The 5th Gender

On a space station, in the far future, a gruff detective falls for an exotic humanoid alien only for them both to be swept up into investigating a seemingly impossible murder.[a:Gail Carriger 2891665 Gail Carriger https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1476925456p2/2891665.jpg] has impressed me in the past with her ability to write hilarious books with lovable characters and heartwarming romances, that none the less grip you with fascinating mysteries. Until now I'd only read her Victorian(ish) novels, so I was interested in how she would fare writing Science Fiction. The answer is that she fares very well indeed.The two main characters of this story are just adorable and their relationship is just so well written. The purple...ahem...lavender alien, Tris, is so well meaning and misunderstands most of human society in sweet and hilarious ways, while “Gruff Detective” Drey tries to keep up the rough banter with colleagues while being utterly soppy on the inside.The mystery itself is in the grand SF-Detective tradition of Asimov. Not only is the death itself seemingly inexplicable, but to solve the mystery the detective must come to understand a different culture with different preconceptions - encouraging us to challenge our own. Gail Carriger blew my socks off with her handling of this (Tris would be shocked, socks are important!).Fair warning - there are several intimately described bedroom scenes OK, living room/nest scenes. I'm not big on too much description in this area - generally speaking I love the soppy romantic bits, but I usually prefer getting back to the plot rather than a paragraph describing just how sweaty someone is. In other books this has annoyed me (looking at you [a:Peter F. Hamilton 25375 Peter F. Hamilton https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1235123752p2/25375.jpg]) but Ms Carriger somehow did not annoy me. Perhaps it was the banter in these scenes, or maybe she is just better at writing characters than many other authors.I would utterly LOVE to read more stories based in this world. Please write more SF Ms Carriger!

3.25 stars. Very sweet and cute, but the relationship between the two MCs is established early on and then consists of them having sex and telling/thinking how wonderful the other one is. Which is fine, but not particularly interesting. I guess there is a message in there about gender, sexual preference and choice, but it was too easy to put the book down because there was so little forward momentum.