River of Teeth / Sarah Gailey

River of Teeth is a hundred pages and change, which results in a four hour-ish audiobook, and my biggest takeaway from it is that I wish it was longer. Here again we have a great concept well-executed, but it is Very Rushed, and listen: I like a good twist and/or turn, but if a novella has a "but theEeEeEeEennn" moment every single scene it gets to be a BIT MUCH. And the action moved so quickly and I couldn't get a grasp on how much time was meant to be passing and I was like "I know I'm SUPPOSED to feel betrayed/shocked/happy about what these characters are doing, but I haven't had time to get attached!!!!!!!" 

A definite strength of this book is the very varied cast of characters. There's a non-binary character who is always referred to as they/them, even by people who don't like them or want them gone. No one uses gendered language as a weapon against them, and there aren't scenes where they have to explain what their pronouns are, or explain what being non-binary is, they just ARE, and it's refreshing. There's a scene in the book (mild spoiler ahead) where the crew has to decide what to do after losing the only white man on the team when there's someone expecting a white man to come and get something, and it was nice to read about a book where the world looks like the world actually looks. 

I WANTED TO LIKE THIS MORE, is what I'm saying. I'm hoping the second book is a little less break-neck and a little less "but it turns out"-y with one or two fewer Shocking Reveals. You know? Gimme them good hippos.