Science Fiction

FACE by Joma West

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Face
By Joma West
Tordotcom Publishing — 2nd August 2022
ISBN: 9781250810298 — Hardcover — 272 pp.

In near-future society, everything comes down to maintaining Face, masterly control over one’s image, the light in which others perceive you. Domination of diverse social media, and selfishly calculated steps in the dances of social interactions to build influence and control, become rewarded by a climb up the ladder of class and power. Marriages are built only upon convenience, a mutual benefit of improved Face, increased attention. Children are carefully designed, with the best possibilities available to the highest class, using the most talented of genetic artists. In an existence where success and fulfillment comes only from the construction of a virtual profile and celebrity persona, traditional forms of community and physical interactions have vanished. The concept of physical touch is anathema, and no respectable person would have a child other than through a professional biological surrogate who can fare no better.

Schuyler and Madeline Burroughs (together forming SchAddie) exist at the very top rung of society, with Faces of perfection that can make no missteps and who can afford eccentricity. They live as models and envy for others to follow and emulate, and to court their favor. But underneath those Face masks of perfection, sits discontentment and strife within the SchAddie household. Their designer children maintain their own exceptional Face, yet also don’t seem to be living up to the potential for which they were made. Maddie lives on edge, finding it harder to feign happiness and control, particularly with the increasingly risky behavior of Schuyler against conventions and expectations.

Case in point: Schuyler has inexplicably befriended a young couple who are hoping to get a baby of their own. While not socially low, they are not high up along the ladder to be able to get the best doctor out there without Schuyler’s support. Which, he oddly seems eager to provide, without any seeming benefit for himself. He arranges to host a party with Maddie in their home to introduce the young couple to the most famous baby designer around.

Also at that party are all the Menials owned by SchAddie, genetically engineered and trained human servants who are designed to have no will or desires of their own, constructs with a fleetingly short life-span and no rights. But one of their Menials harbors secrets of his own buried beneath the emotionlessly servile mask. Despite the design and training, he is feeling urges to transcend the rules: sexual desire and an increasingly difficult yearning to reach out and touch the skin of his mistress.

In a certain way, Face could be considered as a collection of interconnected short stories as much as a novel. Each of the main chapters presents the point-of-view portrait of a unique character. In other words, Face is itself a compilation of distinct character faces into a whole. Between each of these chapters are interludes from the perspective of a Menial who has started going to a confessional online in an effort to fight his prohibited compulsions, taking the added bizarre initiative of giving himself a name en lieu of his official Menial registration number.

The fragmentary construction of Face is central to its themes, purpose, and success. This future society is fragmentary itself, built from competing individuals whose only sense of community comes from naked desire for personal gain, never risking to sacrifice and lose Face. On the smaller scale, each of the characters we meet are fragmentary identities. There is the public persona they present in the online world and at engagements. But there is also their actual desires and thoughts beneath the ersatz, a personality they never let stray from their own mind or private moments where they think they are alone, unsurveilled.

The construction of the novel also means that it lacks strict linearity or one distinct protagonist arc. One you have a chapter from a given point-of-view, you’re done. The character will appear again, but you won’t get any further closure to their unique perspective. This is what’s brilliant about Face, because it’s all about perspective and how one appears compared to what really lies beneath, known only to oneself.

The construction also means that events that occur in one chapter will reappear in another, usually with blocks of identical dialogue. I have noticed many reviews of Face that criticize such receptiveness, but I can’t help but feel these have failed to appreciate just how essential the element is to the novel. Not only is it essential, it is exactly the element that drew me in to keep reading with intense curiosity. Again, it’s all about perspective.

West gives us a scene from one point of view and then later revisits that same scene from another individual’s senses and interpretations. The spoken words may stay the same, but the inflection of them, their interpretation, and the reading of body movements and actions brought on by that dialogue all shift. For instance, we see a character speaking to Schuyler early in the novel from their point of view, noting their uncertainties over why Schuyler uses particular words or frowns. Later, we get that same scene from Schuyler’s point of view.

As the novel progresses the reader begins to learn just how all the characters are connecting and tie together with the SchAddie corse. We get to learn about the characters from multiple directions, intimately and distantly alike. And we also begin to get a deeper sense of the complexity of the society in Face: its various strata of social class, and the large amount of discontentment that sits universally across the class spectrum, despite the veneer.

An engaging social commentary, Face inventively takes a look at the ways in which preoccupations with self and recognition in an increasingly digital civilization can go awry, stripping away the basics of humanity and healthy relationships social and biological. I wish I could easily go more into the various characters and events of Face, but things are so juxtaposed and woven to make summary impossible. These are elements simply to be discovered by reading.

Face is a compelling near-future dystopia of competitive social pretense, formed from interlacing portraits of individuals who thirst for biological & psychological connection. With all their energies devoted to cultural success that ultimately leaves them empty and dysfunctional, they seek fulfillment through community that paradoxically compels and disgusts them. There’s a bleak horror to Face, not unlike an episode of Black Mirror, an apt comparison that others have drawn. For all its coldness and distance, it’s an emotionally resonant narrative that readers are forced to stitch together from disparate conflicting perspectives into a singular community of reality.

A HALF-BUILT GARDEN by Ruthanna Emrys

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“…Using a first-contact plot and speculative themes of ecology, Ruthanna Emrys explores the politics of human interactions in A Half-Built Garden. The novel delves deeply into elements of gender, sexuality, and diplomacy, tackling the balances of discord and harmony, competition and cooperation, that go into the institution of government and family. Some readers may feel the novel lacks concrete details of its speculative world in terms of how humanity achieves an ecological turn for the better. However, Emrys does significantly develop speculative details of communication technology, and brings greatest focus to explorations of sociological possibilities Though pacing struggles in its middle, its captivating opening and its incisive conclusion make A Half-Built Garden a successful and significant novel in the first-contact sub-genre and speculative literature in general…”

Read my entire review of A Half-Built Garden HERE at Fantasy Book Critic.

Tordotcom Publishing – 26th July 2022 – Hardcover – 336 pp.

THE MOONDAY LETTERS by Emmi Itäranta

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“…a lyrical epistolatory novel of longing and hope. One part science fiction, one part fantasy, and one part mystery, it becomes linked by the strand of romance, the connection between Lumi and Sol even in separation… With a wistful voice, Lumi’s words flow with a poetic precision and empathetic peaceful calm. Yet, murmuring beneath that calm lies a continuous thread of unease, a growing panic that Lumi allows out in short moments, but mostly tries to tamp down through memories of happiness and togetherness…”

Read my entire review of The Moonday Letters HERE at Speculative Fiction in Translation.

Titan Books – July 2022 – Paperback – 368 pp.

THE BLUE-SPANGLED BLUE by David Bowles

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The Blue-Spangled Blue
(The Path, Book 1)
By David Bowles
Castle Bridge Media — March 2021
ISBN: 978173647260 — Paperback — 452 pp.

I completed The Blue Spangled Blue awhile back, intending this review to go up on Skiffy & Fanty. But, I now have several reviews sent there that haven’t been edited and posted, and as the months pass I figured it’s best to just get it up here. The Blue-Spangled Blue is an ambitious and complex novel, an epic space opera that serves as merely the opening for a series that seems to be tackling weighty themes of family and religion. And it’s a novel that deserves to get some more notice.

Normally I compose my own version of plot summaries to fit in with the thoughts I have on a book, but in this case the official blurb suits just fine and would be easier to employ:

Tenshi Koroma’s people, the Aknawajin, were brought to the planet Jitsu as workers more than a century ago. Against all odds, they managed to win their independence from the world’s corporate owners. During a long period of isolation, a theocratic government arose, dominated by fundamentalist views. Now, as Jitsu begins to open itself to the rest of humanity, Tenshi—a controversial architect and leader of a religious reform movement—meets Brando D’Angelo, who has left Earth to accept a teaching position on Jitsu. As the two grow closer, Tenshi begins to teach Brando about her faith—The Path—and he decides to accept its tenets, to shatter his identity and rebuild himself with her guidance so that he can be worthy of a soul.

But the dogmatic struggles on Jitsu are a mask for the machinations of a diabolical mind, and the couple’s life will be forever altered by the cruelty of Tenshi’s enemies. In the aftermath, their family will find a perilous new Way along The Path. And their steps will echo throughout history.

The Blue-Spangled Blue shimmers in a diversity of cultural palettes: ethnicities, class, politics, languages, religion, and more. The religious aspect of cultural is central here, and represents the major thread of character development in the novel in the form of Brando. It’s both a philosophy or outlook and a purpose of action, even when those set Brando further apart from his own family and traditions.

I really appreciated the core facet of religion to Bowles novel. Religion is very frequently overlooked across genres, and when it does appear, including in something like space opera, it tends to be treated in primarily negative lights, or with clichés and ignorance. Bowles approaches the subject with respect, and puts as much world building into this aspect of a society’s culture as into other elements.

He doesn’t simplify things. Bowles depicts cultural practices as complex systems, mixtures that contain both conflicting aspects and principles that could unify. The cultural mixture becomes most evident in Bowles use of language with his characters, a mélange of terms from across current human cultures along with additions of speculative futuristic ones. He highlights how cultural clashes can engender strife – whether arising between two separate people or arising from within the spectrum of belief and practice of one people. And he also shows the power of cross-cultural alliances, symbolized in the relationship between Brando and Tenshi.

The complexities of The Blue-Spangled Blue‘s world building, and its host of characters make this an epic space opera novel. And that’s something that might also cause problems for some readers. There’s a lot to digest here. This could have easily been multiple novels in itself. Epic reads aren’t necessarily out of the norm for speculative fiction fans.

What might make things difficult in this case are issues of pacing, the one significant negative critique I would make of the novel. There are many chapters of exhilarating action, and slower ones of plotting or establishing the narrative framework. With the novel encompassing so many developments and interludes, however, there are stretches that seem to drag. The reader anticipates that things could come to a head. When things do, they don’t quite go as one may have expected. Resolution isn’t really there, it’s just an opening to more possibilities and new paths. It can end up feeling a little overwhelming.

However, I will say that going through those feelings (if they are there during reading) are well worth it. Bowles does not pull punches with the novel, with reader hopes or assumptions of who might live or die, whether heroes or villains are victorious. This lends a mature realism to the novel, while also allowing Bowles to show how strength to go on can be mustered from something like faith, even against all odds and setbacks, or powerful enemies lurking in the shadows.

The ambition of The Blue-Spangled Blue in depicting a complex, speculative human future with space opera plotting, and audaciously tackling politics and religion makes this is a notable novel in the genre to read. The execution has some issues, but any fans of epic genre fiction should be encouraged to take it on.

Newer editions of the novel helpfully include a series of invaluable appendices: 1) A glossary of terms; 2) A lexicon of foreign phrases in Baryogo and Kaló; 3) a Dramatis personae; 4) a break-down of star systems and their associated planets; 5) background on Jitsu’s official religion, The Path, and its adherents.

The story continues in The Deepest Green, also available from Castle Bridge Media, and another The Swirling Path, seems to be due in 2023. The latter is listed on Goodreads as Book 4 of The Path, which I assume is an error, as no Book 3 is listed at all, and I can find no mention of any other book in the series on the publisher’s site.

IMMUNITY INDEX by Sue Burke

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Immunity Index
By Sue Burke
Tor Books — May 2021
ISBN: 9781250317872 — Hardcover — 240 pp.

It is the near future and the United States has continued down a path of current trends: partisanship, inequality, disruptions in services/goods, racism, rising fascism, and choosing megalomaniac reality TV stars for president. Advances in genetic modification technology have also taken off through decades past, leading to successful cloning of extinct species like the wooly mammoth, and a brief period of human embryonic design. The individuals resulting from this technology while it was still legal are now persecuted in American society and politics: second-class ‘dupes’.

But, brimming beneath the suppressive status quo are two phenomena with the potential for social and political upheaval. First, a new coronavirus is spreading in the population, turning deadly, and the US administration seems ill equipped for any effective response. Instead, the Prez advocates magical waving of Old Glory and shouts of patriotic incantation to stop the surge of what he inaccurately dubs the ‘Sino cold’. Second, an extensive network of discontents through the nation are secretively planting the seeds for a Mutiny, a time for the majority to step up and wrest power of the government from the fascist minority who have gamed control of the system.

Amid this (frighteningly familiar) setting are the protagonists of the novel, four characters, and unique perspectives, that harbor unrealized kinship and potential. Three are young women, each written in the third-person: Avril, Berenike, and Irene.

An eager and idealistic college student, Avril seeks to join the Mutiny, but instead finds herself being dismissed as naïve by the contacts she approaches, belittled just as general society would based on her simple existence as a dupe. Not in school, Berenike works a joyless, but reliable, job in car rentals. Her simple life becomes overturned in familial blackmail: revelations about her cloned origins, and threats to advertise her status as a dupe. A college graduate, Irene works in animal conservation on a farm, tending Nimkii, a wooly mammoth relegated to being a tourist attraction in a world that doesn’t know where to put a de-extinct relic.

Contrasting in first-person point-of-view is the final character, Dr. Peng, the scientist responsible for the major genetic engineering technologies for modified humans – the so-called dupes. With their life threatened from the controversies of their research past, Peng lives in disguise, changed from a woman into a man, who now works in relative obscurity processing collected viral samples from around the world for monitoring of threats. Peng discovers odd mutations and characteristics in the coronavirus variants that are spreading, and he soon becomes taken by elements from the government to work alongside other talented individuals for designing another virus to release into the population as a vaccine.

Each of these four connected threads take turns through the novel relating their contributions to the overall elements political and viral/immunological. Burke does a great job with the pacing of the novel, juggling the four perspectives without adding too much confusing or losing reader interest.

Judges in cooking shows often suggest to not make multiple versions of a dish, because invariably one will look weaker and bring down the whole. The same holds true a bit here. Irene’s segments are wonderful, largely due to the sincere and touching love between her and the mammoth Nimkii. Dr. Peng’s segments are also engaging, not to mention essential. These are the biological heart to the novel, full of all the virology and immunology details I appreciate. Avril’s segments also serve importance, a contrast in personality and position from Irene’s. That leaves the version of the dish here that probably wasn’t needed, Berenike.

While Immunity Index has a number of good traits going for it, the novel ultimately suffers from some significant problems. Most of these I feel come down to the issue of development or editing/execution. For example, is Berenike really necessary? The pieces that make up Immunity Index are excellent: the themes, the writing, the development of the protagonists, and the plot. However, problems occur in how these are assembled into a whole, and in the absence of visible mortar to force them together.

The title and cover of the novel, and its blurbed synopsis, place a fair amount of emphasis on this as a pandemic novel. While admittedly a significant thread to the plot, the viral aspects ultimately are secondary to the political threads and the Mutiny. In fact, the biological elements here are simply one of the tools as it were of those larger political issues that Burke tackles, more artificial than natural.

With politics being the real core of Immunity Index, the confrontation lies between humans in the Mutiny versus those in power, as opposed to humans versus virus. The mortar the novel lacks is any clear antagonistic face. Burke propels the novel forward by building reader interest in seeing how the different characters connect in their pasts and futures. But there’s really never much doubt to what will inevitably come here. The challenges against the protagonists come from a system, but without any specific character or point of view to show that threat, it never comes across as real or having a chance.

Perhaps, this is a point Burke is trying to make? That the fascist trends of politics in reality have no single face to them, and their defeat could perhaps come from people deciding they’ve had enough, and staging a mutiny. The problem is, there’s no believability here to how this would so simply happen, it’s a stretch to think things would go as easily as they do in Immunity Index to usher in regime collapse. And it makes the whole conflict of the novel lack teeth.

If I recall correctly, Burke began this novel before the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak, and it published of course amid the pandemic. I wonder how much of the novel became a more rushed product of such unfortunate timing, changing aspects of the plot and steering the marketing toward what is making present-day news headlines and occupying our minds. I feel like the novel needed more time, and length, to really flesh out and work.

I’ll admit that a large part of my disappointment in Immunity Index also stems from simple high expectations. Sue Burke’s Semiosis and Interference are absolutely outstanding. I’m very happy still to see that a third novel in that series will be coming, and that it was merely delayed due to the pandemic – and a shift to getting this topical novel out? Also, I was really excited and hopeful to see Burke write a novel with microbiological and immunological elements to it.

Even with its deficiencies, Immunity Index is an engaging and compelling novel that readers may enjoy, particularly as political wish fulfillment. And I’d still use it for my Biology in Fiction course. The novel raises plenty of issues in terms of genetic engineering, virology, epidemiology, and vaccination to talk about.

AUGUST KITKO AND THE MECHAS FROM SPACE by Alex White

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“… August Kitko and the Mechas from Space bursts with action, humor, and heart. Amid a dire and tragic setting of humanity facing apocalyptic extinction, it’s a hopeful shot of joyous adrenaline and whimsy. Confronting death, Gus and Ardent choose to celebrate life to its fullest, taking every moment they may have left to fully be themselves, and to be there for one another. White uses lively characterization and pacing – with an effective blend of space opera, mecha anime, and music – to tell a story of human strength, weakness, and resilience. The Starmetal Symphony is simply ripe for adaptation into a rock opera musical, and I’ll be sorely disappointed if that never happens.”

Read my entire review of August Kitko and the Mechas from Space HERE at Fantasy Book Critic.

Orbit Books – 12th July 2022 – Paperback – 464 pp.

A PSALM FOR THE WILD-BUILT by Becky Chambers

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A Psalm for the Wild-Built
(Monk and Robot #1)
By Becky Chambers
Tordotcom Books — July 2021
ISBN: 9781250236210 — Hardcover — 147 pp.

A week from my writing this, the second Monk and Robot book (A Prayer for the Crown-Shy) gets released. I haven’t had the chance to read that one yet, but will eagerly grab a copy. This seems like a good time to put up a review of the first book – last year’s A Psalm for the Wild-Built – to get this on the radar of anyone who hasn’t discovered Becky Chambers’ series yet. If you’ve already read the first novella, check out this review of the sequel from my reviewing colleague Shazzie, over at Fantasy Book Critic.

Humanity has settled the moon of Panga and built a utopic civilization in balance with the other biological inhabitants, leaving areas unsettled as preserves for other species. Now absent from their civilization are the robots, artificial workers that gained sentience and chose to depart into the wilderness, centuries ago, in search of their own purpose and destiny. The robots have since faded into cultural myth.

Sibling Dex of the Meadow Den Monastery has begun to feel directionless, restless for deeper connection to others and life. They decide to leave, to drift the Pangan countryside serving as a tea monk: a wandering attendant who ministers to any who need a break: a sympathetic ear and that perfect cup of hot tea that can warm the heart and soul.

New to the role, Dex at first stumbles at finding just the right brew to match the needs of their guests. But, they quickly learn and adapt, gaining experience to become one of the most sought-after tea monks around. Just as they begin to feel as if they found their strength of purpose, and settle into the familiarity of their routine, Dex finds something unfathomable emerge from the forest wilderness to reignite their insecurity and feelings of inadequacy.

A robot named Splendid Speckled Mosscap enters their camp and enthusiastically declares they have returned to honor an old promise to humanity. Mosscap poses a simple question of Dex: “What do people need?” The tea monk is at a loss for words of how to reply.

A Psalm for the Wild-Built is a peaceful novella, an embodiment of that feeling of a nice cup of tea. There is little to it in way of a conflict, at least in the typical sense that one might find in a SFF plot. It’s a journey of empathetic friendship between two characters who discover one another over conversation. Dex and Mosscap are two very different individuals. A humble tea monk, Dex is timid and restrained, but also lacks self confidence. Mosscap bursts with curiosity and an assured optimism. Biological and artificial, they each view one another with a good bit of initial confusion and bewilderment.

Through their existential conversations and building friendship comes the discovery of each of their unique points of view, a celebration of their differences, and a perfectly matched partnership that gives them each greater purpose than they could have apart.

As I began A Psalm for the Wild-Built, I wondered how much I would like it. Most fiction relies on antagonism in polar opposite to the main character(s), with conflicts, setbacks, and dire threats aplenty. So often SFF tends toward the darker side of things. Even if not full-on ‘grim-dark’, there’s usually some amount of violence or tragedy to be overcome. Dystopias are the norm. I’m used to that; I enjoy that. The only other case of a more optimistic type of SFF story that I can think of reading is The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison. It’s a beloved novel for many, but I couldn’t stand its optimism and peaceful resolutions. I wondered if I just didn’t like bright idealism.

A Psalm for the Wild-Built showed that I can go for that flavor of things. For whatever reason, the characters and world created by Becky Chambers here just worked. The conversation between Mosscap and Dex might not read as profound by all, but it should prove fascinating and worthwhile. Chambers illustrates personalities and a relationship of how two individuals coming from two different backgrounds and experiences can find a way to bridge. It requires a calm, an openness; an appreciation of life, open ears, and a patient tongue.

Reading the novella is like a retreat into the wilderness, a moment to appreciate beauty and meditate with one’s own thoughts and in close fellowship with a few. Chambers writes it with a simplicity and bright joy of words that matches the characters and premise. All of which enliven the novella into a page-turner without the need for extensive, complex plotting.

When visiting my local bookshop the other day, I noticed A Psalm for the Wild-Built featured on a corner cap as a staff recommendation. Notably, it may have been the only book there without an accompanying handwritten, signed note explaining the choice. Considering this, though, I realized the cover did all the speaking required. The art, title, font, and blurb from Martha Wells says it all, with a sparse charm to match the novella’s core.

Just writing this makes me regret that I didn’t request an ARC of A Prayer for the Crown-Shy. I’ll have to channel the patience and peace of Monk and Robot to calmly await July 13th when I can pick this up in the store now. If you haven’t started the series yet, this still gives you plenty of time to read a copy of A Psalm for the Wild-Built before the sequel’s release. Just don’t forget to collect some leaves of your favorite tea and to set a pot to boil.

COMPOSITE CREATURES by Caroline Hardaker

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“… a creeping terror of unease, a slow burn of little deceptions building to bitter tragedy, a dystopia of corporate power masquerading as a prosaic story of two people uniting as one in courtship and marriage. Though echoing familiar themes of post-apocalyptic genre fiction and feminism, Caroline Hardaker builds her debut novel with rich atmosphere and a purely unique symbolic take on character and the concepts of life. Readers demanding heavy action or instant answers would be advised to give this a pass, but lovers of character, nuance, and atmospheres of just-off-kilter disquiet should be enraptured and satisfied..”

Read my entire review of Composite Creatures HERE at Fantasy Book Critic.

Angry Robot Books – April 2021 – Paperback – 400 pp.

MOMENTS ASUNDER by Dayton Ward

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Moments Asunder
(Star Trek: Coda Book I)
By Dayton Ward
Gallery Books — September 2021
ISBN: 9781982158521 — Paperback — 304 pp.

After decades of not really reading any Star Trek tie-in fiction I decided to start up again. I wanted to reread the novels I tore through when younger, but knew I would be hard-pressed to catch up with where the fictional universe currently sat. I was curious to see what had happened to characters since movies and shows ended. So, I decided to both reread the older stuff while keeping up with newer novels released, starting right then.

Bad timing.

No sooner had I read the latest Star Trek: The Next Generation novel and the announcement of the new Picard series came. What would happen to these novels now? I feared they’d just stop, especially given other Star Trek franchises didn’t seem to have a new novel published for a terribly long time. The state of Deep Space Nine adventures particularly made me worry.

One other Star Trek: The Next Generation novel was released, with a note in it that the recent authors were hard at work at a way to bring closure to the novel line while merging it into the new continuity that Picard would establish. Until then, new releases seemed to be set during the time period the original show took place.

I felt the author’s and fan’s frustration. It annoys me so much that the film/television universes ‘need’ to take precedence over the novels. I would LOVE it if a show took all the constraints that a novel universe put on franchise and the writers were forced to come up with something that fits. Watching Picard now, I doubly wish it. Because the first season of Picard, at least, was far less enjoyable and interesting than what the novels seem to have produced in the last decades.

Irregardless, here we are, the start of a trilogy (Star Trek: Coda) that seeks to wrap up the novel universe of the franchise and bring things in line with the new continuities. Cue time travel and multiverses. These are two tropes that SF routinely uses to ‘reimagine’ and ‘reboot’ things, originating from comic books perhaps? It’s always a mess, and it usually leads me to abandoning things. As soon as multiverses came into the DC superhero TV shows, popping up all over, I stopped. I’m over the Marvel movies.

So, I came into reading Moments Asunder being very skeptical. The time travel and multiverse nature of the story line bugs me, but I have to admit that Dayton Ward does a good job at trying to give fans some kind of closure and excitement to start things off here. It’s a Kobayashi Maru scenario he faces. He can’t avoid tragedy, but he minimizes the mess.

Building the plot line with Traveler Wesley Crusher makes sense, and drawing in elements from the other Star Trek series and novels works well, for the most part. It gives this start to the trilogy the sense of being the culmination of everything, a grand send-off to the literary franchise that has been built around the original source materials. At the same time Moments Asunder shows greatest focus on The Next Generation. (Presumably the next two novels may focus more on others. The official ‘synopsis’ for this novel mentions the Benjamin Sisko and his crew, for instance. Yet, they don’t appear in here at all.)

The most significant consequences seem to befall members of the Enterprise crew who were created for the Star Trek: The Next Generation novels, meaning that any real emotional impact from the novel will come to fans who have stuck with the novels through the last decades. Casual, or new, readers of the novels might not be completely lost amid the characters, references, and time/multiverse shenanigans – but they also won’t feel connected to those characters or events either. Despite the well paced action and the quality writing, even I felt it somewhat hard to feel engaged in it all, to stave off boredom that would creep up.

(There is one sole exception to major consequences only befalling characters created for the novels. One character from the televised Star Trek series does meet death in Moments Asunder. I wouldn’t spoil who that is, but mention it only to say that it is handled as badly as many other Star Trek major character deaths have been: i.e. Yar and Jadzia Dax. If this is meant to have import, it should have been written better.)

The multiverse nature of things further makes it difficult to care what happens to anyone here. After all, there are plenty more of the same person out there. Unlike Everything, Everywhere, All at Once, Moments Asunder can’t overcome the nihilism inherent to the multiverse. Maybe the next two novels in the series will change my mind or surprise me, but I can’t help but read this and shrug my shoulders in annoyed anticipation of where it will all end up, putting things into the bland Picard-verse. I wish they’d just simply let two sets of novels continue, with two different separate universes of these characters – sort of like the double duty they get from the classic series between the original and Kelvin timelines.

I feel like this review is sort of all over the place, hard to organize. Likely because that’s pretty much how I feel about Moments Asunder. It has some good elements, and generally strong writing. But it simply shouldn’t have to exist, if there were justice in the universe.

Fans of the novels who have kept up with things will likely really appreciate Coda for its closure to what they’ve enjoyed. Maybe not the end they want, but better than other options available. For all other potential readers I’d say this trilogy is probably something to just skip. Pick up with the Picard novels and check out what comes in the future, don’t worry about what was or may-have-been.

QUEEN’S HOPE by E.K. Johnston

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Queen’s Hope (Star Wars)
(Padmé Amidala Trilogy Book 3)
By E. K. Johnston
Disney Lucasfilm Press — April 2022
ISBN: 9781368075930 — Hardcover — 280 pp.

Set during the onset of the Clone Wars immediately following the climax of Episode II on Geonosis, Queen’s Hope completes a trilogy of YA Padmé Amidala stories by Johnston. It’s an unconventional trilogy in its chronology, overlap with the prequel film canon, and its thematic focus. Also, as much as it’s been a series featuring Padmé, it’s equally been a spotlight on her retinue of handmaidens/doubles, in particular Sabé, played in The Phantom Menace by Keira Knightley.

The first novel, Queen’s Shadow, established the core exploration of Padmé’s relationship with her handmaidens in far more deeper ways than the films (or television series) could do on their own. Half of the novel directly paralleled The Phantom Menace, from the fresh perspectives of Padmé and Sabé. It then also bridged her transition from royal Queen of Naboo to being a Senator of the Republic. The sequel novel, Queen’s Peril, went back in time to relate Amidala’s election as Queen and how she selected/found her handmaidens.

In this, Padmé was revealed in it to be more than just an individual, but a team of young women working together for justice and the betterment of Naboo – and then the Republic. While Padmé’s story has been well covered through the visual media, these novels allowed fans to see some more background while also building the look-alike handmaidens into unique individual personalities. Together, their various talents and expertises were shown to complement Padmé’s, all united by a vision of hope for a better tomorrow.

Queen’s Hope chronicles how the physical partnership of this vision comes to an end, even as the hope it embodies does continue on. How the story of the Republic and the galaxy will go is of course well known. The Clone Wars series and The Revenge of the Sith chart Padmé’s path to giving birth to twins Luke and Leia, and of course her death (with its inane droid explanation of causation.) She’s going to die, and her handmaidens will go onto lives apart from her. But what happens to their hope amid that?

Johnston crafts the novel with brief passages in italics prior, in the middle, and after the main novel. One from the view of Shmi Skywalker, one from Padmé, and one from Breha Organa (adoptive mother of Leia.) Through this she makes the hope theme of the novel (and series) clear. Through the generational lines of women hope and a struggle for betterment will pass. As Yoda points out later, Luke is not the ‘last hope’, there is another. And the sequel trilogy continues that theme with Leia more to the fore (even more so planned before Carrie Fisher’s premature death) and the use of Rey as the next generation of hope.

The problem with Queen’s Hope is that the pessimism surrounding what will come becomes rather hard to surmount, particularly when there is no significant new plot or character focus in this novel to capture the reader’s interest. This third novel spends a lot of time establishing Padmé’s rather messed up relationship with Anakin – a situation that Lucas did a bad job to start with in crafting in any believable way to the character’s personalities. Johnston tries to work with this, showing how Padmé’s emotion and empathy leads to blindness with Anakin, potential darkness that her handmaidens, like Sabé, can see so readily.

The novel is disappointing in how it fails to go as deeply into the minds and future of the handmaidens, both Sabé and the others, who barely appear. Meanwhile, Padmé goes off on a secret mission tied to the Clone Wars and Palpatine’s continued rise. There’s nothing surprising or new in any of this, and the novel suffers as a result, lacking the emotional heart that the previous ones did by doing a larger dive into the secondary characters.

Here, the secondary characters appear fleetingly, with details seemingly thrown in by diversity committees, with no flesh behind them. A transgender Clone Trooper, a non-binary handmaiden: these would be great additions if they were crafted as anything more than a hollow checkmark on some list, with no development or intimacy or stake in the plot.

The first two novels remain among my most enjoyed Star Wars reads in the new canon universe. It’s in that light that perhaps I react more harshly to Queen’s Hope. Unlike those previous novels, it doesn’t seem to be able to rise above the limitations of the prequels in terms of the Padmé – Anakin – Palpatine relationship. It was fairly unbearable in the films, and it remains so. By failing to focus more on new elements and giving more on the Padmé – handmaiden links, we’re left with little.