Mumble Herder

I must recommend Norse Code by Greg Van Eekhout. I've misspelled that, and I have the internet right here so I could look it up, but I'm a rebel. And I make this recommendation to you as someone who has tried to like a lot of the traditionally popular authors in this genre, and who has often ended up throwing them across the room because the plotting is so awful, or the characters are shit, or because the language is lazy and/or overwrought. But this is a good book.