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3.57 AVERAGE
3.57 AVERAGE
It took me awhile to get into this book because it has a very slow start, but once they actually went back in time [about halfway through the book] I thought it really picked up. Definitely more a cultural study so don't expect too much action but there's some really interesting stuff in here and I liked that one of the main characters was ace!
Did your brain go totally Roald Dahl when you saw the title? Mine did. Anyway, this novella was sent to me by the publisher, Tor.com, at no cost. It will be available for you to read from 13 March, 2018 (which is this year!).
Somehow, don't ask me how, I managed not to read "The Waters of Versailles," Robson's highly regarded short story from... last year? The year before? I don't know how I managed not to read it, given everyone else was raving about it... I just didn't get to it. I'm going to get to it now, because I've read this and it's excellent.
Seriously, just go pre-order it. Do you like the paradoxes of time travel? Do you like cranky old women being cranky and smart? Do you like a bit of ancient Mesopotamia? GO. PRE-ORDER.
It's well into the future, things haven't gone so great for humanity but they're maybe kinda improving, if people manage to focus on what's relevant. Time travel is... probably not relevant. But it's consuming a lot of attention. But maybe it could be used for something relevant? That's what Minh is hoping, anyway, as she prepares a brief for an intriguing new job.
The world that Robson has developed here is suuuuper developed for such a short story; as in, I wouldn't be surprised to read at least a novel just fleshing out the things that she hints at here in terms of economies and habitats and generational attitudes and... yeh. That bit alone is completely absorbing; reminded me a bit of Iain M Banks' civilisations. And then you add time travel.
The opening is somewhat disconcerting, as there's clearly two separate stories being told - one with gods and monsters, one with technology. Very quickly the links between the two become evident but exactly how things will resolve is not at all evident. I really enjoyed the way that Robson played off the two different civilisational points of view. I also really enjoyed the different characters she employs. Minh is my favourite, of course: how could she not be with her crankiness and her competence and her bloody-mindedness? But her companions are also great and offer excellent, necessary and important alternatives to Minh's point of view.
I am well impressed with this novella.
Somehow, don't ask me how, I managed not to read "The Waters of Versailles," Robson's highly regarded short story from... last year? The year before? I don't know how I managed not to read it, given everyone else was raving about it... I just didn't get to it. I'm going to get to it now, because I've read this and it's excellent.
Seriously, just go pre-order it. Do you like the paradoxes of time travel? Do you like cranky old women being cranky and smart? Do you like a bit of ancient Mesopotamia? GO. PRE-ORDER.
It's well into the future, things haven't gone so great for humanity but they're maybe kinda improving, if people manage to focus on what's relevant. Time travel is... probably not relevant. But it's consuming a lot of attention. But maybe it could be used for something relevant? That's what Minh is hoping, anyway, as she prepares a brief for an intriguing new job.
The world that Robson has developed here is suuuuper developed for such a short story; as in, I wouldn't be surprised to read at least a novel just fleshing out the things that she hints at here in terms of economies and habitats and generational attitudes and... yeh. That bit alone is completely absorbing; reminded me a bit of Iain M Banks' civilisations. And then you add time travel.
The opening is somewhat disconcerting, as there's clearly two separate stories being told - one with gods and monsters, one with technology. Very quickly the links between the two become evident but exactly how things will resolve is not at all evident. I really enjoyed the way that Robson played off the two different civilisational points of view. I also really enjoyed the different characters she employs. Minh is my favourite, of course: how could she not be with her crankiness and her competence and her bloody-mindedness? But her companions are also great and offer excellent, necessary and important alternatives to Minh's point of view.
I am well impressed with this novella.
Ecological conservators get a job to do a survey of the ancient world. In their present, the world is in cataclysm, capitalism has choked off progress, time travel has halted the future, and "privacy" is measured in how many walls you get to say you own rather than any sort of solitude in your own mind. In the world they're exploring, their coming is signaled by three new stars in the sky.
CONTENT WARNING: (no actual spoilers, just a list of topics)
The really cool stuff:
-The ancient world. I loooved the little openers about the civilization that came before.
-The skin on the new world. People with octopus legs or bio-engineered goat legs! Biom trackers, habs, hives, and hells! Fakes/clones to handle the drudgery!
-The inclusivity. Ace people! Gay people! People of color! Aside from the one weird outting of Kiki, all of it was really relaxed, too. No performative gayness, no weirdness about age or race.
-The idea for how time travel worked. I'm not sure I got all of it, but it seemed like an interesting theory.
Things that we just pretend aren't important:
-Plot. Someone tell me what the elevator pitch is for this story. What are they doing? Why? What's the pay out?
-Endings. Oh hi, cut out midscene. How ya doin'?
-Anything beyond the skin. So, the cool stuff looked cool, but what did it do? You pick up all this stuff about plagues and the need for humanity to survive, but what happened?
-Character motivations. I tried to keep up with how people could justify their actions, and I kept coming back to "because the author needed them to do this for there to be a story." Given all the cool effing stuff going on, that's a damn shame. This author is clearly very imaginative. I think, especially for a novella, the storyboarding could have been tighter.
It was short, it had cool visuals, and I'm a sucker for something that feels like myth. I just wish we'd spent a lot more time on that stuff and waaaay less time on the proposal process, worrying about billable hours, and maybe had someone explain to me why they were going through all this hassle to begin with. Also a proper ending.
CONTENT WARNING: (no actual spoilers, just a list of topics)
Spoiler
body horror, illnessThe really cool stuff:
-The ancient world. I loooved the little openers about the civilization that came before.
-The skin on the new world. People with octopus legs or bio-engineered goat legs! Biom trackers, habs, hives, and hells! Fakes/clones to handle the drudgery!
-The inclusivity. Ace people! Gay people! People of color! Aside from the one weird outting of Kiki, all of it was really relaxed, too. No performative gayness, no weirdness about age or race.
-The idea for how time travel worked. I'm not sure I got all of it, but it seemed like an interesting theory.
Things that we just pretend aren't important:
-Plot. Someone tell me what the elevator pitch is for this story. What are they doing? Why? What's the pay out?
-Endings. Oh hi, cut out midscene. How ya doin'?
-Anything beyond the skin. So, the cool stuff looked cool, but what did it do? You pick up all this stuff about plagues and the need for humanity to survive, but what happened?
-Character motivations. I tried to keep up with how people could justify their actions, and I kept coming back to "because the author needed them to do this for there to be a story." Given all the cool effing stuff going on, that's a damn shame. This author is clearly very imaginative. I think, especially for a novella, the storyboarding could have been tighter.
It was short, it had cool visuals, and I'm a sucker for something that feels like myth. I just wish we'd spent a lot more time on that stuff and waaaay less time on the proposal process, worrying about billable hours, and maybe had someone explain to me why they were going through all this hassle to begin with. Also a proper ending.
adventurous
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This time travel novella reminded me of a number of other time travel stories where the real purpose of the story is to just show off historical settings and situations in the guise of science fiction that people would actually read. There's really not much plot here, mostly just MacGuffin. There are a lot of cool ideas in this story, such as how unchecked capitalism and advanced bioengineering might affect the future, but a lot of it was superficial to the story, as if Robson just wanted to throw out all these interesting ideas and see what stuck. And, unless I dozed off in the final pages, the story just sort of stops in mid-scene.
3.5 stars rounded up
A very interesting novella. At the outset I felt like the worldbuilding was a bit of a combination of too much detail about some things and not enough about others. The characters, however, were quite wonderful right from the start.
About the halfway point things smoothed out for me, and once the time travel happened I loved the entire portion spent in the past. That ending though, what? I want some more please :)
A very interesting novella. At the outset I felt like the worldbuilding was a bit of a combination of too much detail about some things and not enough about others. The characters, however, were quite wonderful right from the start.
About the halfway point things smoothed out for me, and once the time travel happened I loved the entire portion spent in the past. That ending though, what? I want some more please :)
This book sort of didn't have an ending? It seemed almost like there were missing chapters. Otherwise I was really enjoying it.
adventurous
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I struggled with this book so much. I kept wanting to DNF but it was so short, I figured I could just make it. The ending was not worth the struggle and I left the book more confused than I was in the beginning, when we enter this strange world with almost no world building.
Somewhere along the way, I got the notion that this book had a mystery in it; IT DOES NOT. I’m not even sure what the point of this book is. It starts with a devastated world and population, trying to rebuild. Then we watch financial negotiations, collection of LOTS of ecological samples, and then an ending so strange, It seems like the author had a cool idea, but it was a short idea without much plot and not well executed.
I can’t find anything I really liked about this book besides the cool prosthetics. I’m a big fan of time travel, but even that didn’t make sense. I just feel like this whole story was a mess.
Somewhere along the way, I got the notion that this book had a mystery in it; IT DOES NOT. I’m not even sure what the point of this book is. It starts with a devastated world and population, trying to rebuild. Then we watch financial negotiations, collection of LOTS of ecological samples, and then an ending so strange, It seems like the author had a cool idea, but it was a short idea without much plot and not well executed.
I can’t find anything I really liked about this book besides the cool prosthetics. I’m a big fan of time travel, but even that didn’t make sense. I just feel like this whole story was a mess.
Author Kelly Robson packs a lot into this novella about Minh, an ecological scientist living and working in world where the Earth has become uninhabitable for humans and they have been forced to retreat to underground "hells" or above ground "habs". Minh's life's work revolves around restoring the above surface ecosystems for humans but the money has dried up with the invention of time travel. Minh is recruited to travel to the past with a small team of scientists to the heart of civilization in the Tigris and Euphrates river valley in about 200 B.C. to study the ecosystem and come up with a baseline for a restoration project. Minh is assure that the time travel missions have become routine, but their trip ends being anything but.
The world building in both Minh's post-apocalyptic 2267 and the details of ancient Mesopotamia are fascinating and really put the reader there with the characters. I really enjoyed the relationships between the characters and thought there was a good amount of tension through out the novel. My only complaint is that it felt too rushed being a novella. I felt like we ran out of pages before we ran out of story. "Leave them wanting more", may be an old show biz saying, but when it comes to reading a story you're very invested in it becomes a tricky balance of leave them wanting more and not giving the reader enough. I'd definitely read more stories with these characters or set in this universe. I'd recommend the book to fans of time travel, ecology and environmental science, as well as good old science fiction adventure. It definitely has something for everyone.
The world building in both Minh's post-apocalyptic 2267 and the details of ancient Mesopotamia are fascinating and really put the reader there with the characters. I really enjoyed the relationships between the characters and thought there was a good amount of tension through out the novel. My only complaint is that it felt too rushed being a novella. I felt like we ran out of pages before we ran out of story. "Leave them wanting more", may be an old show biz saying, but when it comes to reading a story you're very invested in it becomes a tricky balance of leave them wanting more and not giving the reader enough. I'd definitely read more stories with these characters or set in this universe. I'd recommend the book to fans of time travel, ecology and environmental science, as well as good old science fiction adventure. It definitely has something for everyone.