Saabrina

The universe is filled with sound: the growl of a black hole, the harmony of a gravitational wave, the chirp of an interstellar collision. It's an ever-present backing track to every moment of every day, everywhere that a Saab like Saabrina can hear. But Saabrina doesn't hear when with one little accident, she and Bob change the key; one little accident that has knocked the universe horribly out of tune.

It could be because she's too busy listening to the congresswoman building a political career on taking her and the Saabs' rights away or trying to find the brilliant women gone missing on pre-contact worlds or helping her BFF, Rebecca, get on with her life or finally taking a vacation, albeit as a six-year-old version of Rebecca. Or it could be that Saabrina is behaving very strangely indeed.

Four years into their partnership, Saabrina and Bob are something neither of them has a name for. Is she daughter, girlfriend, partner, something else? Something that her big sister, Saabra, has set Saabrina on course for, maybe something more than expanding Saabrina's job as a sentient spacecraft for the United Star Systems.

The universe can be saved. Probably. The harder question is what Saabrina and Bob are to each other and whether they'll figure that out before everything else falls apart.

Funny and endearing in equal measure, Tanglewood deepens everything that made the first book worth reading and raises stakes that won't be resolved until the very end of the series.