering a set-up as bad or worse than what we have in the real world right now.
Which, to be clear, is a failure (or lie) of the book’s marketing, not the author. It’s not Reed’s fault I went into this with the wrong expectations. But whose fault it is doesn’t change my reading experience, unfortunately. That being said, even if the publisher had not called this a queer hope book, I would not have enjoyed it. It was dull and depressing and did the thing of teasing me with seriously interesting things at the edges of the story, but focussing on other stuff I couldn’t care less about instead.
John is unwillingly dropped onto the planet Scythia, a dry, dusty environment populated by settlers from two different cultures, both of them deeply conservative. They don’t trust him because he comes from a matriarchal culture that practices free sex and doesn’t have marriage; he thinks they’re all insane because from where he’s standing, marriage is a barbaric practice. (Very little in the book proves him wrong.) John’s responsibility is caring for Sudharma, a deeply lovely man on Scythia to try and learn the language of the native aliens and determine if they’re another sentient species. John makes friends, learns a bit about the aliens and Scythia’s strange flora and fauna, and is peripheral to the tensions around a teenager who wants to take the vow to become a jess, a nonbinary gender found in the culture of some of the settlers.
And that’s kind of it. There isn’t a big plot, and there’s no impetus, no driving force moving the story along. On a line level, the prose is graceful and lovely; there’s some fantastic asexual and aromantic representation (not the same character, for once!); and the life that’s evolved on Scythia is nicely unique and weird. But the book itself drifts and waffles and meanders, introspective and philosophical rather than having a plot. And normally that wouldn’t be a huge problem for me; the anthropologist-esque eye John turns on the settlers is something I usually quite enjoy. But the settlers’ cultures are deeply boring, patriarchal and Christian and maddeningly conservative. The history and culture around the jesses was fabulous, but we got so little of it, and all of it via being lectured by the one jess character.
Scythia is boring and dry and the people living on it painfully familiar, and I was left longing to explore John’s world, or the delightfully strange culture of the star-ships, instead. I would have been very happy to read a book about jesses on their origin world. To have all this interesting worldbuilding dangled in front of me, but set the story on the dullest of all the worlds we hear about instead…wtf?
There are little hiccups of interest here and there – there’s Vo, the wonderfully odd human from mysterious Earth, joined in some way to the eldritch aiyi, who may just wipe out the humans on Scythia if the aliens turn out to be sentient. John’s relationship with her was refreshing and really fun; Vo is probably my favourite character in the book, functionally neurodivergent because of her connection to the aiyi, but still fully capable of connecting to and caring for other humans. And Sudharma’s quest to understand the basket-men – the aliens – was…intellectually interesting, even if it wasn’t gripping until very near the end of the book. But we barely glimpsed the aiyi, and what they and Vo could do; and the most fascinating aspects of the basket-men’s culture and understanding of the world were dropped on us in the very last pages, with no time to explore them or see them in action. Sudharma is concerned that the settlers might come to enslave the basket-men, but nothing happens in that direction (thankfully, but it still feels like a massive waste of potential plot). Sudharma is also prepared to alter his own brain to better understand the basket-men and their language, something John frets over for much of the book, but
What kind of story is it? Honestly, I don’t know. I find it hugely depressing to look at far-future settings, thousands of years in our future, that are still homophobic, transphobic, misogynistic af. Sure, baby steps are made over the course of the book, but they are very much baby-steps: What We Are Seeking ends with a lot of grinding misery in the future of all our characters, with the promise that in a couple of generations things are going to get even worse when the sci fi tech eventually fails. Queer hope? What queer hope? Like: thanks, I hate it! Every single bit of it!
Read the rest at Every Book a Doorway!
~all the cool things are out of sight
~bugs that are mammals that are plants
~killing a tree makes you hetero
Here is the description this had on Netgalley when I requested it (and still has at the time of this writing);
From Cameron Reed, the acclaimed author of The Fortunate Fall, comes a soaring novel of queer hope and transformation, perfect for readers of Ann Leckie and Amal El-Mohtar.
On the planet Scythia, plants give birth to insects and trees can drag you to your death. Artificial monsters stalk the desert, and alien basket-men have wandered into town.
John Maraintha has been abandoned here, light-years from the peaceful forests that he loves.
The desert is harsh and the people in thrall to a barbaric custom called marriage.
He must find some way to make a life here.
But on Scythia, survival means transformation—and not everyone is willing to change.
Having now read it, What We Are Seeking is not a book I would describe as one of ‘queer hope’. And I am so tired of books promising that and just delivering a set-up as bad or worse than what we have in the real world right now.
Which, to be clear, is a failure (or lie) of the book’s marketing, not the author. It’s not Reed’s fault I went into this with the wrong expectations. But whose fault it is doesn’t change my reading experience, unfortunately. That being said, even if the publisher had not called this a queer hope book, I would not have enjoyed it. It was dull and depressing and did the thing of teasing me with seriously interesting things at the edges of the story, but focussing on other stuff I couldn’t care less about instead.
John is unwillingly dropped onto the planet Scythia, a dry, dusty environment populated by settlers from two different cultures, both of them deeply conservative. They don’t trust him because he comes from a matriarchal culture that practices free sex and doesn’t have marriage; he thinks they’re all insane because from where he’s standing, marriage is a barbaric practice. (Very little in the book proves him wrong.) John’s responsibility is caring for Sudharma, a deeply lovely man on Scythia to try and learn the language of the native aliens and determine if they’re another sentient species. John makes friends, learns a bit about the aliens and Scythia’s strange flora and fauna, and is peripheral to the tensions around a teenager who wants to take the vow to become a jess, a nonbinary gender found in the culture of some of the settlers.
And that’s kind of it. There isn’t a big plot, and there’s no impetus, no driving force moving the story along. On a line level, the prose is graceful and lovely; there’s some fantastic asexual and aromantic representation (not the same character, for once!); and the life that’s evolved on Scythia is nicely unique and weird. But the book itself drifts and waffles and meanders, introspective and philosophical rather than having a plot. And normally that wouldn’t be a huge problem for me; the anthropologist-esque eye John turns on the settlers is something I usually quite enjoy. But the settlers’ cultures are deeply boring, patriarchal and Christian and maddeningly conservative. The history and culture around the jesses was fabulous, but we got so little of it, and all of it via being lectured by the one jess character.
Scythia is boring and dry and the people living on it painfully familiar, and I was left longing to explore John’s world, or the delightfully strange culture of the star-ships, instead. I would have been very happy to read a book about jesses on their origin world. To have all this interesting worldbuilding dangled in front of me, but set the story on the dullest of all the worlds we hear about instead…wtf?
There are little hiccups of interest here and there – there’s Vo, the wonderfully odd human from mysterious Earth, joined in some way to the eldritch aiyi, who may just wipe out the humans on Scythia if the aliens turn out to be sentient. John’s relationship with her was refreshing and really fun; Vo is probably my favourite character in the book, functionally neurodivergent because of her connection to the aiyi, but still fully capable of connecting to and caring for other humans. And Sudharma’s quest to understand the basket-men – the aliens – was…intellectually interesting, even if it wasn’t gripping until very near the end of the book. But we barely glimpsed the aiyi, and what they and Vo could do; and the most fascinating aspects of the basket-men’s culture and understanding of the world were dropped on us in the very last pages, with no time to explore them or see them in action. Sudharma is concerned that the settlers might come to enslave the basket-men, but nothing happens in that direction (thankfully, but it still feels like a massive waste of potential plot). Sudharma is also prepared to alter his own brain to better understand the basket-men and their language, something John frets over for much of the book, but
What kind of story is it? Honestly, I don’t know. I find it hugely depressing to look at far-future settings, thousands of years in our future, that are still homophobic, transphobic, misogynistic af. Sure, baby steps are made over the course of the book, but they are very much baby-steps: What We Are Seeking ends with a lot of grinding misery in the future of all our characters, with the promise that in a couple of generations things are going to get even worse when the sci fi tech eventually fails. Queer hope? What queer hope? Like: thanks, I hate it! Every single bit of it!
Read the rest at Every Book a Doorway!
April 8, 2026
3.5 ⭐ CW: sexual content, homophobia, forced sterilization
What We Are Seeking by Cameron Reed is a speculative fiction scifi novel that I received from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. This was a weird book. Not necessarily in a bad way, but it wasn't quite what I expected. I always feel a little weird about not absolutely loving a book by a trans author, because I want to support in any way I can.
We follow John Maraintha as he is traveling on a starship and gets sent down to live in a colony of an alien planet called Scythia. There, he must confront two different human cultures much different from his own, and also an alien species. His roommate's job is to try to learn the alien language to figure out how to communicate with a species that is born from plants. John has to navigate a culture of marriage, which feels anathema to him, and the oppressive nature of religion, as it restricts sexuality. John himself is bisexual. He also has to navigate unrequited love.
As I said, this was a weird book. I thought the main plot was really about the aliens, their language, and how they were going to navigate life with them on Scythia, but there wasn't actually much of a plot. The story even ended somewhat abruptly with no real resolution. This is really a story of concepts around language and communication, religion and marriage practices, sexuality, and gender. There was some interesting stuff with the Earth human, Vo, who seemed to be the most alien of all the humans. We are really dropped in this universe with no explanations. I found John to be a difficult MC to connect with. No matter what he did, I didn't feel emotionally connected to him. He seemed distant or disconnected and not very emotional. Even the sex scenes felt passionless.
This was also a very slow read due to the content and the writing style. I didn't dislike this book, but I wish I had gotten more out of John. I did like Iren, and the conversations around gender and being a jess (a person who takes a vow and becomes nonbinary). I wish we had seen more interplay between John and his group of friends and the rest of the colony. I think it would have kept my attention more if I felt like we were working toward something. I recommend this, if you're looking for some weird conceptual speculative fiction by a trans author, and don't mind a slow moving story.
What We Are Seeking by Cameron Reed is a speculative fiction scifi novel that I received from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. This was a weird book. Not necessarily in a bad way, but it wasn't quite what I expected. I always feel a little weird about not absolutely loving a book by a trans author, because I want to support in any way I can.
We follow John Maraintha as he is traveling on a starship and gets sent down to live in a colony of an alien planet called Scythia. There, he must confront two different human cultures much different from his own, and also an alien species. His roommate's job is to try to learn the alien language to figure out how to communicate with a species that is born from plants. John has to navigate a culture of marriage, which feels anathema to him, and the oppressive nature of religion, as it restricts sexuality. John himself is bisexual. He also has to navigate unrequited love.
As I said, this was a weird book. I thought the main plot was really about the aliens, their language, and how they were going to navigate life with them on Scythia, but there wasn't actually much of a plot. The story even ended somewhat abruptly with no real resolution. This is really a story of concepts around language and communication, religion and marriage practices, sexuality, and gender. There was some interesting stuff with the Earth human, Vo, who seemed to be the most alien of all the humans. We are really dropped in this universe with no explanations. I found John to be a difficult MC to connect with. No matter what he did, I didn't feel emotionally connected to him. He seemed distant or disconnected and not very emotional. Even the sex scenes felt passionless.
This was also a very slow read due to the content and the writing style. I didn't dislike this book, but I wish I had gotten more out of John. I did like Iren, and the conversations around gender and being a jess (a person who takes a vow and becomes nonbinary). I wish we had seen more interplay between John and his group of friends and the rest of the colony. I think it would have kept my attention more if I felt like we were working toward something. I recommend this, if you're looking for some weird conceptual speculative fiction by a trans author, and don't mind a slow moving story.
September 20, 2026
Really strong start. Peters out a bit at the end, but good prose carries it through. Overall, an interesting read about aliens, linguistics, gender, family, community, and love. Kind of like a weird mesh of Adrian Tchaikovsky and Becky Chambers, but also wholly unique
August 29, 2026
This felt very much like Ursula K Le Guin meets Simon Jimenez (truly a match made in heaven and the highest of compliments): a sci-fi where there’s a bit of adventure, sure, but it’s really a cover for exploring different ways of being, questioning our ingrained structures by portraying societies (or biologies!) that simply developed in another direction.
I really just have two quibbles: the overall story lacks some structure and drive (what are we doing on this planet and why?) and much of the exploration of ideas is done via characters explaining things to each other in ways that just feel like the author’s own exposition. Even so, lots to thinking about, just not necessarily effective as a narrative.
I really just have two quibbles: the overall story lacks some structure and drive (what are we doing on this planet and why?) and much of the exploration of ideas is done via characters explaining things to each other in ways that just feel like the author’s own exposition. Even so, lots to thinking about, just not necessarily effective as a narrative.
physical-tbr
January 7, 2026I am soooooo incredibly seated for this! Can't believe the luck I have that I don't have to wait 30 years for a new Cameron Reed novel!
May 8, 2026
I'm going to redefine the term 'planetary romance'.
It used to mean a science fiction story set on another planet, not in space. The 'romance' is an old term for fantasy, not for love.
But for this book set on another planet, love and acceptance are definitely the main topic. Hence my re-definition.
John is a doctor who is sent planetside from a spaceship. His planet is matriarchal and practices what used to be called 'free love', with no legal commitments and certainly no marriage. Marriage disgusts him.
The settlers on the planet are definitely the marrying kind, some form of classic Christianity.
One of the settlers is what we would call non-binary or trans, although those terms aren't used. The term is 'jess', after the first person who became that way. Iren has declared themselves to be celibate, but that doesn't mean without feelings and emotions.
John is sidelined as a doctor and is assigned to assist a translator of the native species of humanoid. The translator, Sudharma, is an intense but quiet person who John develops feelings for.
The stage is set for the most amazing consideration and discussion of gender identities, religious beliefs, and how we interact with others with whom we don't share a fundamental view of life and society. It's a thought piece and examines how we see each other today and can learn to accept what we don't believe or share.
I'm making it sound like a philosophical discussion and nothing else. There's plenty of action, especially when the people venture out to interact with the native species, and Sudharma starts getting proficient at translation. There are exotic plants that are also animals that are incredibly dangerous. There is the possibility of death in the desert. There are plenty of examples of how alien to our way of thinking the native humanoid species is, and how their way of speaking has to be twisted just so in translation in order for Sudharma to even begin to understand them. It felt realistic.
Meanwhile, there's an augmented human from Earth who has arrived, who is connected to an AI (called 'aiyi' here), of whom the settlers are deeply suspicious since the aiyi have basically taken over management of Earth and have god-like powers. This person, Vo, becomes a lover of John and displays almost omniscient powers. In fact, this is why I kept my rating at four stars rather than five - even with Clarke's Third Law, I felt the god-like ability of Vo to be a bit too much.
Other than that, though, I can heartily recommend this book. It integrates well with the author's previous work like 'The Fortunate Fall', in that it examines gender ideation in an incredibly thoughtful manner. Cameron Reed is moving the needle on the representation of gender in science fiction, in ways that remind me of how pioneering authors were attempting it in the 1970s and 80s.
It used to mean a science fiction story set on another planet, not in space. The 'romance' is an old term for fantasy, not for love.
But for this book set on another planet, love and acceptance are definitely the main topic. Hence my re-definition.
John is a doctor who is sent planetside from a spaceship. His planet is matriarchal and practices what used to be called 'free love', with no legal commitments and certainly no marriage. Marriage disgusts him.
The settlers on the planet are definitely the marrying kind, some form of classic Christianity.
One of the settlers is what we would call non-binary or trans, although those terms aren't used. The term is 'jess', after the first person who became that way. Iren has declared themselves to be celibate, but that doesn't mean without feelings and emotions.
John is sidelined as a doctor and is assigned to assist a translator of the native species of humanoid. The translator, Sudharma, is an intense but quiet person who John develops feelings for.
The stage is set for the most amazing consideration and discussion of gender identities, religious beliefs, and how we interact with others with whom we don't share a fundamental view of life and society. It's a thought piece and examines how we see each other today and can learn to accept what we don't believe or share.
I'm making it sound like a philosophical discussion and nothing else. There's plenty of action, especially when the people venture out to interact with the native species, and Sudharma starts getting proficient at translation. There are exotic plants that are also animals that are incredibly dangerous. There is the possibility of death in the desert. There are plenty of examples of how alien to our way of thinking the native humanoid species is, and how their way of speaking has to be twisted just so in translation in order for Sudharma to even begin to understand them. It felt realistic.
Meanwhile, there's an augmented human from Earth who has arrived, who is connected to an AI (called 'aiyi' here), of whom the settlers are deeply suspicious since the aiyi have basically taken over management of Earth and have god-like powers. This person, Vo, becomes a lover of John and displays almost omniscient powers. In fact, this is why I kept my rating at four stars rather than five - even with Clarke's Third Law, I felt the god-like ability of Vo to be a bit too much.
Other than that, though, I can heartily recommend this book. It integrates well with the author's previous work like 'The Fortunate Fall', in that it examines gender ideation in an incredibly thoughtful manner. Cameron Reed is moving the needle on the representation of gender in science fiction, in ways that remind me of how pioneering authors were attempting it in the 1970s and 80s.
July 14, 2026
This book is astonishingly beautiful. The characters are richly layered, both as individuals and as parts of their different cultures. The world has tremendous depth and vivid detail. The interpersonal relationships and politics are gripping in their developments. I only wish it kept on going. I didn't want to leave these characters.
May 1, 2026
The writing is crisp, the world-building an immersive anthropology, and the moral lessons are delivered by deeply empathetic characters. The cleverest move is the triangulation. By making the protagonist’s own people the deviants from the perspective of the "marrying" cultures, and the third gender role as problematic for libertines and fundies alike, Reed strips disgust of its claim to objectivity. What looks like natural order is just whichever arrangement got there first and trained its children to gag at the alternatives.
What earns the novel its place on a philosophical SF reading list is that it avoids an easy liberal landing, despite making a clear case for sex/gender freedom. Sanctioned celibacy is still seen as a cage, even though it is celebrated as freeing. The tolerant culture’s bargain - "you may exist if you do not desire" - is the same bargain that the Catholic Church has cut with gay people.
Reed reminds us where sexual disgust does its dirtiest work: at the borders of the permissible body, policing not just who counts as human, but who counts as a full sexual citizen. Any politics of liberation has to do more than just redraw those lines; it has to dissolve the unexamined "disgust infrastructure" that polices them.
What earns the novel its place on a philosophical SF reading list is that it avoids an easy liberal landing, despite making a clear case for sex/gender freedom. Sanctioned celibacy is still seen as a cage, even though it is celebrated as freeing. The tolerant culture’s bargain - "you may exist if you do not desire" - is the same bargain that the Catholic Church has cut with gay people.
Reed reminds us where sexual disgust does its dirtiest work: at the borders of the permissible body, policing not just who counts as human, but who counts as a full sexual citizen. Any politics of liberation has to do more than just redraw those lines; it has to dissolve the unexamined "disgust infrastructure" that polices them.
November 25, 2025
I'm already planning to reread it. what a thoroughly thoroughly wonderful book that somehow managed to exceed my ridiculously high expectations.
September 14, 2026
Gonna be honest, I think you have to have a lot of gender feelings to get the most out of this book, and I simply do not. I found it interesting, but in an academic way. The emotional palette of the prose was too muted for me to really get invested in any character or relationship. Also the ending! There was literally no resolution of any of the things I was most interested in, lol. I care significantly less about everyone’s gender and transformation feelings than I do about the negotiation with aliens :( Which is not to belittle the characters’ gender and transformation feelings, or the ways they illuminate modern society’s views of gender and sexuality. Just, like, those feelings and explorations got to the point of feeling kinda didactic and boring, compared to, again, the negotiation of how to create a future with the aliens the humans share this colony planet with. Some neat world building though.
March 29, 2026
I’m rather torn about this book. On the one hand, the world building is admirable, inventive, and extraordinarily clever. However, there are also entire chapters where nobody does anything, but sit around and talk and that drives me crazy. Cameron Reed has transitioned to female since their first book and I can really feel the author’s personal issues bubbling through the characters and it ruins the story for me. Ultimately, it’s not a bad book, but I found it kind of a slog and I would have liked if the plot had centred around the indigenous life-forms.
Thanks to Tor Books who kindly sent me an ARC for review.
Thanks to Tor Books who kindly sent me an ARC for review.
May 3, 2026
This is exactly the kind of book I've been waiting for. It has a great premise for describing to other people ("a barbaric custom called marriage"!), but the really good part of the book are the relationships between the characters, how they talk about them, and how they grow in the story. I would have liked the book to be longer and spend more time talking about how these colonists are going to shape the world with the "basket men," but the book itself didn't seem as interested in that. Or it just got lost in everything else. I'm giving it five stars anyway because it's my rating system and it's not a grade!
September 21, 2026
There is a LOT going on in this book. Almost as an aside, the author has thought about interstellar ship culture, several different planetary cultures, an AI oriented culture and an alien one. Then mixed them all together to see what will happen. And included different complex norms around gender and morality.
But also: there is a planet upon which all creatures seem to go through both a sort of plant AND animal phase in their lives. The aliens that humans hope to communicate with are part of a world which is somewhat hostile towards people, although not entirely. The life of the colony is in doubt but there doesn't seem to be immediate danger. But extinction can take some time.
Our main character is a doctor who's been dropped off on this planet but he isn't trusted to do much doctoring because of the culture he comes from. Our doctor is dealing with the possibility of a lot of loss. He's in love with a man who may ask him to perform a brain altering operation in order to understand the aliens better even though this is likely to lose him his love. He is in a relationship with a woman who may decide to become entirely digital. And he is also developing a relationship with a person of a third gender who has experienced prejudice and danger because of who they are.
People and things change all the time, places too. How does one deal with the losses that inevitably come with life, chosen and unchosen? These are heavy questions but there's also a lot going on in the foreground plot of the book. I was truly impressed by all the balls that the author kept juggling. Their imagination is top notch and they also dealt with sensitive social conundrums. I would love to read more by them.
But also: there is a planet upon which all creatures seem to go through both a sort of plant AND animal phase in their lives. The aliens that humans hope to communicate with are part of a world which is somewhat hostile towards people, although not entirely. The life of the colony is in doubt but there doesn't seem to be immediate danger. But extinction can take some time.
Our main character is a doctor who's been dropped off on this planet but he isn't trusted to do much doctoring because of the culture he comes from. Our doctor is dealing with the possibility of a lot of loss. He's in love with a man who may ask him to perform a brain altering operation in order to understand the aliens better even though this is likely to lose him his love. He is in a relationship with a woman who may decide to become entirely digital. And he is also developing a relationship with a person of a third gender who has experienced prejudice and danger because of who they are.
People and things change all the time, places too. How does one deal with the losses that inevitably come with life, chosen and unchosen? These are heavy questions but there's also a lot going on in the foreground plot of the book. I was truly impressed by all the balls that the author kept juggling. Their imagination is top notch and they also dealt with sensitive social conundrums. I would love to read more by them.
September 18, 2026
3.5 rounded up. I liked this less than I wanted to.
As a big fan back when she was going by Raphael Carter (stops to preen) and nobody else seemed to care (I never got that) I was really looking forward to Reed's big comeback book. But it felt more didactic, pedagogical, and political than I like. And I identify, at least somewhat, as nonbinary. So I didn't need the emphasis on undercutting our culture's conventions around gender and sexuality.
This is very much SF-of-ideas, which I know many people enjoy, so YMMV.
I would also say that I never quite connected with John, the narrator, and almost all the principal characters remained foreign enough to me that I couldn't identify with them. But perhaps this was intentional and/or necessary for what Reed set out to do.
I will so, however, that I was usually very interested in what she was up to and where the story was going, so I remained almost continually engaged with the book. And she has beautifully conjured up a future which feels very plausible while remaining fascinatingly exotic.
As a big fan back when she was going by Raphael Carter (stops to preen) and nobody else seemed to care (I never got that) I was really looking forward to Reed's big comeback book. But it felt more didactic, pedagogical, and political than I like. And I identify, at least somewhat, as nonbinary. So I didn't need the emphasis on undercutting our culture's conventions around gender and sexuality.
This is very much SF-of-ideas, which I know many people enjoy, so YMMV.
I would also say that I never quite connected with John, the narrator, and almost all the principal characters remained foreign enough to me that I couldn't identify with them. But perhaps this was intentional and/or necessary for what Reed set out to do.
I will so, however, that I was usually very interested in what she was up to and where the story was going, so I remained almost continually engaged with the book. And she has beautifully conjured up a future which feels very plausible while remaining fascinatingly exotic.
July 27, 2026
I had been hearing raves about this book, so I already had high expectations going into it.
This takes place far into the future, where many planets have been colonized from various groups on Earth, and have had some sociological/political divergence. The main character, John, is from a society that doesn't believe in marriage, in fact, sees it as an institution to imprison and control women. He ends up being stuck on a new planet, a small settlement settled by a couple of other groups who very much believe in traditional heterosexual marriage and gender roles.
There's a lot of stuff here. A really unique planet where the fauna is all "hatched" from vegetation, but can be mammals, birds, or reptiles, and some of the mammals even try to communicate with humans. There are some adventure parts of it. But it's also a lot about identity and how John changes or is changed by those around him. The author really uses the medium of sci-fi to explore what it means to be human and what we think about gender roles.
This takes place far into the future, where many planets have been colonized from various groups on Earth, and have had some sociological/political divergence. The main character, John, is from a society that doesn't believe in marriage, in fact, sees it as an institution to imprison and control women. He ends up being stuck on a new planet, a small settlement settled by a couple of other groups who very much believe in traditional heterosexual marriage and gender roles.
There's a lot of stuff here. A really unique planet where the fauna is all "hatched" from vegetation, but can be mammals, birds, or reptiles, and some of the mammals even try to communicate with humans. There are some adventure parts of it. But it's also a lot about identity and how John changes or is changed by those around him. The author really uses the medium of sci-fi to explore what it means to be human and what we think about gender roles.
April 27, 2026
idk the writing felt weird and stilted. ESPECIALLY at the first half of the book. It did get somewhat better though when you got into it, maybe because the plot carried it.
- They (tried) to make it like a mixture of mundane (as mundane as space colonies can be i guess lmao) daily life and cultured mixed with these 'philosophical' dialogues (or rather, think pieces). It was fine, but when you read through it, you can obviously clock what the writer was trying to do, which ruined the fiction and plot narrative for me.
- Thats my gripe i guess, that this book was not COMPLETELY good, not fully baked. Where it was bad, it was so boring, trite, and annoyingly stale but when it was good, it was so nuanced, tender, meditative and smart.
- Reading this made me feel like The Woker, but like, in a good way lmao
- ALSO BECAUSE this book heavily focused on language and communication i have a bone to pick with them, well maybe more like an inquiry. They used the word sunscreen as a name for a pill to help them with the sun. But does sunSCREEN not literally mean something you apply (topically) to protect you externally from the sun? It doesn't work when it a pill you ingest. IDK IT JUST BEEN ON MY MIND
- They (tried) to make it like a mixture of mundane (as mundane as space colonies can be i guess lmao) daily life and cultured mixed with these 'philosophical' dialogues (or rather, think pieces). It was fine, but when you read through it, you can obviously clock what the writer was trying to do, which ruined the fiction and plot narrative for me.
- Thats my gripe i guess, that this book was not COMPLETELY good, not fully baked. Where it was bad, it was so boring, trite, and annoyingly stale but when it was good, it was so nuanced, tender, meditative and smart.
- Reading this made me feel like The Woker, but like, in a good way lmao
- ALSO BECAUSE this book heavily focused on language and communication i have a bone to pick with them, well maybe more like an inquiry. They used the word sunscreen as a name for a pill to help them with the sun. But does sunSCREEN not literally mean something you apply (topically) to protect you externally from the sun? It doesn't work when it a pill you ingest. IDK IT JUST BEEN ON MY MIND
July 13, 2026
I loved reading this for the worldbuilding in general, the aliens and the alien ecology, and the different planetary customs. It doesn't get the fifth star because . Which I assume is the author's intention, but I still find it very frustrating. However, I expect (and hope) to see it on next year's award ballots.
July 3, 2026
A truly splendid book doing many things and all of them on multiple levels. I like the planet and its aliens, I like the languages and interpretations and efforts at communication in all its guises, I like the complicated character relationships, I like how this is about so many different people's journeys. And there is much more. I will be thinking about this one for a good while and already look forward to rereading it.
May 11, 2026
This book mostly just left me frustrated with how much potential it had that wasn't left fulfilled. The world was utterly fascinating, the scientific ideas of alien biology new and creative. I have many gripes (why did so little happen until the last few chapters and then get left unresolved?) but the greatest of them is that all of this gets filtered through the most boring POV character out of the whole cast that the author created. I genuinely adored Iren, I was fascinated by Vo, I would have loved to even hear Sudharma actually grapple with Jainism on a planet where the line between plant and animal is so blurred—any or all of them would have made amazing narrators. Instead we get John, whose most interesting trait is he comes from a planet without any form of marriage. And that's seemingly his whole personality.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 25, 2025
This book is so goddamn good I want to screech. It is precisely the type of sci-fi I'm always searching for.
Review to come, because I need to get my thoughts in order.
ARC provided by Edelweiss and TOR.
Review to come, because I need to get my thoughts in order.
ARC provided by Edelweiss and TOR.
September 25, 2026
This book was about an awful lot of things.
It was about human bias. It was about the shape of culture and civilization and technology when resources are scarce. It was about whether you can be celibate and also fuck someone as long as you don't let them fuck you. It was about snakes that are trees.
I generally pick up books for shit like the last example there. I keep reading books for things like the first three examples. For a while I wasn't sure I would finish this one, because the first type of thing seemed so prevalent over the latter. I've already seen a lot of poorly-thought-out starships used as window dressing for something else. Thank you, next. But once we were on the planet, and all the well-thought-out-weirdness of the biome came out, I was a lot more on board. I don't know why I need the genre elements in place in order to engage with the non-genre, but I do. Also I just really love being surprised by story and exploring new places, which I very much got to do here.
Anyway, circling back to themes and big-picture questions, I was never quite sold on any of it. Mostly because of the main character. I don't know if John was meant to be an one of those unlikeable protagonists that readers are still expected to engage with for some unknowable reason, but I do know that he and I got off on the wrong foot. A lot of it had to do with his truly bizarre views of marriage: that it is always bad. That it chains people together "unnaturally," and one or both partners will always suffer for it. Especially heterosexual marriage! O the horror! Everyone should instead be like him, perfectly polyamorous. It really isn't complicated at all!
Obviously marriage is not for everyone, but it is for a lot of people, hetero or not, and every human culture I've ever heard of has some form of it so...not sure where the "unnatural" claim is coming from. And vise versa, polyamory is great for some folks, but very much not for others. And has this character (or possibly this author) really never seen a happy, healthy marriage? If so, I'm very sorry. They're out there, I promise. I'd even argue that they are abundant.
I kept tripping over this and similar issues throughout the book, such as Iren . Possibly John was meant to make me confront my own cultural biases. Possibly Iren was meant to illustrate how gloriously complicated people are and how they can hold entirely contradictory multitudes, but I kept coming up with counter-argument after counter-argument instead. I wasn't convinced. I was barely even urged to reflect. It just didn't work.
All that being said, the writing was straightforward and tasty enough (some hiccups, such as early on a character randomly being identified/addressed as "doctor" for no reason I could discern, and only being given an explanation a page later). The ending was bittersweet, which is, on occasion, nice. And I am such a sucker for a book with a detailed, believable alien landscape, which I found this one to be, with beauty abundant and dangers hidden. But I think it wanted to be The Sparrow for gender instead of religion, and there wasn't enough of a thesis to hold it all together. Nor, unfortunately, does it entirely stick the landing. That ending should have spun out all the way, so we could see all the consequences John was so afraid of.
It was about human bias. It was about the shape of culture and civilization and technology when resources are scarce. It was about whether you can be celibate and also fuck someone as long as you don't let them fuck you. It was about snakes that are trees.
I generally pick up books for shit like the last example there. I keep reading books for things like the first three examples. For a while I wasn't sure I would finish this one, because the first type of thing seemed so prevalent over the latter. I've already seen a lot of poorly-thought-out starships used as window dressing for something else. Thank you, next. But once we were on the planet, and all the well-thought-out-weirdness of the biome came out, I was a lot more on board. I don't know why I need the genre elements in place in order to engage with the non-genre, but I do. Also I just really love being surprised by story and exploring new places, which I very much got to do here.
Anyway, circling back to themes and big-picture questions, I was never quite sold on any of it. Mostly because of the main character. I don't know if John was meant to be an one of those unlikeable protagonists that readers are still expected to engage with for some unknowable reason, but I do know that he and I got off on the wrong foot. A lot of it had to do with his truly bizarre views of marriage: that it is always bad. That it chains people together "unnaturally," and one or both partners will always suffer for it. Especially heterosexual marriage! O the horror! Everyone should instead be like him, perfectly polyamorous. It really isn't complicated at all!
Obviously marriage is not for everyone, but it is for a lot of people, hetero or not, and every human culture I've ever heard of has some form of it so...not sure where the "unnatural" claim is coming from. And vise versa, polyamory is great for some folks, but very much not for others. And has this character (or possibly this author) really never seen a happy, healthy marriage? If so, I'm very sorry. They're out there, I promise. I'd even argue that they are abundant.
I kept tripping over this and similar issues throughout the book, such as Iren . Possibly John was meant to make me confront my own cultural biases. Possibly Iren was meant to illustrate how gloriously complicated people are and how they can hold entirely contradictory multitudes, but I kept coming up with counter-argument after counter-argument instead. I wasn't convinced. I was barely even urged to reflect. It just didn't work.
All that being said, the writing was straightforward and tasty enough (some hiccups, such as early on a character randomly being identified/addressed as "doctor" for no reason I could discern, and only being given an explanation a page later). The ending was bittersweet, which is, on occasion, nice. And I am such a sucker for a book with a detailed, believable alien landscape, which I found this one to be, with beauty abundant and dangers hidden. But I think it wanted to be The Sparrow for gender instead of religion, and there wasn't enough of a thesis to hold it all together. Nor, unfortunately, does it entirely stick the landing. That ending should have spun out all the way, so we could see all the consequences John was so afraid of.
July 23, 2026
[…] at this distance even a muddied reflection of home felt like comfort.
From the beginning, What We Are Seeking marinates you in alien spices. Details hit askew, analogies emerge estranged from their common referents. Our lead perspective feels facinatingly off-center, his thoughts peppered with fears that rats are so close to humans that eating them would be akin to cannibalism, and that planets are frightening for having marriage customs.
This unsettling design filters into all parts of the world, from its greater cultures and social structures, to the linguistic grounding of the dialogue, what counts as “soft” or “sharp” language. With all of this layering, we are slowly brought into what appears to be a well-thought-out science fictional world, with intriguing new biological designs.
And then something changes halfway through.
“John. What you want can’t be.”
”Oh,” he said; and something in him that had hoped despite all reason—some bird-shaped brightness lying at the center of his chest—curled up its many legs, shed its clear wings, became compact and heavy as stone.
This book has a perfect section: Chapter 15. Two wandering souls, marred with such grievous tragedies, baring hidden hearts to one another in the dead night. This darkly glimmering core and the complex emotion it peels out is the sole reason this story must have 5 stars from me. An instantly haunting scene that plays as shadows flickering in the mind.
I wonder if it’s even possible to truly want to become alien, or if we can only imagine ourselves as some humanized version of them. If it is possible, then I was not up to the task.
Beyond the deeper topics explored in this book, there is something very appealing in how much time Cameron Reed spends on cooking and stitching, these slower, fundamental tasks of living that normally don’t get such patient focus. So many interesting choices for what to value and give attention to, such vivid overlapping of sociocultural conflicts. Perhaps more than any other I’ve read, this book does an excellent job of giving voice to that fear, that someone you love will turn into something you no longer recognize, and letting it fly free.
It isn’t selfish to insist on being allowed a life.
May 17, 2026
The one where Dr. John Maraintha comes against his will to a strange planet which is in the process of being settled by humans who are also strange.
I devoured the first third of the book. The worldbuilding, first of shipboard culture and then of the ecosystems of Scythia, is absolutely delightful from the largest scale down to the occasional hints that remind you that you're reading a story in English that's being spoken in something very different.
John has the characterization that you often see in narrators of both sci-fi and mysteries. He's naive and has some fixed ideas, so when he describes something to you, it's often possible for you to see things in it that he's oblivious to. He brings almost nothing in with him; he's both empty-handed (desperate to secure his material life) and lonely (desperate to connect), so he's ready to be transformed.
Unfortunately he's the only person in the book who shows us much interior. The other characters are having conflicts, making discoveries, following through with difficult choices -- but far too often things that ought to feel active are delivered by a character saying, "I've decided I'm going to do this," and going ahead (possibly after a bit of argument) and doing it.
It would have benefited greatly from another point of view. I would especially have liked to hear from inside Iren's head; mostly I understood the things they did, but I consistently had trouble making sense of the things they said, which seemed to be part of a witty dialog that was taking place somewhere other than on the page. Sudharma's perspective would have been welcome, too.
I devoured the first third of the book. The worldbuilding, first of shipboard culture and then of the ecosystems of Scythia, is absolutely delightful from the largest scale down to the occasional hints that remind you that you're reading a story in English that's being spoken in something very different.
John has the characterization that you often see in narrators of both sci-fi and mysteries. He's naive and has some fixed ideas, so when he describes something to you, it's often possible for you to see things in it that he's oblivious to. He brings almost nothing in with him; he's both empty-handed (desperate to secure his material life) and lonely (desperate to connect), so he's ready to be transformed.
Unfortunately he's the only person in the book who shows us much interior. The other characters are having conflicts, making discoveries, following through with difficult choices -- but far too often things that ought to feel active are delivered by a character saying, "I've decided I'm going to do this," and going ahead (possibly after a bit of argument) and doing it.
It would have benefited greatly from another point of view. I would especially have liked to hear from inside Iren's head; mostly I understood the things they did, but I consistently had trouble making sense of the things they said, which seemed to be part of a witty dialog that was taking place somewhere other than on the page. Sudharma's perspective would have been welcome, too.
Did Not Finish
August 31, 2026*Thanks to NetGalley for an eARC of this book*
Unfortunately for me, I will not be finishing this book. I was intrigued by the premise; however, the writing style is not engaging me and the plot hook of considering marriage to be a barbaric practice was only interesting the first time it was mentioned and lost me after the third time.
I read 30% of the book and while the world building was interesting, it seemed to me that the book was going to mostly be people sitting in a room discussing philosophical matters, which while I agree with a lot of the opinions being discussed, did not make me want to continue reading. In fact, knowing I needed to read this book was keeping me from reading anything.
I do think based on other reviews this is mostly an issue for me, so if you are interested in this book, I would give it a shot, there was nothing objectively wrong with what I read, it was just not holding my interest.
Unfortunately for me, I will not be finishing this book. I was intrigued by the premise; however, the writing style is not engaging me and the plot hook of considering marriage to be a barbaric practice was only interesting the first time it was mentioned and lost me after the third time.
I read 30% of the book and while the world building was interesting, it seemed to me that the book was going to mostly be people sitting in a room discussing philosophical matters, which while I agree with a lot of the opinions being discussed, did not make me want to continue reading. In fact, knowing I needed to read this book was keeping me from reading anything.
I do think based on other reviews this is mostly an issue for me, so if you are interested in this book, I would give it a shot, there was nothing objectively wrong with what I read, it was just not holding my interest.
June 28, 2026
Menschen von zwei verschiedenen Planeten und Kulturen haben einen dritten Planeten besiedelt. Ein Arzt und ein Übersetzer von zwei weiteren Planeten kommen dazu, um die Kommunikation mit Aliens aufzunehmen. Sehr schön geschriebene und zum Nachdenken anregende Geschichte über Lebensentwürfe und Gesellschaften.
July 2, 2026
I had no idea what was coming, but I thoroughly enjoyed this. There were complicated human societies, different ethical priorities, space adventures, love, identity crises, and many other themes.
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