The novel starts with Dee, Carl and Travis, characters who appear in After Atlas, talking about their future a few months into their voyage following the Pathfinder traces. This time we follow Dee trying to come to terms with the events at the end of After Atlas and getting used to life in a star ship. She is determined to find whoever was responsible for the atrocities they witnessed and if possible, kill them. Her new freedom, far from her life as an indentured (a corporate slave), does not give her peace of mind. She still carries the weight of all those years not being able to decide on her actions and body. Far from trying to heal herself or look for help, she masks her emotions and her past. As Dee gets a job within the ship mining consumer data for Mersives (kind of virtual reality games) she is able to access data on the crew and population. She sets her target to discover everything she can about what happened in Earth with all the resources she has available. All of a sudden, she is contacted by someone who infiltrates into her “office” (set in a private mersive) and who wants to help her find the ones she is looking for. Despite the obvious dangers Dee accepts the help… and read the book if you want to know more!!
Opinion: I am impressed with Emma Newman’s capacity to keep the quality of writing and storytelling at a high level. This book is as amazing as the other three. Initially I thought the story was about space travel, life in secluded spaces, recycling food and water and similar BUT I was wrong. I am glad I was wrong. What Newman gave me with this book was total immersion into a character’s mind, flaws, traumas, memories, thoughts and bad decisions. I wouldn’t call Dee a likable character, but I didn’t hate her either. I think she was a perfect, controversial character, with so many layers we could talk about her for hours. To start, the topic of indenture comes to mind. Dee was (or still is??) a corporate slave, forced to do things she didn’t want to do. To pretend to be something she wasn’t. And she wasn’t allowed to tell anyone about her situation. That was her life on earth, but it still affects her now. The only person who new her was Carl (Carlos Moreno, main protagonist in After Atlas) but she would not open up with him either. Through all the book she tries to escape her memories by avoiding them or by crumpling them as one does with paper and throwing them somewhere, she cannot see them. She hides her emotions as she hides her past. “My face is a mask in front of a mask” is one phrase of hers I particularly liked. It is self-defence. A strategy she uses even when she is not threatened. Her mission is revenge and escapism as well. From her memories and her past. She needs purpose in her life now that no one is telling her what to do. She needs to prove that she is capable and valuable. Revenge is the perfect motivation. She wants justice for earth, but I feel she wants it for herself too. Dee is not alone in her quest for justice. She is helped and guided by someone she doesn’t know. Sometimes this help looks more like an imposition. She feels she is forced to do things like when she was indentured but she doesn’t care as long as she can get justice. There are parallels between her new situation and her past. She is an object again. Used by someone else. Perhaps this is why her psychological and emotional balance crumble as she gets closer to her targets. That contradiction between believing in justice but not being able to make her own decisions in obtaining that justice destroys her.
Anyway, I totally recommend this book and the whole series, and I hope Emma Newman writes the fifth novel soon because that ending was …!!!
My edition is a paperback published by Ace in 2019. It has 306 pages.
No comments:
Post a Comment