My biggest problem was not knowing who/what Nightwalkers were. A company? A species? A profession? A travelling culture, like [the Hollywood notion of] Gypsies? Are they only up in orbit on a ship? Half the time I thought it was "nightworkers". Cate mentions being "half Nightwalker" - which of her characteristics were Nightwalker - the plant parts, or what?
Did Freeman know Cate was part Nightwalker? Evidently not, since she says he didn't notice a lot of things.
I got real confused right after she asked Freeman if it was a business arrangement or what. Her reaction to his answer really muddied some things up, like what her motivation was in doing him in.
There was some potential with exploring the Nightwalker's code. What would have happened if the code demanded that someone be protected who did not deserve it? What happens when it conflicts with human law? The western and science fiction genres have the ideal tools for exploring issues like this.
The Code... If she cared about the Code, why should it matter whether or not Freeman was aware of it?
Or is the Code more like
guidelines?
Claim of ignorance: I missed how Cate realized that Mr. Big Shot killed her friend.
I had to replay it to figure that one out.
@14:23 - "The Nightwalkers didn't normally share information with outsiders. What happened in Nightwalker territory
stayed in Nightwalker territory. Freeman should have been able to avail himself of any of the indentured pleasure slave there to any degree, without it getting back to any other Human ears. Still, Family's good for something."
Next she goes on about "We're not even people to someone like that." Did she mean "we prostitutes", or "we hybrids"? (Ooh - shades of
Bladerunner.) Maybe the author
intended it to have a double meaning.
At any rate, it confused me as to what Cate was, and how she's connected to Nightwalkers. Was she the "other human ears" (meaning she was Human) or did it mean she was treated as a Nightwalker, and hence privy to Nightwalker info.
So, I thought the beginning was okay, and the ending was pretty good, but I had the feeling I was reading a hard-copy book and accidently skipped 10 pages.
Loved Minx's reading though, as ever.
I believe the odd "overprocessed" sound quality is an artifact of overly-aggressive noise removal. If it's "spectral noise gating" such as used by
Audacity 1.3.3 or later, the more
obvious artifacts can be quite loud and sound like a dozen tinkly glass wind chimes passed through a phlanger.
I find it less obtrusive simply to allow more of the original background noise to remain, since the natural analog noise is less alien to my ears than the artifacts, so I tend to adapt to it and forget about it sooner.