Gemina by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff

Gemina

2/5. Sequel to Illuminae. The pampered daughter of a space station commander teams up with her drug dealer when the station is invaded by a corporate commando squad bent on hushing up the atrocities from the prior book.

Yeah, no, this did not work. Which is really an accomplishment, considering Illuminae 80% worked on me and this is the exact same book. On a space station instead of a spaceship, but otherwise the structure, the emotional beats, even the characters all slot perfectly into the same mold. You can swap elements one-for-one – the plague in Illuminae is replaced here with an invasive and deadly alien predator, but they fill the exact same role of invoking terror at squishy, unstoppable biology in these close-in space habitats. The entire book is like that – like they played madlibs.

The main problem is that the epistolary structure is for a specific purpose, instead of just being a gimmick, and we know that from word one, whereas it wasn’t actually explained until the end of the first book. You’d think that’d be a good thing. But no. It just means the intense performativity of this book, and it’s obvious and clumsy emotional manipulations, become fully transparent. And my God, the attempt at stuntwriting (there’s this whole thing where a narrator is telling one story twice at the same time with slight variation for reasons). It’s embarrassing how not good it is.

Seven Surrenders by Ada Palmer

Seven Surrenders

4/5. Oh man. Oh man oh man. This is so great. And so batshit. Like, currently 8/10 on the WTF scale, and I am pretty certain Palmer is still only revving up. I can’t wait to be boggled and croggled and outraged and exasperated and delighted by the next two books in the series.

So the thing I really like about this series is that it’s science fiction set centuries from now, and many of the characters are obsessed with seventeenth and eighteenth century French philosophers. And the book plays – and cosplays – with historicity. There’s a single house, for example, where – it is a shock and a scandal, I know – but in this house, people use gendered pronouns.* And what I really like is that the historicity this book is playing with is ultimately not play. And not cosplay either. Because the questions the characters wrestle with are seventeenth and eighteenth century questions. If God is benevolent, how could they be the silent watchmaker who never shows their hand to anyone? What role can providence – as a force, not just a belief – play? Are humans capable of living without violence? These are not the questions modern science fiction is concerned with, and I love the way this book sent me tumbling way out of my familiar ruts.

I get why a lot of people bounced off of Too Like the Lightning because this whole thing is, uh. A very particular flavor. But I am so here for it.

*Still processing a lot of the gender stuff. The first book indulged in a lot of gender play. This one was less playful and more interested in a particular point about the vulnerabilities that people are left with when gender is taken off the table as a topic of acceptable discussion or even of language. Still processing.