(Found) Book about a redhead, lowborn girl who finds out she is lost genes of old, highborn family which can manipulate "the net"

[5syko]

This has been bugging me for months!
I've searched everywhere - including my scattered thoughts - to no further avail. This is what I remember:

•Either not set in our world, or very far in the future.
•Girl turning 18, has ginger/red hair (important)
•There's a big focus on genes.
•She lives in pleasure house(?)
•She is allowed by the woman who runs the place to go watch a festival/goes & buys some street food.
•The world they live in is separated & segregated by genes, class (maybe also race?)
•There are lizard people, 1 of whom is tasked with finding & assassinating this girl.
•She turns out not to be a lowborn girl of unimportant genes, but to be the heir to hidden lost bloodline of family that can interface with & manipulate "the net"/tech that controls their entire world. A lot of which is broken by her long lost gene relatives.
•The lizard guy at 1 point is unsure as to the legitimacy of his employer, as she "didn't want to hear about how he killed by the slow/small cuts."

So far I think that's it & I've been dragging more to the surface but with what I've got I just can't find any mention of a book!

3 years ago I got off of the streets, but while I was homeless I used to read intrepidly & this story was 1 that I managed to really lose myself in. I would really like to try to find it & any possible linked literature.

Thanks in advance

 

[PaulMmn]

I'm assuming space flight (at least between lizard people and humans).

I'm also intrigued by the red hair-- only other stories with a hero with red hair are the Alan Dean Foster stories about Flinx and his mini-dragon Pip. Flinx has some mental powers, and some of the stories mention blood lines/ancestral families.

Flinx came from the planet "Moth--" so named because it had 2 rings at an angle to each other, looking sort of like wings on the planet.

In the Flinx stories, the lizard people are the Aan.

There is also a giant race of insects (I think of them as giant praying mantises) known as the Thranx (?). One of them is named Truzenzuzex. His niece (?) is Sylzenzuzex.

 

[5syko]

I'm assuming space flight (at least between lizard people and humans).

I'm also intrigued by the red hair-- only other stories with a hero with red hair are the Alan Dean Foster stories about Flinx and his mini-dragon Pip. Flinx has some mental powers, and some of the stories mention blood lines/ancestral families.

Flinx came from the planet "Moth--" so named because it had 2 rings at an angle to each other, looking sort of like wings on the planet.

In the Flinx stories, the lizard people are the Aan.

There is also a giant race of insects (I think of them as giant praying mantises) known as the Thranx (?). One of them is named Truzenzuzex. His niece (?) is Sylzenzuzex.

Hey thanks for the reply Paul but that's not it unfortunately!

 

[tachyon]

OK did a bit of searching - finally came across (search terms: "red hair" "lizard" "novel" "assassin") this stackexchange question:

Looking for a sci-fi novel that featured a slave species called spacules (I think)

It was set in the distant future, on a world humans had settled such a long time ago that Earth is never mentioned. Humanity enslaved a native species called spacules (or maybe spicules).These were

scifi.stackexchange.com

Which points to: Palace by Katharine Kerr & Mark Kreighbaum

Reading some reviews strongly suggests Palace is the book in question.

 

[5syko]

That's it! Palace!!

Oh you absolute beautiful human! Thanks so much

I'm new here, I literally signed up to get this worm out of my brain & to hopefully - & successfully, thanks to you - find this book. Is there anything I need to do to close this thread/put as resolved? Or do I just leave it?

Thanks again!

 

[tachyon]

Glad to help!

Mods will mark the thread found in the title eventually, you're all set.

Stick around and help keep this place lively!