And What Can We Offer You Tonight by Premee Mohamed

   This is my third read by the author. The first two were a strangely meandering introduction, where I’d find myself liking some of it, but almost reluctantly. Which is to say, this author and this reader are not an organic match. In fact, with her last novella I pretty much decided to maybe just stay away, but the thing is…I love novellas. And this one (unlike that last one) was actually a proper novella size at only 80 pages (as oppose to 170), so I figured one more try.
    Ok, it stands to mention that the main thing with this author for me is how young her novels read. They are not YA and are not marketed as such, but that’s how they often read, which really, really, really isn’t for me.
    This novella, refreshingly, was somewhat more mature. Instead of the age disparity, it just had a strange poetic quality to it that didn’t quite work for me.
   Mind you, it’s a perfectly fine novella and the author isn’t without talent, it just doesn’t quite sing for me the way it might for some readers. In fact, given the poetic quality of the language, the way it was meant to sing.
    The basics are this…a dreamily overwritten account of a fancy futuristic high end pleasure palace and a revenge plot hatched by the fancy high end (and occasionally modified) courtesans of it against their masters and abusers, after one of their own ends up...well, not quite dead. So it has a positive empowering message, it has some elegantly froufrou descriptions, it has a certain luxurious lavishness of style. And a positively lush cover. It’ll certainly find its audience, even if I’m not exactly it. Plus it reads quickly enough, so you’re not overcommitting one way or another. Thanks Netgalley.