He, She and It

While this novel has a rich world full of detail and cultural diversity, it suffers from slow pacing and a tremendous amount of unbroken exposition. The plot develops at an agonizing slow pace until it is jarringly interrupted by a seemingly non-sequitur story within a story about life in a Jewish ghetto in seventeenth century Prague. Once the story did gain some traction, I found myself feeling unsympathetic toward any of the characters who spend all of their time wallowing in guilt and self-doubt over their past mistakes and the existential nature of their own existence including, surprisingly, the cyborg and the golem.
There is very little in the way of dramatic tension. Whenever there is a moment of genuine conflict, it is resolved with surprising speed or is glossed over altogether. The ending in particular was anti-climatic. By the end I felt the relief of having completed a difficult chore rather than the satisfaction of a well-told story.
A beautiful but flawed novel. If you're willing to invest the time required to read it, it can be a worthwhile experience, but if you crave something with excitement and action, this book may not be for you.

An absorbing and compelling read. It was absolutely incredible to see my culture on the pages of a science fiction novel set in the future; each sly reference tickled me and the use of the Golem of Prague legend as allegory was effective. I especially liked that certain references or terms were not spelled out for the reader, at least not right away or in so many terms - the reader is simply expected to be literate in Jewish culture, religion, and history.

I enjoyed that each character was complex, that the sympathetic characters were not actually always sympathetic, but rather had their own warts. It would have been easy for an author to make Shira Shipman a Mary Sue, but no - Shira is prickly, more than a bit self-centred, and anxious. I suspect Malkah was a bit of an avatar for the author, but this is actually fun for the reader.

Since the book was published in 1991, there are a few bits of terminology that haven't aged well - the use of the word “autistic” is an example. It comes up a few times and betrays the author's belief (at that time) that autistic people are incapable of emotion or expression, and have minimal quality of life. This isn't a theme of the book, so it doesn't mean I won't recommend this title, but it jumped out at me as a reader in 2021.