How do people decide on a path, and find the drive to pursue what they want? Ida struggles more than other twentysomethings to work this out. She can shift between parallel universes, allowing her to follow alternative paths. One day Ida sees a shadowy, see-through doppelganger of herself on the train. She starts to wonder if she's actually in control of her ability, and whether there are effects far beyond what she's considered. How can she know, anyway, whether one universe is ultimately better than another? And what if the continual shifting causes her to lose what is most important to her, just as she's discovering what that is, and she can never find her way back? Ida is an intelligent, diverse and entertaining novel that explores love, loss and longing, and speaks to the condition of an array of overwhelming, and often illusory, choices.
Winner of the People's Choice Award at the 2018 Victorian Premier's Awards.
★★★☆ Genderfluid, bisexual and transgender characters with a wonderful emphasis on each characters preferred pronouns. Ida is bisexual and biracial, of Vietnamese heritage. Blended with a captivating urban science fiction narrative, it's thought provoking and beautifully diverse. There were too few pages though. A longer narrative would have allowed for further explanation of how Ida's ability progressed and of Damaris and Adrastos' characters.
