This is book two in the continuance series after Stars and Bones and I liked this one a lot more than the previous one. I tried to figure out why… what is it about this book that resonated more with me? Don’t get me wrong. I liked the first one, but I gave that a 4/5 and this one gets a 5/5. So, what is different?
Maybe because it was set further in the future after the fall/rescue of humanity by the strange god-like creatures, the Benevolence. Maybe because I was more used to almost total disregard for hard SF principles (which is fine… I just have been reading harder SF lately so it was a transition). And maybe, it was because I was more used to his style. He has a light banter, even when dealing with heavy topics, like the annihilation of Earth.
No matter the reason, I thoroughly enjoyed this read. I read it over the course of about a week and a half in about 3-4 sessions. Last night I plopped down and read the last third. I was very engaged, and wanted to know how it ended. I was 90% sure I knew what a “Descendant Machine” was, until I got to almost the end, where I found out that I was wrong in a neat little twist/play on words.
Slight spoiler here. The climax and ending was a bit dues ex machina. The brilliant human physicist ends up at the end of the universe (reminding me of the Douglas Adams journey in that book) and is able to teach humanities descendants about physics. This seems unrealistic as scientific progress definitely moves forward. End spoiler.
Powell included a scientist in this story who seemed very tropey to me. He is gangly, awkward, though married to (perhaps only in a relationship with) a woman he truly loves. He pursuers science for science’s sake, and there were several lines in there about the purity of the scientific pursuit. As a scientist, I do like seeing scientists portrayed. And to be fair, most of Powell’s characters are fairly one-dimensional. Even his main characters have a singular character trait that he uses to move the plot forward. This is what you expect when you read faster paced softer SF and I have no problem with it. But it does tend to result in characters who I don’t necessarily love or understand or want to really grapple with. Contrast this with his main POV character in the Embers series, Sal, who had a real emotional depth for me. The Embers books are a bit longer though not really broader in scope, so maybe that is how the characters are also broader.
Anyway, I didn’t think I had so many thoughts on this book but here it is. A good read, one I really liked, and a solid 5 stars from me.