I was delighted to have been asked to read this story. I loved it completely, and was pretty dazzled to learn that every thing that had struck me as unusual and unique about it had been part of that initial Challenge by Cat Valente: the very few lines of dialogue; the absence of "to be" verbs, which weighted every sentence with muscle; the protagonist herself. I just loved it.
I loved that this was a story where a man and woman become allies without any romance. I loved that it was a story in which we got an illustration of communication without words, that main characters spoke languages they didn't understand, and there was no "Common Tongue" cop-out. I loved that it was a story about a woman's love for her father and her love for her daughter, and that both relationships are weighted equally, and that we have a sense of how complex she is herself. I loved that it was okay for her and her daughter to fall back into their life of solitude and needing only each other. It was a very physical story; I felt the cold, the fatigue, the sense-sharpening near danger, all of it.
I'm sorry to see I enjoyed the process of reading it more than people seem to have enjoyed the listening of it. I'd suggest finding it in print if my narration didn't work out, because I think it's just that brilliant and effective.
About the daughter: I totally bought that she could kill her kidnapper. The creature wasn't expecting her to be able or willing to fight -- neither was her own mother. The line "my daughter, who waited for her opportunities, and took them" was all the explanation I needed.
Possibly the thing I loved best, thought, was the ending that reflected on its own injustice. The protagonist knows she did a terrible thing, and regrets it. The articulation of "the world has no place for justice" was this amazing gutpunch. It was such a stark, honest self-awareness.
In short, and at the risk of being redundant, I loved it.