This book has been on my TBR pile for a long time and I finally picked it up for my birthday (which I share, one year different, with GLP!) this year. This story begins with two brothers arguing because both are in love with the same woman, and she had feelings for both as well. Before they can reconcile, the older brother gets transported through a mysterious arch that appears randomly in the tube station and he disappears. Meanwhile, hundreds of years in the future, a down-on-her-luck starship captain “reunites” with her ex-lover and they both race to get to the harvest on a far away world to make it big. And the third major plot (albeit, a much smaller part of the book) involves some sort of scientific acolyte on a mission to the enormous alien artifact, the ark.
I enjoyed reading this book primarily to compare Powell’s style and how it has grown and changed over the last decade. It has a lot of familiar parts: sentient starships, strong but broken female lead characters, galaxy spanning space opera, ancient alien tech, and a humanity-ending threat. The most interesting thing for me was watching how much better Powell has gotten at his craft in the intervening decade. It’s not that the writing is “bad” in this earlier piece, but it felt more forced. For example, at one point he describes a character entering a damp location with a great description of the smells and sounds of a swimming pool, but as I read it I found myself thinking “oh, he is putting description in here,” instead of just living in the moment. It isn’t blatantly obvious, but I noticed a change. It got me thinking about in my own craft, my descriptions probably also feel forced, but I can’t see it because I wrote it. There were a few other places, maybe 10-20 in the whole book, where I just … noticed … that he was adding description covering two senses instead of just one, and it felt a little clunky.
Don’t get me wrong. It didn’t take away from the book in general, but maybe as I have improved as a writer I am noticing other writer’s craft more. I found it more interesting than distracting, and I want to ensure that my own writing feels natural and not forced.