Reviews with content warning for Colonisation - 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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wlewis98's review

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adventurous lighthearted medium-paced

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

2.5

The premise is fascinating. The setting earns it two stars by itself. The author also plays with gender in a far-future setting in ways that help deconstruct contemporary gender/sexual mores. As an abstract story premise or piece of queer analysis it might be good, but as an actual story it falls far short of its potential. The sex scenes are gratuitious and regularly involve animals (albeit intelligent ones), the prose is awkward, and the plot contains disorienting time jumps, preventing characters from sticking around long enough to develop well.

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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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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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schnaucl's review

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adventurous dark emotional hopeful inspiring sad tense 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? It's complicated

4.5

This wasn't really what I was expecting. For some reason I was expecting a book about climate change (which is on me). Instead, this was a story about terraforming (...hence the title), colonialism, gentrification, class solidarity and the ravages of capitalism.

The most horrifying part to me was the constraints the corporations put on creatures with a low intelligence assessment except what a low rating really meant was that their brains were designed so that they physically couldn't verbalize other than what they were allowed. In the case of a mount, the limitation was polysyllabic words, in the case of a cook, it was anything not related to her job. They can still understand other words and concepts, but they couldn't verbalize them. It's discovered in the first book what the limitation does, and that it can be at least partially reversed and then it just...isn't? I get that it was possible because the mount was injured and in the course of treating him they were able to mitigate the limitation. But there's no real discussion about whether it might be possible to use the same technology even in the absence of a severe wound. The people with the artificial limiters can and do find ways around the limitation but it's exhausting.

I did like the concept of the minority getting one concession from the majority that the minority gets to specify when a vote is taken, although I feel like that only really works if there's agreement on why the minority is voting against the majority. And if everyone is operating in good faith, of course.

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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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