Nominally Hugo Awards homework in that it's dystopian SF that came out this year, but it's from a small Canadian press, so... I might nominate it for best novel out of sheer perversity? Also, I appreciate abolitionist, and bisexual polyamory is normalised, but not idealised.

In a future where war and climate change have made the Earth only marginally inhabitable, the corporation-state of Flint is divided between an upper class living in the mountains, and a hyper-regulated prison camp. Our Hero(ine) is a non-binary person who is in a hidden relationship with a revolutionary. They arrange to escape from the prison camp, but then have to figure out where they fit into a colony of fellow escapees/freedom fighters.

Most of this book is a case study of a community that doesn't exist, but is created by a society not unlike ours, its set pieces being a pair of trials: one right after the main character arrives. These show off the structure of the community, and bring to light the failure modes of egalitarian anarchy. Meanwhile, the main character is trying to figure out what personal and sexual relationships look like when you don't have to hide them or your gender, and aren't under constant threat of violence. It's pretty clear that Karasik has spent a lot of time in co-ops, but unlike Eleanor Catton in Birnam Wood, isn't entirely cynical that they can work.

I was surprised how much I liked this. It felt like old school social science fiction where people spend most of their time thinking and talking about theory, and then sometimes things explode.