Read-Along: Babylon's Ashes by James S.A. Corey, Part 4 [END]

Welcome to the final post in the read-along of James S.A. Corey’s Babylon’s Ashes, book six of The Expanse!  We’re planning to tackle the new book, Persepolis Rising, in January.  If you’d like to join, speak up at our Goodreads group page! This week’s questions were provided by There’s Always Room for One More, and they cover through the end of the book.  Please beware of spoilers from here on out!

1. So - we get up close and personal with Marco Inaros. Reactions?

He is just as awful of a person as I had surmised by seeing him from the perspective of others? I didn’t really enjoy seeing his thoughts about characters I liked, and it seems he’s one of those gross (and dangerous) people who refuse to let exes go.  Further, his sections thoroughly convinced me that he did not have the strategy or vision to really lead the Belt into a stable future.  It was pretty satisfying when his section ended with him and all his followers getting vaporized!    

2. Filip completes his arc - were you surprised? How do you feel about him as a character now? Would you be happy to see his POV in the future?

I was surprised that his character arc didn’t have anything to do with killing all those people or his feelings about it. I feel like him being a mass murderer was really just kind of side-stepped, and he hasn’t even seemed particularly concerned about it (he’s still proud, I guess).  Instead, his arc was about him moving from hero-worshipping his dad to realizing that he’s an abusive manipulator.  I guess the more that see that side of Marco the merrier, but I don’t see any reason to modify my previous opinion of Filip.  I don’t really feel any desire to see more of his perspective, but I hope Naomi finds out he’s not dead.  That will help a bit with her grief and guilt.

3. What do you make of Holden’s choice at the end?

I think it made a lot of sense.  I was facepalming as well, when I heard Avasarala wanted Holden to be the head of the new Belter union.  They’ve tried that.  Fred’s OPA was not exactly a resounding success, though he did his best.  The OPA needs a leader that is a Belter, not an Inner who really wants to help them.

As for which Belter, as much as I have criticized her, I think Michio will do well.  She’ll deal fairly with Belters, and she has already been organizing distribution of goods throughout the Belt.  I got the impression she’s highly visible in Belter society, and people will likely respect that she cared so much about the people of the Belt that she turned against the Free Navy to help them.  I might have chosen Anderson Dawes, just because he’s used to complicated administration work, but I think Michio will be a good choice.

I’ll just say, though, Naomi would have been an awful choice.  Not because I think she couldn’t do it, but because I think she’d be miserable in the job.  She does not strike me as someone who would be happy spending her days administering a complicated trade union.

4. Can Holden's vision succeed? Is it going to be happily ever after?

I think so.  Weirdly enough, this is one of the ideas I was thinking of when Belters started talking about their vanishing niche.  It makes a lot of sense for them to be in charge of trade.  I can see a few potential pitfalls, though.  The Belters have never done anything this large and organized, so there’s bound to be mistakes and growing pains.  Second, a good number of them hate people who live on planets.  Ships with these kinds of folks are likely to price gouge or otherwise abuse colonists.  This could be managed by ensuring frequent trade stops per planet and a rotation of different ships, I think, so that no community is dependent upon any one shipment.  So not exactly happily ever after--they’ve got a lot of work ahead of them.  I think the future is brighter for them than it’s looked for a while though!

For a final thought, I loved that Naomi was the one who saved the day, and that she did it through data analysis! I'm looking forward to seeing what's in store in Persepolis Rising!

Review: The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers

Published: Harper Voyager (2016), Self-published (2014)

Series: Book 1 of the Wayfarers

Awards Nominated: Arthur C. Clarke Award & Kitchies: Golden Tentacle Award

The Book:

“Somewhere within our crowded sky, a crew of wormhole builders hops from planet to planet, on their way to the job of a lifetime. To the galaxy at large, humanity is a minor species, and one patched-up construction vessel is a mere speck on the starchart. This is an everyday sort of ship, just trying to get from here to there. But all voyages leave their mark, and even the most ordinary of people have stories worth telling.

A young Martian woman, hoping the vastness of space will put some distance between herself and the life she's left behind. An alien pilot, navigating life without her own kind. A pacifist captain, awaiting the return of a loved one at war. Set against a backdrop of curious cultures and distant worlds, this episodic tale weaves together the adventures of nine eclectic characters, each on a journey of their own.” ~WWEnd.com

I’d heard a lot of positive buzz about this series on the internet, so I decided to check it out. I love space opera in general, so it was a pretty easy sell for me. I’m planning to read A Closed and Common Orbit sometime soon!

My Thoughts:

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet does not follow the traditional format of a novel.  Instead, it is more like a television show (e.g., Star Trek, Firefly, Dark Matter ), following episodic adventures that slowly reveal the histories and personalities of the Wayfarer crew.  This approach works for me, both because I generally love these kinds of stories and because the setting and characters of the novel are so interesting.  The Wayfarer has a majority human crew, but humans are a relatively minor species in the galactic community.  I liked how humanity was not in charge or extremely special, but just one of many peoples.  It was neat seeing how the human and alien crew members compromised to create a space to live and work together, whether that involved learning new ways to communicate or handling less than optimal climate control.  Each of them comes from a different background, but they find a way to make the Wayfarer a home.

Since this is more of an episodic/slice-of-life kind of story, there’s not all that much of an overarching plot.  There is the job that initially sets them off on a longer voyage than usual, but the story doesn’t really build up to a climax.  Instead, the culmination of that story feels like another episode.  However, as in many things, it’s not the destination that matters here, but the journey.  As the crew of the Wayfarer stop at different communities and interact with different aliens, the focus shifts from crew member to crew member.  By the end of the novel, I felt like I knew and appreciated each of them.  As is important for a slice-of-life story, it was always a pleasant world to drop back into, just to see what would happen next in their journey.  

Another thing that I enjoyed about this novel was the group dynamics and optimistic atmosphere.  I enjoy stories about groups of people that work together and complement each other’s strengths and weaknesses. Each of the crew is competent at their jobs, and they rely on their skills to face each problem that they meet along the way.  They’re also a close-knit group, and I enjoyed seeing the peace of the community that they created on their ship. They are not merely doing a job together, they are helping to build lives of meaning and purpose for themselves and each other.  They face some very sad events along the way, but it does not overwhelm the story.  These are still people who can accomplish their goals, and who look forward to a brighter future together.  

My Rating: 4/5

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet is an entertaining slice-of-life space opera about the crew of a ship called the Wayfarer.  Reminiscent of Firefly and other sci-fi tv shows, the novel introduces details about the main cast through episodic stories.  The journey to the small, angry planet is really the focus, not what will happen once they arrive.  There is not a lot of tension, but the compelling human and alien characters, as well as the interesting universe full of alien cultures, make the story compulsively readable.  I’m looking forward to reading A Closed and Common Orbit, Becky Chambers’s next book in this universe!

Review: Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge

Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge

Published: Tor, 2006

Awards Won: Hugo and Locus SF Awards

Awards Nominated: Campbell Memorial and Prometheus Awards

The Book:

“Advances in medicine have rescued the elderly Robert Gu, world-class poet, from death’s door.  While he’s admired by many, the people closest to him know him as an abusive and hateful SOB.  While recovering, he lives with his son, daughter-in-law and granddaughter Miri, a sunny young teen whom he’d never had the opportunity to wound. He has lost his place in the world, and his sense of how he relates to the people in it.  It’s difficult for him to go back to poetry, so he begins the painful process of trying to learn a new generation of technology through adult remedial education.

One thing that particularly grates on Robert is the lack of physical books in this new age, since most information has been digitized into searchable information.  When he learns from others of his generation that a new technology is going to digitize the library of his old university, destroying the books in the process, he falls into their clandestine scheme to throw a spanner in the works. Things are never simple in an interconnected world, though, and Robert has no way to know how far his actions will reach.” ~Allie

I’m finally coming in on reading the last few Hugo winners!  I’m currently reading Vernor Vinge’s A Deepness in the Sky, and then my only remaining unread winner is Mirror Dance by Lois McMaster Bujold.  I’ve also read A Shadow Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge years ago, and as far as I can recall, I enjoyed it quite a lot.

My Thoughts:

Rainbows End imagines a fascinating future world filled with new technology.  Connectivity has moved into articles of clothing, and young people can manipulate information and communication with gestures.  I especially enjoyed how technology allowed you to play with perception.  You can transform your surrounding into Middle Earth, but still keep the relevant cues so that you can interact normally in the shared physical reality.  The novel also takes into account the downsides of a highly connected world.  For instance, most work is now about synthesizing information, and non-searchable data structures (like physical books) are neglected.  When most people are interacting through digital avatars, a more literal form of identity theft is also a problem.  Despite the downsides, it’s a very cool world, and one that I was happy to explore.

On the other hand, I was not particularly interested in the abusive jerk of a protagonist, Robert Gu. I’m also not exactly sure why his body was miraculously cured to youth, because it was irrelevant to the story.  Anyway, he has a deeply unpleasant personality, and I sympathized with his family’s dislike of him.  Robert does have a small character arc throughout the book, where he becomes gradually slightly less of an abusive jerk.  This might be a realistic depiction of the extent to which people can actually change, but in fiction it can feel a little unsatisfying. Aside from Robert, though, there were some sympathetic side characters.  His cheerful and intelligent granddaughter Miri was a favorite of mine, as well as his earnest and struggling remedial classmate Juan.  Some of the other elderly also have interesting takes on how to re-integrate into the current society.  For me, there were interesting and likeable characters here, they just weren’t Robert Gu.

Regarding the plot, I think I could best describe it as fitting in the slice-of-life genre.  I’ve seen the novel described as a thriller, but I feel that’s a little misleading.  There is a global conspiracy that may be a threat to the human race, but it’s heavily backgrounded.  The main story is about Robert’s daily life, his work with the remedial education class, and his relationships with his family.  Robert’s big conspiracy is just a plot with his old frenemies to mildly inconvenience the book digitizing/shredding operation.  The implementation of this plot leads to the most action-packed part of the book (which includes a really neat technological riot), but there’s not much narrative payoff from all the chaos.  I enjoyed the page-by-page of seeing life in this interesting future, though, so ultimately I’m happy to have read it.  

My Rating: 3.5/5

Rainbows End is a slice-of-life story featuring a jerk protagonist in an interesting future world.  I enjoyed exploring how ubiquitous connectivity affected people’s lives, as well as seeing the clever things that can be accomplished with augmented reality.  The main character, an abusive old man named Robert Gu, has a slight redemption character arc, but it was never enough to really make him likeable for me.  I preferred reading about some of the side characters, such as his granddaughter and his classmates.  There is a big, worldwide conspiracy involved here, but it’s the little, local conspiracies that are the focus of the novel.  This is not my favorite Vinge novel, but I did enjoy exploring its hypothetical future.