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3.76 AVERAGE
3.76 AVERAGE
adventurous
funny
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
adventurous
funny
mysterious
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Ah, man. I loved loved loved Mary Robinette Kowal’s [b:Lady Astronaut|45160910|The Calculating Stars (Lady Astronaut Universe #1)|Mary Robinette Kowal|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1555512434l/45160910._SY75_.jpg|53735352] series, so I was really excited for this one since she’s returning to sci fi and it’s a murder mystery (which I typically love!), and I can see how it’s riffing on Nick and Nora in [b:The Thin Man|63140412|The Thin Man By Dashiell Hammett|Dashiell Hammett|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1667194606l/63140412._SX50_.jpg|1336952] (also a fave!). But I did not enjoy this.
In short: Famed roboticist Tesla Crane and her husband Shal are on their honeymoon on a luxury spaceship cruise from Earth to Mars, when a murder occurs and they decide to investigate it.
Murder mysteries are honestly probably one of the toughest things to plot out and structure, but this one fumbles the bag in so many other ways too, so quite literally none of it worked for me. This is going to be a really long ranty essay about all the things I disliked about this one, sorry if you liked it!
Tesla’s physical disability: I was initially stoked to see this representation of a heroine with chronic pain and disability… but Tesla’s Deep Brain Pain Suppressor (DBPS) is near-magical tech to turn off her pain receptors and pretty much eliminate her problem entirely, to the extent I don’t even feel great shelving this under physical disability. Because Tesla can turn off her pain and not feel it at all, and can literally sprint around whenever it’s convenient, and whenever the plot just needs her to function as an able-bodied person.
The narrative keeps warning of her pushing too hard past her limits, but there are literally never any consequences to this behaviour. I’m uncomfortable with how Tesla deactivates her safeties and abuses this pain management system, when even the narrative was saying she was pushing it too high; functionally, what’s the difference between that and a painkiller addiction?
There should be consequences to this, too, when she turned the numbing so high that she also loses normal sensation: running your leg into a table, slamming your hand in a door, tripping, all these ways of accidentally hurting yourself because you’ve gone too far. Instead, it’s just used like “flick a switch & you’re ’normal’ for this amount of time”. I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop re: her explicit misuse of the system, and it never happened.
tl;dr: One of my biggest pet peeves in fiction is disability with a magic solution, so this disability rep just feels disingenuous if Tesla has a Magic Switch she can hit to completely override it, plus her service dog isn’t even required in those long stretches when Tesla’s without her. I dunno, man.
Speaking of, her service dog Gimlet: The author’s note at the back of the book makes it clear that Kowal is aware of the three rules about service dogs:
- Don’t make eye contact with the dog.
- Don’t touch the dog.
- Don’t talk to the dog.
And yet… Tesla breaks these rules in practically every single scene?? Her service dog is supposed to be a crucial aid, but Tesla manipulates her so often as a mere tool for her investigation. She continually, constantly, all the time uses her service dog to distract people with cuteness (rolls my eyes) more than anything else. Everyone is always, always touching and petting and cooing over and playing with the dog.
Kowal does drop mentions of whether or not Gimlet is wearing her vest, and Tesla stops people from petting her maybe once or twice because she’s on duty — but the flipping-on-and-off-duty is constant. I don’t have much firsthand experience with service dogs, but surely you shouldn’t be switching them back and forth so frequently?? It’s like every single minute!
Plus it seemed like Gimlet was in Casual Play Mode like 95% of the time, so there was rarely any representation of the “hey she’s an actual physical aid and working dog, Do Not Touch Her” side. Which feels like an irresponsible representation, because it’s instead depicting that playing with a service dog is “probably okay 95% of the time”.
Her relationship with her husband: Shal is boring!! This is actually a similar problem to Lady Astronaut — the spouses are simply not interesting, because Shal is just Perfect and Supportive and Loving and Horny. These are like, his defining traits. He’s just a cozy accessory like Gimlet is. Every time there was a hint of some more intriguing conflict between the couple, nothing comes of it.
I also cannot adequately express my ire whenever they were engaging in thoroughly inappropriate PDA, even at times when it wasn’t necessary as a ruse for their local skin-to-skin comms. Someone has been fucking murdered! You’re in holding with other panicked passengers! This is NOT THE TIME to be nibbling on each others’ earlobes!!! Screams.
The wise-cracking humour & the sleuthing itself: Tesla and Shal, and particularly Shal, have a problem with snarky humour at people they absolutely should not be snarking at. I get the impression it’s supposed to be charming and witty and likeable, ha ha look they are so funny, but instead, I found this behaviour offensively inappropriate. Again, someone has been literally murdered and an earnest officer — who is doing her best — is genuinely trying to solve the case and needs to ask you some serious questions, and you’re cracking jokes about a doggie playdate? Okay! You just seem like an asshole! This is a serious situation, please take it seriously!
It’s possible to write a character being a fun tongue-in-cheek wisecracker without also being horrifically disrespectful and inappropriate, but this was not it!!
The married couple also goes rogue with their renegade investigation, circumventing the ship’s security officers. Which is a very noirish trope, skirting actual law enforcement when they’re buffoonish or untrustworthy — but Maria Piper is on the level, and she’s trying to do her job, and Tesla and Shal are straight-up fucking with the investigation and muddying the waters and making it so much harder for her.
I would be so much more sympathetic to these protags’ investigation if Piper didn’t exist, and the only security rep was Wisor being unhelpful and antagonistic and not pursuing the case at all — but they do have an ally whose job it really is to do this investigation, and they are just making it worse for her. So instead I found myself asking myself: why is this plot even happening? After Shal is released from holding, why is Tesla so hell-bent on looking into this, when even her retired private eye husband is telling her to let it go? In addition, it would have made more sense if our main character were the private eye, instead of a roboticist running chaotically rough-shod all over the criminal investigation.
There’s also just some big weird glaring lapses in protocol, and Piper letting them get away with some extremely suspicious nonsense when she has zero reason to trust them, and in fact has explicitly stated how suspicious their behaviour is. And then they proceed to just mess with Piper more, including hanging up on her and pretending there’s static on the line. She’s an ally!!! If I were Piper I would have been murderously furious with this couple, not friendly with them by the end of it. Over time, I just grew to dislike our main characters so much.
The mystery: Okay. So. In a mystery plot, you are supposed to be laser-focused on the mystery. But the narrative’s approach here is so shambolic and disjointed: because it’s also so easily distracted by going on and on about how cute Gimlet is, how much everyone loves her, the cocktails our characters are making and drinking, the cocktail recipes at the start of every chapter, Tesla trying to avoid public notice, Tesla and her husband making out over and over, their lawyer’s crocheting, talking about how Awesome her lawyer is, and they’re prevented from investigating because they’re locked in their suite, and then they’re prevented from investigating because Shal is in sickbay.
So the book is just continually derailed from the actual mystery, and for fully the first half of the book it felt like Barely An Afterthought even though it’s meant to be the prime thing.
And even when the puzzle does get rolling more in the back half of the book… ugh! I won’t spoil specifics, but the cardinal rule of mysteries is that there should be enough breadcrumbs sprinkled along the way for you to solve it alongside the detective; or, even if it requires a leap in Poirot deduction which most people aren’t going to make, it should still be coherent. Here, the resolution is laughably out of left field… and, even more damning, Tesla doesn’t even solve it. She doesn’t successfully put the pieces together! She just accidentally blunders into the resolution! So ultimately, Tesla and Shal might as well not have been here in the plot??
The privilege: Tesla is rich and powerful and untouchable, but isn’t even particularly smart about wielding those tools. I grew tired of her Quirky Crotcheting Lawyer with the Quirky Insults and Steaming Temper and All-Powerful Resources. Like, okay, Lawyer Fantine can accomplish literally anything under the sun, I get it. Fine. But in the end, the plot wasn’t even examining anything about Tesla Crane’s privilege, when I kept expecting that to be examined more critically.
Anyway. Unfortunately I hated this.
In short: Famed roboticist Tesla Crane and her husband Shal are on their honeymoon on a luxury spaceship cruise from Earth to Mars, when a murder occurs and they decide to investigate it.
Murder mysteries are honestly probably one of the toughest things to plot out and structure, but this one fumbles the bag in so many other ways too, so quite literally none of it worked for me. This is going to be a really long ranty essay about all the things I disliked about this one, sorry if you liked it!
Tesla’s physical disability: I was initially stoked to see this representation of a heroine with chronic pain and disability… but Tesla’s Deep Brain Pain Suppressor (DBPS) is near-magical tech to turn off her pain receptors and pretty much eliminate her problem entirely, to the extent I don’t even feel great shelving this under physical disability. Because Tesla can turn off her pain and not feel it at all, and can literally sprint around whenever it’s convenient, and whenever the plot just needs her to function as an able-bodied person.
The narrative keeps warning of her pushing too hard past her limits, but there are literally never any consequences to this behaviour. I’m uncomfortable with how Tesla deactivates her safeties and abuses this pain management system, when even the narrative was saying she was pushing it too high; functionally, what’s the difference between that and a painkiller addiction?
There should be consequences to this, too, when she turned the numbing so high that she also loses normal sensation: running your leg into a table, slamming your hand in a door, tripping, all these ways of accidentally hurting yourself because you’ve gone too far. Instead, it’s just used like “flick a switch & you’re ’normal’ for this amount of time”. I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop re: her explicit misuse of the system, and it never happened.
tl;dr: One of my biggest pet peeves in fiction is disability with a magic solution, so this disability rep just feels disingenuous if Tesla has a Magic Switch she can hit to completely override it, plus her service dog isn’t even required in those long stretches when Tesla’s without her. I dunno, man.
Speaking of, her service dog Gimlet: The author’s note at the back of the book makes it clear that Kowal is aware of the three rules about service dogs:
- Don’t make eye contact with the dog.
- Don’t touch the dog.
- Don’t talk to the dog.
And yet… Tesla breaks these rules in practically every single scene?? Her service dog is supposed to be a crucial aid, but Tesla manipulates her so often as a mere tool for her investigation. She continually, constantly, all the time uses her service dog to distract people with cuteness (rolls my eyes) more than anything else. Everyone is always, always touching and petting and cooing over and playing with the dog.
Kowal does drop mentions of whether or not Gimlet is wearing her vest, and Tesla stops people from petting her maybe once or twice because she’s on duty — but the flipping-on-and-off-duty is constant. I don’t have much firsthand experience with service dogs, but surely you shouldn’t be switching them back and forth so frequently?? It’s like every single minute!
Plus it seemed like Gimlet was in Casual Play Mode like 95% of the time, so there was rarely any representation of the “hey she’s an actual physical aid and working dog, Do Not Touch Her” side. Which feels like an irresponsible representation, because it’s instead depicting that playing with a service dog is “probably okay 95% of the time”.
Her relationship with her husband: Shal is boring!! This is actually a similar problem to Lady Astronaut — the spouses are simply not interesting, because Shal is just Perfect and Supportive and Loving and Horny. These are like, his defining traits. He’s just a cozy accessory like Gimlet is. Every time there was a hint of some more intriguing conflict between the couple, nothing comes of it.
I also cannot adequately express my ire whenever they were engaging in thoroughly inappropriate PDA, even at times when it wasn’t necessary as a ruse for their local skin-to-skin comms. Someone has been fucking murdered! You’re in holding with other panicked passengers! This is NOT THE TIME to be nibbling on each others’ earlobes!!! Screams.
The wise-cracking humour & the sleuthing itself: Tesla and Shal, and particularly Shal, have a problem with snarky humour at people they absolutely should not be snarking at. I get the impression it’s supposed to be charming and witty and likeable, ha ha look they are so funny, but instead, I found this behaviour offensively inappropriate. Again, someone has been literally murdered and an earnest officer — who is doing her best — is genuinely trying to solve the case and needs to ask you some serious questions, and you’re cracking jokes about a doggie playdate? Okay! You just seem like an asshole! This is a serious situation, please take it seriously!
It’s possible to write a character being a fun tongue-in-cheek wisecracker without also being horrifically disrespectful and inappropriate, but this was not it!!
The married couple also goes rogue with their renegade investigation, circumventing the ship’s security officers. Which is a very noirish trope, skirting actual law enforcement when they’re buffoonish or untrustworthy — but Maria Piper is on the level, and she’s trying to do her job, and Tesla and Shal are straight-up fucking with the investigation and muddying the waters and making it so much harder for her.
I would be so much more sympathetic to these protags’ investigation if Piper didn’t exist, and the only security rep was Wisor being unhelpful and antagonistic and not pursuing the case at all — but they do have an ally whose job it really is to do this investigation, and they are just making it worse for her. So instead I found myself asking myself: why is this plot even happening? After Shal is released from holding, why is Tesla so hell-bent on looking into this, when even her retired private eye husband is telling her to let it go? In addition, it would have made more sense if our main character were the private eye, instead of a roboticist running chaotically rough-shod all over the criminal investigation.
There’s also just some big weird glaring lapses in protocol, and Piper letting them get away with some extremely suspicious nonsense when she has zero reason to trust them, and in fact has explicitly stated how suspicious their behaviour is. And then they proceed to just mess with Piper more, including hanging up on her and pretending there’s static on the line. She’s an ally!!! If I were Piper I would have been murderously furious with this couple, not friendly with them by the end of it. Over time, I just grew to dislike our main characters so much.
The mystery: Okay. So. In a mystery plot, you are supposed to be laser-focused on the mystery. But the narrative’s approach here is so shambolic and disjointed: because it’s also so easily distracted by going on and on about how cute Gimlet is, how much everyone loves her, the cocktails our characters are making and drinking, the cocktail recipes at the start of every chapter, Tesla trying to avoid public notice, Tesla and her husband making out over and over, their lawyer’s crocheting, talking about how Awesome her lawyer is, and they’re prevented from investigating because they’re locked in their suite, and then they’re prevented from investigating because Shal is in sickbay.
So the book is just continually derailed from the actual mystery, and for fully the first half of the book it felt like Barely An Afterthought even though it’s meant to be the prime thing.
And even when the puzzle does get rolling more in the back half of the book… ugh! I won’t spoil specifics, but the cardinal rule of mysteries is that there should be enough breadcrumbs sprinkled along the way for you to solve it alongside the detective; or, even if it requires a leap in Poirot deduction which most people aren’t going to make, it should still be coherent. Here, the resolution is laughably out of left field… and, even more damning, Tesla doesn’t even solve it. She doesn’t successfully put the pieces together! She just accidentally blunders into the resolution! So ultimately, Tesla and Shal might as well not have been here in the plot??
The privilege: Tesla is rich and powerful and untouchable, but isn’t even particularly smart about wielding those tools. I grew tired of her Quirky Crotcheting Lawyer with the Quirky Insults and Steaming Temper and All-Powerful Resources. Like, okay, Lawyer Fantine can accomplish literally anything under the sun, I get it. Fine. But in the end, the plot wasn’t even examining anything about Tesla Crane’s privilege, when I kept expecting that to be examined more critically.
Anyway. Unfortunately I hated this.
adventurous
lighthearted
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
adventurous
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Murder mystery in a 1920s esk interplanetary spaceship. Very Noir (ish) but the hero is the dame with the hard boiled detective.
As always, the writing is fantastic and the story enthralling. Negative, Tesla’s superpower is brandishing wealth like a sledge hammer and Wisor is right about her.
As always, the writing is fantastic and the story enthralling. Negative, Tesla’s superpower is brandishing wealth like a sledge hammer and Wisor is right about her.
funny
mysterious
relaxing
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Muy en el estilo de MRK, aunque por alguna razón no me ha gustado tanto su protagonista como quería que nos gustase.
Me ha recordado al #3 de Lady astronaut en el sentido de ser una trama de misterio en el espacio.
Team Gimlet.
Me ha recordado al #3 de Lady astronaut en el sentido de ser una trama de misterio en el espacio.
Team Gimlet.
adventurous
funny
mysterious
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
N/A
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No