Undertow by Elizabeth Bear

[lightreads]

Undertow by Elizabeth Bear

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


Crunchy SF about the mining exploitation of a planet with a population of amphibious aliens, and corporate wrongdoing, and people who can alter probability with their minds, and redemption, and time forks.



To be fair, this book had the misfortune to intersect my life during a deeply frustrating snowed-in interlude, some bad travel, and today a – let’s just call it the aftermath of New Year’s and leave it at that. So not good context.



But still, meh. There’s a lot of stunt writing here – completely nongendered alien point-of-view, a climax of collapsing and expanding alternate realities – and it all just rubbed me as trying too goddamn hard. And everything else fell a little flat. Like I’d be reading along, and I’d think, ah, okay, these are background details alpha and beta that are supposed to lend depth to this supporting character. More of the same feeling that the book spent way too much time trying to be a thing and not actually being it.



Also, it didn’t magically cure my hangover, so I’m taking a star off for that.





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