Murata continues to impress with her ability to turn "normal" society upside down and making the sheer fact of living in a mammal body seem profoundly weird. Here she picks apart the very notion of sexuality, of dating, of relationships, of why the hell anyone would want a genetic copy of themselves running around, the very concept of what it means to be normal... which is all very good, but it gets a bit repetitive. The ending is truly glorious and makes up for a lot of it, even if Earthlings was more fun. Looking forward to more of her novels getting translated.