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laurareads87's review against another edition
adventurous
hopeful
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
4.0
This was my first Elizabeth Bear novel, and while it's part of a series it did read well as a standalone. This novel follows Dr. Jens, a rescue specialist, who is sent to investigate when an ancient generation ship is discovering moving quickly and off course with an unresponsive contemporary ship attached to it. The novel explores themes of artificial intelligence, medical ethics, free will, and class inequality.
What worked for me: I loved the diverse cast of characters, including many profoundly non-humanoid aliens. I appreciated Dr. Jens as a queer disabled protagonist, and her experiences of chronic pain & pain management felt very relatable and believable to me as someone who's lived with long term injuries. Dr. Jens was a multi-faceted character who is both complex and easy to root for. I liked that the novel's handling of its themes felt deliberate and thoughtful, but not preachy, and I really liked the descriptions of the aliens and the space hospital. The plot moved quickly and kept me engaged, and there were one or two plot developments I did not see coming.
What didn't work so well: The novel was a bit slow to grab my attention -- by around 20% in I was hooked, but before then I was not particularly interested. Some of the action scenes were a bit hard to follow by virtue of the very alien technology involved.
Overall, I'd absolutely read more from Elizabeth Bear based on this novel, which I enjoyed & recommend.
Content warnings: chronic illness, medical content, medical trauma, violence, a few minor instances of homophobic and/or sexist comments
What worked for me: I loved the diverse cast of characters, including many profoundly non-humanoid aliens. I appreciated Dr. Jens as a queer disabled protagonist, and her experiences of chronic pain & pain management felt very relatable and believable to me as someone who's lived with long term injuries. Dr. Jens was a multi-faceted character who is both complex and easy to root for. I liked that the novel's handling of its themes felt deliberate and thoughtful, but not preachy, and I really liked the descriptions of the aliens and the space hospital. The plot moved quickly and kept me engaged, and there were one or two plot developments I did not see coming.
What didn't work so well: The novel was a bit slow to grab my attention -- by around 20% in I was hooked, but before then I was not particularly interested. Some of the action scenes were a bit hard to follow by virtue of the very alien technology involved.
Overall, I'd absolutely read more from Elizabeth Bear based on this novel, which I enjoyed & recommend.
Content warnings: chronic illness, medical content, medical trauma, violence, a few minor instances of homophobic and/or sexist comments
Content Warnings
Graphic: Medical trauma, Medical content, and Chronic illness
Moderate: Violence
Minor: Homophobia and Sexism
caryndi's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
After having read Ancestral Night at the beginning of this year, I was very excited to get a new White Space novel so quickly! Though set in the same universe, this book has a different main cast (we do get to see some returning characters, Cheerilaq and Singer, though they are not central to the story). Dr. Jens and her friends/crew are the workers on an ambulance ship (and the ambulance ship itself, Sally) that replies to a distress beacon coming off an ancient generation ship that left Earth during the Eschaton. However, the ship's crew has been locked in quickly-made cryo pods, the AI seems to be compromised in some way, and both the ship that sent the distress signal and its Darboof crew have been put into stasis somehow. As Dr. Jens tries to solve the mystery, she learns secrets she'd rather not know and has to find a way to put things right.
Like the first book in the series, Machine talks a lot about trauma and how the ability to rightmind allows people like Dr. Jens, who has chronic pain, to overcome their maladaptive reactions to the situations they find themselves in. However, even tuning one's emotional and physiological responses does not lead to an ideal society. Rightminded beings can do just as much harm to each other as non-rightminded ones like the captain of the ancient shipwho re-programmed the ship's AI to create cryo pods for its crew in response to a quick-spreading flu virus, even though the pod failure rate was likely far higher than the virus' death rate would have been . Additionally, Dr. Jens meets one of the revived members of that ancient crew, who was frozen long before people had foxes, and finds herself liking him despite the way he acts due to the fact that he does not even have the option to tune. As the emotional toll of the mystery begins to get to Dr. Jens, she at times chooses not to tune in favor of feeling emotions that could be dangerous. Not to mention, this book raises the question of how much you can trust someone else to tune you, should you find yourselves on different sides. The narrative still does favor rightminding, but compared to the previous book in the series, it presents a more complex view of it.
I personally enjoyed having a main character who was a woman andsomewhat of a failed mother/wife and allowed that complexity. While her actions were not presented as a good thing, nor were they used to invalidate everything else she had done with herself. In fact, part of her growth was understanding the mistakes she'd made and realizing that, even though she could not necessarily fix them, she could try to do better, both for herself and others. It was also nice to see a disabled main character, though I would be interested to read a deep dive into Dr. Jens' disability/disability in the universe of the series from a disability scholar and/or someone who deals with chronic pain themself.
Though this book didn't hit me as being as happy as Ancestral Night was (though maybe that's because we're now 8 months into a pandemic), it did have a message of hope: That, even when things are wrong, we can come together and make them better. That perfection does not exist, but if people do their part, we can make systems that are constantly improving. That it's worth it to have faith in others, even if that means getting hurt sometimes.
I also want to note, for anyone who has made it this far, that earlier this year I heard allegations that Elizabeth Bear had abused other writers in the sci-fi community. I want to acknowledge the person who came forward to speak about this (I don't remember their name); though I have not seen Ms. Bear respond, I have no reason at this point to doubt the allegations. It's always disappointing to learn someone whose work you like has a record of mistreating others; more so when the books you've read by them specifically address the ways trauma we have experienced can lead us to hurt others. While rightminding doesn't exist in our world, there are ways to address trauma, and I hope for both her sake and the sake of the writer(s) who have lodged complaints against her, Ms. Bear is able to look at her past and see how her actions have hurt others.
Recommend?: Yes. We need hopeful sci-fi like this, and the characters were both complex and loveable.
Like the first book in the series, Machine talks a lot about trauma and how the ability to rightmind allows people like Dr. Jens, who has chronic pain, to overcome their maladaptive reactions to the situations they find themselves in. However, even tuning one's emotional and physiological responses does not lead to an ideal society. Rightminded beings can do just as much harm to each other as non-rightminded ones like the captain of the ancient ship
I personally enjoyed having a main character who was a woman and
Though this book didn't hit me as being as happy as Ancestral Night was (though maybe that's because we're now 8 months into a pandemic), it did have a message of hope: That, even when things are wrong, we can come together and make them better. That perfection does not exist, but if people do their part, we can make systems that are constantly improving. That it's worth it to have faith in others, even if that means getting hurt sometimes.
I also want to note, for anyone who has made it this far, that earlier this year I heard allegations that Elizabeth Bear had abused other writers in the sci-fi community. I want to acknowledge the person who came forward to speak about this (I don't remember their name); though I have not seen Ms. Bear respond, I have no reason at this point to doubt the allegations. It's always disappointing to learn someone whose work you like has a record of mistreating others; more so when the books you've read by them specifically address the ways trauma we have experienced can lead us to hurt others. While rightminding doesn't exist in our world, there are ways to address trauma, and I hope for both her sake and the sake of the writer(s) who have lodged complaints against her, Ms. Bear is able to look at her past and see how her actions have hurt others.
Recommend?: Yes. We need hopeful sci-fi like this, and the characters were both complex and loveable.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Chronic illness, Death, Medical content, and Mental illness
Minor: Sexism
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