Stilson does something technically impressive in Universe of Lost Messages — she manages alternating first-person voices across a large cast without losing the distinctive register of each character. Cheeta, Tristan, and Lush Ellington each narrate their sections with genuine individuality, which is hard to do and harder still to sustain across a full novel.

The world-building is layered rather than dumped. “United America,” the class structures of Chav and Elite, the security bots and spider bots — Stilson parcels out context in exactly the doses that let you keep reading without stopping to orient yourself. That’s the mark of a writer who has thought carefully about exposition.

The metaverse where lost messages float in bubbles is the novel’s most visually distinctive invention. A strong, accomplished science fiction novel from a writer who clearly knows what she’s doing.

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