Most of humanity has been slaughtered, and we, along with refugees from other alien civilizations across our local spiral arm have fled to a camp at the edge of the void, waiting to board slow ships that will carry us away from the Cutters.
That is a heck of a premise, and it is exactly the type of SF I love to read. It literally says in my bio that I am a “spaceships and aliens” kind of guy, and I am. The setup to the story was good. There is a mysterious infection that the main character, Ursula, acquires on an archaeological dig on a far off planet. There is a love triangle between her, her former lover, and her former lover’s wife, who also happens to be a spaceship. Powell loves his sentient ships, and I love them too.
The middle section felt a bit formulaic. Maybe because I have read a lot of craft books and am currently in the middle of edits of my own novel, but each new action felt like it was “now force the characters to make a choice, and have the worst possible outcome.” I mean, that is generally accepted to be more captivating fiction, but it just felt too on the nose for me. However, I could look past it and enjoy a nice adventure story and I didn’t always know what the next step would be.
The ending was, as others have said online, dues ex machina. Even the “machine” that ends the story calls it out by name (denying it) so it is clear that the author is aware of this potential read of the ending. I actually didn’t mind it, since it did fit in with the general setup of the story. We knew that eventually Ursula would get back to the artifact that infected her and it would do… something. I didn’t like how rapid the ending was, though. The book was fast paced, but the ending came up on us quickly and I wanted more. This is a relatively short read, 300 pages, and it could have had a bigger impact with a more drawn out ending where everything wasn’t neatly tied up.
My biggest complaint about the book is that it very much reminded me of Tchaikovsky’s “Final Architecture” series which I really really enjoyed. But this book felt like only a dimmer echo of the earlier work. The alien Cutters felt like the Architects. The “under void” felt like the “unspace.” Powell is a different writer, and this is a different type of read. Rather than the slower, more complex and longer buildup of the Final Architecture series, this story was a quick and easy read.
Now, it turns out, this was what I needed this week. I read the book in 4 days, and it felt good to start and finish something that I enjoyed after slogging my way through longer more difficult reads lately. I just wish that I felt as deeply about the characters in this book as I did for Trouble Dog and Sal in his Embers of War trilogy.
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