Reviews with content warning for Slavery - The Terraformers

Futuristic sci-fi meets multi-generational family-ish saga meets climate crisis, with a three-part plot tracing three different generations of terraforming Environmental Rescue Team (ERT) engineers as they fight their planet's corporate owner and its greedy colonizing violence. A few key things that worked really well for me:

1) The structure. Short, fast-paced chapters within a clearly defined three-part story. This seems trivial, but I honestly felt like this accessible structure made it easy to follow the characters and the action and kept the plot moving. In each of the three parts we have a core cast (with connections between each generation) and an evolving picture of Sask-E, and because each generation has its own corporate obstacles, there is always a clear (and unique) central conflict.

2) The world-building. For as many creatures and constructs of human-level intelligence as there are in this story, it's surprisingly easy to get acclimated. A world in which "The Great Bargain" has determined which creatures can participate as equals in self-governance means a world in which a moose or a cow or an earthworm may be your partner in the field. I loved our wacky cast of characters, and appreciated that the moments of levity are counterbalanced with moments of uncomfortable reflection. Ideas of defining personhood and measuring intelligence reminded me of Martha Wells' Murderbot universe, as did the futuristic corporate-colonizing space-race.

3) The audio! There are so many implied/described sound effects in the story that are brought to life in the audiobook - Crisp and Hellfire's doubled speech, our various bots' conversational sound effects, the train song in part three (perhaps my favorite part of the entire story!). This narration elevated the reading experience for me (and I say this as a reader who generally has not enjoyed Graphic Audio productions that include sound effects).

I wouldn't consider this a sci-fi entry point for newer readers to the genre, but it is a thought-provoking and unique read for sci-fi fans!

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karlawaddles's review

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adventurous hopeful inspiring slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

This book was riveting. It was not what I expected but the story was engaging and the multiple points of view were cleverly done. The world building was clearly intently researched (most of the acknowledgments were thanking various experts in a variety of fields). Probably could have been 3 books with how much went on, but it was satisfying to see the storyline build on each other.

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trankz's review

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adventurous hopeful lighthearted mysterious fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.75

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squidbillyinvictus's review

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adventurous emotional reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.75

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woolerys's review against another edition

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hopeful inspiring reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.25

Writing - 4/5

Plot - 3/5

Characters - 5/5

Setting - 5/5

Genre - 4/5

Clarity/coherence - 3/5

Imagination - 5/5

TOTAL: 4.14

I felt unsettled and confused by how the world was constructed (everything is so engineered), but really enjoyed how it set the stage for such an expansive definition of "person" and how that figured into the story. It seemed to me (someone without much science education) that the science in the world-building was a mix of really accurate, specific things (eg atmospheric differences in the Archaen period vs Pleistocene) and really far-fetched, barely-sketched-out things (eg anti-gravity mesh). I loved all the characters and was always sad to leave one behind even as I was excited to meet a new one—the main characters change over the course of the book, which is divided into three parts that are each several hundred years apart. On the flip side, you get to see how a character’s legacy plays out over a longer time period, which was cool.

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jhbandcats's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional funny hopeful sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

I love Annalee Newitz’s books and will always want to read their novels. However, I found this one disappointing because it was overly didactic. It’s a transparent diatribe against the rich, big corporations, the destruction of the environment, forced labor, and racism. I’m very left-wing and agree with everything Newitz is saying, but I don’t want to be hit over the head with her arguments.

I liked the characters and I thought the plot was interesting. It was fun to think that every thing, not just humans and robots, could be autonomous from earthworms to trains. I liked the way each section was about a thousand years later than the one before so we could see how much had changed. That reminded me of Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy but much smaller.

Overall I thought this had great potential but it was just TOO much.

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alsoapples's review

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adventurous challenging hopeful fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

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billies_not_so_secret_diary's review

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slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.0

The Terraformers

by Annalee Newitz

Science Fiction

Scribd Audio

18+

Destry and her mount, which is a mouse, are part of a team that was created, so owned by their company, to protect the planet's environment so the company can 'sell' plots of land to 'humans'. They go to investigate a collapse in a lava tube and find a city under the volcano whose inhabitants were supposed to have died after their job was over.

Ignoring that the characters who were hundreds of years old and some were supposed to be intelligent, acted like whiny pre-teens, this book started off great. The company that terraformed this planet are ruthless with their 'robot/DNA/modified' workers and will do whatever it takes to protect their investment, including mass murder.

Then this book jumped a few centuries and was no longer interesting, then it jumped again and fell straight down the gutter. I sped up the audio because I wanted to get it done and over with.

The characters are not 'human' some look human, some look like animals, and some are a jumble, but they are considered 'people' because they can think and have living tissue, then there are some that were never really explained if they were real, created as animals, or what they actually were. Were they really birds or created to look like birds and have mechanical parts?

I did listen to the audio version and while I liked the narrator, the sound effects were irritating. I almost DNF-ed it when I found this out. It's a gimmick that can ruin and take a star away from a story.

There is violence and sexual situations with beings who are not of the same species so it's not suitable for readers under eighteen.

The first part of the book is the only reason I can give this...

2 Stars

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