Review: Areta by Daniel Rirdan

So, I'm a fan of screwed up generation ships. Unfortunately, I am not a fan of "They don't know they're on a generation ship and if they don't work it out in X time everyone dies."

I've just never cared for that trope, and Areta brings little new to it, while expressing some ideas I'm not a fan of. Eugenics through selective breeding comes to mind.

Rirdan's "twist" on the tale is that the humans on the generation ship were abducted from the year 300 BCE by...well...we never find out, but it appears to be reasonably benevolent aliens who decide to establish a colony of Homo sapiens on another planet as a backup for us.

And instead of postulating that a generation ship would be screwed up, Rirdan postulates that 50,000 people in close quarters would actually become more mature humans. I...am not inclined to agree with him.

The prose is solid, especially as Rirdan's first language does not appear to be English, and the characters are at least somewhat interesting. And I know that my aversion to the plot is mostly subjective.

So, others will likely enjoy this more than I did, and the problem is more the choice of tropes and plot elements than anything with Rirdan's writing.

Review: Republic of Forge and Grace by Daniel Rirdan

First of all, this book is a parallel world narrative, not alternate history. Rirdan doesn't seem to be responsible for the mischaracterization - the subtitle is "A parallel-universe America novel."

And such it is, but with a caveat. Rirdan has built a libertarian utopia with some bizarrely sexist ideas in his Americana...a weird mix of high tech, women aspiring to be homemakers, with queernorm and polynorm traits. It's...very strange, and its also engaged with in a completely straightforward manner. It doesn't feel as if the author truly explores the negative side of things; instead we're supposed to see Americana as a perfect society, with high states rights, all the schools being charter schools, no cars... Oh, and racism was fixed permanently by one speech in 1965 and now nobody sees color anymore. (You can tell it was not a Black author that wrote this).

It's all very strange and it's all explained to us in detail. The plot is actually pretty solid. It combines a polyamorous romance with our protagonists' growing realization that our America should be kept away from Americana. Unfortunately, the plot feels like an excuse to visit the setting.

I wanted to like this. I like a good parallel universe yarn. And maybe if Americana had remotely appealed to me as a place to live, I would have felt differently. As it is, this is an interesting work, but falls short of being more than that.