Review: Ancestral Night by Elizabeth Bear

This is very much the kind of space opera I like. There are big dumb objects. There are big smart objects. There are people with human problems. And a disaster lesbian, just saying.

In the future, humans have joined the Synarche, a galactic federation that is neither an empire nor a democracy. Representatives are conscripted to serve for a term, because nobody who wants power should have it. It’s an interesting idea (and one I’ve seen voiced in political science discussions).

Our protagonist, Haimey, is the flight engineer on a salvage tug, accompanied by Connla, the pilot, Singer, the ship’s AI, and two cats. They’re a found family, and a functional one. (Except, occasionally, for the cats). She’s been surgically altered to be comfortable in zero G, including having four hands.

She’s also been reprogrammed mentally after being honeypotted into involvement with terrorism in her early twenties. She doesn’t even remember everything she did.

And now the tug has found a ship in deep space…a ship that turns out to be involved in crimes against sentients. (Specifically, space whaling, and the space whales are not happy).

From there, it gets worse. I very much enjoyed this, but that’s because it hits all my buttons.

Recommended for space opera fans. And for people who like my space opera books. Ahem.

Review: The Ghost Brigades by John Scalzi

If you have to ask if you’re the bad guys, you’re the bad guys.

Maybe.

Maybe there are, in fact, no good guys. Old Man’s War told the story of a recruit from Earth. The Ghost Brigades goes into the Colonial Special Forces, who are cloned child soldiers.

Yeah, pretty sure they’re the bad guys.

It also goes into the nature of consciousness and a lot into identity, almost to the point of side stepping from mil SF into cyberpunk. Jared Dirac was cloned from Charles Boutin to take a copy of his consciousness so they could find out where he was…and why he is betraying humanity to their enemies.

It doesn’t quite work. It almost, almost works. From there the story goes in a direction I was hoping and slightly expecting. We find out the CDF is, well, acting like white people always have. At the same time, can the aliens be trusted? I mean, the Rraey do find humans tasty.

I don’t know where it goes from here, but I suspect there will be at least some exploration of family.

As well as the solution to the problem of the bad guys possibly being our only defense.