A deeply engrossing, at times frightening, unique story about a time-traveling serial killer that manages to not fall into the common pitfalls of serial killer stories OR time travel stories. Instead, Beukes approaches the story with an air of magical realism and metaphor, with great attention to character to boot. 
 I really loved like 90% of this book. I was very down with the way she plays with time and inevitability within the narrative itself, sometimes going so far as to include chapters that seemingly make no sense and have leaped very far forward in the narrative, making them context-free and confusing, only to fully justify and explore them later. This leads to a pretty firm time travel logic for the world, and therefore never leads to any paradoxes or missteps that derail the central narrative. 
 I particularly enjoyed Beukes's characters, which, while archetypal, never feel stale. Harper, the killer, is depicted as being a pretty vicious and insane drifter, whose background and justifications for killing feel straight out of any number of crime novels at first. But, as the story goes on, she dives deeper, somehow making this hateful, murderous lunatic seem like an actual person. 
 Same with the main character, Kirby. She presents as a grunge-era Lisbeth Salander, seemingly unflappable and brilliant, but over time, we realize just how affected by Harper she's been. Beukes allows us to see behind Kirby's facade in subtle (and sometimes less subtle) ways, really setting her apart as a hero. 
 The only thing I didn't love about the book is the climax. Without getting into spoilers, I'll just say this: it's very convenient. Throughout the book, we follow Kirby's thorough and frustrating investigation into how exactly Harper is pulling off his murders, but the wrap-up just kind of... happens. It's sudden, fairly unearned, and requires Harper to behave in a way we have not seen him behave in the entire novel. I was pretty disappointed with that part, but its inevitability was so telegraphed in the rest of the novel that I was willing to forgive it. The rest of the book more than makes up for this one relatively minor issue. 
 Definitely recommend for anyone looking for something viscerally scary with a bit of a genre twist thrown in.