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latad_books 's review for:
Far from the Light of Heaven
by Tade Thompson
Tense and claustrophobic, Tade Thompson's latest does a good job with the "locked room" mystery idea by transferring the action to a AI-run spaceship with a thousand colonists on a long journey to a planet founded years earlier by Black Afrofuturists. They named the system Lagos and the habitable planet Bloodroot.
The colonists are on their way to far-off Bloodroot, traversing through several wormholes. The first officer awakes at Bloodroot to find the ship malfunctioning, the AI down or damaged, and several colonists murdered with no idea how this happened.
There are several point of view characters in this story:
-Michelle “Shell” Campion, head stuffed with knowledge, but short on experience. This is her first time on a long space journey, and she’s to be mostly sleeping there and back while the AI runs everything on the ship.
-Rasheed Fin, an investigator on Bloodroot. He’s been off work for a year since his last assignment resulted in a death. He sees his opportunity to return to to work by investigating the unexplained murders of colonists.
-A former pilot, who is also a friend of Shell’s father, and now the governor of Lagos station. His daughter is Joké, an unusual young woman.
-The head of the Lagos Council; she is fascinating, and all the other councillors are terrified of her.
-An artificial being called Salvo. He’s been Fin’s partner for years.
-A gazillionaire from Earth, who sees his next big opportunity off Earth.
I found the story moved at a good clip, and the tension ratcheted up nicely with each new calamity on board, or with growing questions on Lagos station and elsewhere about what was happening with the ship and its colonists.
The characters and their interactions were well handled, with misunderstandings in approaches, mindsets and communication causing tensions to rise further.
I particularly appreciated how Thompson showed the mental costs of the chaotic situation in Shell’s need to continually work her worry beads and watch the Lagos star rise, all while maintaining her stoic demeanour. And we see how detrimental Fin’s year off work has been to his mental health.
As an aside, I also liked how the aliens on Bloodroot are not inimical to the human population on the planet, which is a nice change from the usual. There are misunderstandings, but no desire to hurt one another.
The murder part of the plot is full of moments of revulsion, fear and danger, and the relationship amongst the characters, as well as the implications of the murder investigation for Lagos, evolve believably. The reveal of the motive points to problems far off on Earth, and this, along with the way the story ended, left me hoping Tade Thompson eventually returns to Bloodroot and Lagos, as I think he's set up some interesting points for later stories.
Thank you to Netgalley and to Orbit Books for this ARC in exchange for my review.
The colonists are on their way to far-off Bloodroot, traversing through several wormholes. The first officer awakes at Bloodroot to find the ship malfunctioning, the AI down or damaged, and several colonists murdered with no idea how this happened.
There are several point of view characters in this story:
-Michelle “Shell” Campion, head stuffed with knowledge, but short on experience. This is her first time on a long space journey, and she’s to be mostly sleeping there and back while the AI runs everything on the ship.
-Rasheed Fin, an investigator on Bloodroot. He’s been off work for a year since his last assignment resulted in a death. He sees his opportunity to return to to work by investigating the unexplained murders of colonists.
-A former pilot, who is also a friend of Shell’s father, and now the governor of Lagos station. His daughter is Joké, an unusual young woman.
-The head of the Lagos Council; she is fascinating, and all the other councillors are terrified of her.
-An artificial being called Salvo. He’s been Fin’s partner for years.
-A gazillionaire from Earth, who sees his next big opportunity off Earth.
I found the story moved at a good clip, and the tension ratcheted up nicely with each new calamity on board, or with growing questions on Lagos station and elsewhere about what was happening with the ship and its colonists.
The characters and their interactions were well handled, with misunderstandings in approaches, mindsets and communication causing tensions to rise further.
I particularly appreciated how Thompson showed the mental costs of the chaotic situation in Shell’s need to continually work her worry beads and watch the Lagos star rise, all while maintaining her stoic demeanour. And we see how detrimental Fin’s year off work has been to his mental health.
As an aside, I also liked how the aliens on Bloodroot are not inimical to the human population on the planet, which is a nice change from the usual. There are misunderstandings, but no desire to hurt one another.
The murder part of the plot is full of moments of revulsion, fear and danger, and the relationship amongst the characters, as well as the implications of the murder investigation for Lagos, evolve believably. The reveal of the motive points to problems far off on Earth, and this, along with the way the story ended, left me hoping Tade Thompson eventually returns to Bloodroot and Lagos, as I think he's set up some interesting points for later stories.
Thank you to Netgalley and to Orbit Books for this ARC in exchange for my review.