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mburnamfink 's review for:
A Closed and Common Orbit
by Becky Chambers
The warning sign should have been "[This book] is perfect for fans of Firefly, Joss Whedon, Mass Effect and Star Wars." If I may be forgiven for just a bit of nerd-gatekeeper elitism, if your marketing team won't refer to any other piece of textual scifi, maybe books are not the right medium. And if your marketing team says you can read this book without the first book, and your website FAQ disagrees, get a new marketing team. I'll admit, I did not finish this book. I gave it an honest 25% read before returning it for a refund, which I almost never do.
We start with the AI of the ship Lovelace, from the previous novel, who has suddenly been embodied in a very human chassis, and is not at all sure if she likes this. Putting an AI in a replicant body is Super Illegal, and we're not really told why this is, or why Pepper, our other major character, did this. They go to a planet, where they see some mass transit systems, cute multi-species communities, and various domestic locals. A second plotline takes place in the past, with Pepper (then called Jane23), growing up as a clone in a scrap-salvage facility run by AI.
There are two big problems with this book, which are absolutely fatal. First, Chambers ignores the Fiction 101 advice that STORIES ARE ABOUT CONFLICT. We don't need to have a war, but taking as a basic premise "What type of person is an AI in a human body?" and "Why is it super illegal in this setting?" we need to get some indications that there might be answers to these questions beyond "a ship AI likes to stand on a chair in the corner of the room to get a security camera perspective" and "the government is dumb, lol".
The second problem is that this book is way in love with world-building and exposition, a common scifi error, and then doubles down by being both derivative and banal. I didn't spot a single flash of originality or elegance. The whole thing is constructed around a kind of bland liberal "Wouldn't it be nice if everyone were nicer?" Which, yeah, sure, whatever. Maybe some people feel validated by quirky inclusive millennial characters. I feel pretty validated by the actual people in my life. I read books to be entertained and informed. This is the literary equivalent of a lukewarm bowl of plain oatmeal.
The fact that this was nominated for a whole bunch of awards make me unreasonably upset. At least it didn't win anything.
We start with the AI of the ship Lovelace, from the previous novel, who has suddenly been embodied in a very human chassis, and is not at all sure if she likes this. Putting an AI in a replicant body is Super Illegal, and we're not really told why this is, or why Pepper, our other major character, did this. They go to a planet, where they see some mass transit systems, cute multi-species communities, and various domestic locals. A second plotline takes place in the past, with Pepper (then called Jane23), growing up as a clone in a scrap-salvage facility run by AI.
There are two big problems with this book, which are absolutely fatal. First, Chambers ignores the Fiction 101 advice that STORIES ARE ABOUT CONFLICT. We don't need to have a war, but taking as a basic premise "What type of person is an AI in a human body?" and "Why is it super illegal in this setting?" we need to get some indications that there might be answers to these questions beyond "a ship AI likes to stand on a chair in the corner of the room to get a security camera perspective" and "the government is dumb, lol".
The second problem is that this book is way in love with world-building and exposition, a common scifi error, and then doubles down by being both derivative and banal. I didn't spot a single flash of originality or elegance. The whole thing is constructed around a kind of bland liberal "Wouldn't it be nice if everyone were nicer?" Which, yeah, sure, whatever. Maybe some people feel validated by quirky inclusive millennial characters. I feel pretty validated by the actual people in my life. I read books to be entertained and informed. This is the literary equivalent of a lukewarm bowl of plain oatmeal.
The fact that this was nominated for a whole bunch of awards make me unreasonably upset. At least it didn't win anything.