Saturday, 17 August 2024

Record of a Spaceborn Few

by Becky Chambers

I enjoyed The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet and A Closed and Common Orbit. With this sidequel of sorts, though, I was up to disappointment.

Like CCO, the novel is written as a series of short unnumbered chapters named after their (recurring) protagonists. So all of them are called either Eyas or Isabel or Kip or Sawyer or Tessa. Great for navigating. In the first half of the book, there is practically no connection between the five plotlines; also, no plotlines to speak about. It doesn’t help that all five characters are dull as ditchwater.

The language irritates me no end. The use of politically correct “xe/xyr” pronouns started grating on my sensory organs in the first two books already. Here, the abuse of monosyllabic vocabulary (cred, hex, hud, kick, mek, scrib, sim, vid, vox, etc.) makes the text ridiculously reminiscent of Joey’s “sup with the whack” classic — except it is meant to be serious. Every time a character says “stars” (Exodan equivalent of “heavens to Murgatroyd”), which happens roughly every other page, you’ll want to roll your eyes. As if this wasn’t enough, RSF will drain the life out of you with its endless moralising.

Let’s be fair: it is not all bad. The best bit is a chapter called Eyas where — guess who? — a woman called Eyas goes to one of the tryst clubs, which apparently are part of Exodan welfare system. I liked it. I think everybody would be better off if the author wrote a whole book just about that.

No comments:

Post a Comment