It took me ages to finish this book, so I wasn't exactly captivated by it. In a future world, Tanyana is a pion worker - pions, as far as I could tell, are basic building blocks of matter, and Tanyana manipulates them as part of a circle to make grand architectural edifaces. Manipulates them with her braaaain. So it's a little bit fantasy, little bit sci fi - you couldn't call it sci fi, as the details as to how this world functions aren't entirely there.

Anyway, a disaster on one of Tanyana's building projects causes her to no longer be able to see pions, and she becomes a debris collector (debris being a byproduct of pion usage), the lowest of the low. She finds this change in circumstances rather challenging, and the story of Debris is essentially her gradual investigations into the nature of debris and the suit that has been surgically attached to her body to enable her to collect it. Not that she comes to a great many conclusions, given that this is book 1 of a trilogy. Debris has a number of interesting ideas, but I wasn't enthralled enough with them to continue with the trilogy.