Advanced climate change means that the world is burning, there is looming economic collapse, but a billionaire’s secret and illegal project shipped back hundreds of tons of refined ore from the asteroid Ryugu, and that opens up the possibility of us getting through this and surviving as a species. In book two of this series, we rejoin our protagonists after a harrowing return to Earth after years in deep space, and their main concern is the rescue the two they had to leave behind. But political actors, business competitors, and even some infighting within the crew makes it seem like there is no hope.
I read somewhere online after I finished the first book that Suarez is known more for writing economic thrillers, but a perusal of his website shows that he has moved solidly into the SF realm, mostly writing about AI, crypto, and other more close-to-home ideas than my preferred genre of spaceships and aliens. But this book is solidly near-future hard SF and reads as an optimistic outlook on our possible future. Given that the other possible future is climate collapse, I would like to think that we will follow a path like this, but I am enough of a realist to know that we aren’t going to and our civilization is probably doomed to failure. Even a trillion dollars won’t save you if there aren’t pollinators or if there is a complete collapse of the Atlantic circulation weather patterns.
I am a chemist by training and profession, and there is a lot of chemistry in both this book and the first one. I was impressed at how much he got right about the chemistry, which makes me think that he also is getting a lot right about cryptocurrency, business takeovers, deep space propulsion, and how billionaires think. The story is extremely realistic, with characters that also seem real and motivated by their past actions and experiences. The book is filled with “as you know, Bob” sections, which are not that off-putting to me who cut his teeth on Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke, and Bradbury, but it did take me out of the story from time to time. There is also a lot of buildup and deep dives into making a mass driver on the surface of the moon, corporate espionage, and then… a time jump forward 100 days or more and a new problem has arisen. So the novel reads very episodically even though there is a consistent through-line, that keeps getting hammered in to the reader’s brain by the main POV character JT.
I have struggled to find time to read, but I really did want to get this finished off so I can start a new book. It started to feel like a slog towards the end, but the story wrapped up and I feel like it is complete. I’m happy I read these two books, but I doubt I would read more by this author, especially the further afield from spaceships most of his writing is.
Next up, another “easy” project. Book two of the three-body problem. This was such a difficult read, due in large part to the assumed knowledge of Chinese history, and the more “eastern” storytelling techniques (less linear), and honestly, because I had a hard time differentiating the different names of the Chinese characters. Unfortunately, it’s now been 2 years (!) since i read that so I anticipate a hard start into the sequel. However, I just binged the entire first season of the series in one day last week, so I feel like I’m caught up (assuming that the series is mostly true to the book…)
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