Hardcover, 432 pages
English language
Published Aug. 6, 2024 by Orbit UK.
Starts dark and goes darker. Only shows a glimpse of sunlight toward the end. A very thrilling read that does an excellent job at mirroring the dreadful and slow moving time our human heroes endure. Their powerlessness is palpable and the books offers no respite until the smallest off a sliver on the last 20 pages. Loved it and look forward to the next iteration.
All the things I like in a book: interesting world build, interesting storytelling, and smart character moves. The latter reminds me a bit of Ann Leckie's Ancillary Justice
This is the first book in a new James SA Corey series, and I enjoyed it a bunch.
High stakes academia gets interrupted by alien invasion; their research then becomes even more high stakes while having to navigate trauma and powerful alien political currents. A pithy but unhelpful summary is that this book is about systems thinking vs the just-world fallacy.
The aliens are interesting in several fresh ways; one in particular is that they largely don't give a shit, emotionally speaking. They aren't angry or greedy or vengeful, which gives a much different flavor to an alien invasion. A lot of enjoyment in any book where humans encounter aliens is also about their relations and the slow reveal of who and what the aliens are, and so I'll hold back some more spoiler-y opinions.
(One side note about this book is just how straight it felt. Maybe I just …
This is the first book in a new James SA Corey series, and I enjoyed it a bunch.
High stakes academia gets interrupted by alien invasion; their research then becomes even more high stakes while having to navigate trauma and powerful alien political currents. A pithy but unhelpful summary is that this book is about systems thinking vs the just-world fallacy.
The aliens are interesting in several fresh ways; one in particular is that they largely don't give a shit, emotionally speaking. They aren't angry or greedy or vengeful, which gives a much different flavor to an alien invasion. A lot of enjoyment in any book where humans encounter aliens is also about their relations and the slow reveal of who and what the aliens are, and so I'll hold back some more spoiler-y opinions.
(One side note about this book is just how straight it felt. Maybe I just read too much queer fiction on the regular, but this [like other books by these authors] felt subjectively in the vein of "old school heterosexual science fiction" that I might have read when I was younger. Not everything has to be everything, but it was just something that stood out to me.)
Lots of alien culture clash and dealing with trauma; compelling.
