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kareilaI first tried to read this book's predecessor, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, but bounced off it for reasons I am having trouble articulating. Like, maybe it's that it seemed to be trying too hard to depict a single spaceship's crew as a diverse cross section of galactic misfits, because the author had too many character ideas for one book? It's the kind of story I usually like, but I just couldn't get into it.
This story was more palatable to me by virtue of focusing on two characters against the backdrop of an alien city. These two were only minor characters in the previous book, but we learn much more about them here. Lovelace is an AI who was designed to be a spaceship's brain, but has been newly (and illegally) transplanted into a humanoid body. Pepper is the tech who procured the body for Lovelace and now feels responsible for her.
It's easy to categorize Lovelace alongside Breq and Murderbot as AIs who are trying to live as humans, but those other AIs were designed to physically resemble humans from inception. Lovelace feels totally ill at ease not being a spaceship, and I found that charming and sympathetic. I also enjoyed the parallel story of Pepper's past, how she grew up as one of a pod of cloned humans enslaved in a scrap recycling factory, and how she managed to escape via a series of brutal circumstances.
As we follow Lovelace (who comes to be known as Sidra) and Pepper (who was once known as Jane), their journey is not one of conflict and resolution so much as self-discovery and self-determination. It starts with a panic attack and ends with a hug, which feels exactly right.
This story was more palatable to me by virtue of focusing on two characters against the backdrop of an alien city. These two were only minor characters in the previous book, but we learn much more about them here. Lovelace is an AI who was designed to be a spaceship's brain, but has been newly (and illegally) transplanted into a humanoid body. Pepper is the tech who procured the body for Lovelace and now feels responsible for her.
It's easy to categorize Lovelace alongside Breq and Murderbot as AIs who are trying to live as humans, but those other AIs were designed to physically resemble humans from inception. Lovelace feels totally ill at ease not being a spaceship, and I found that charming and sympathetic. I also enjoyed the parallel story of Pepper's past, how she grew up as one of a pod of cloned humans enslaved in a scrap recycling factory, and how she managed to escape via a series of brutal circumstances.
As we follow Lovelace (who comes to be known as Sidra) and Pepper (who was once known as Jane), their journey is not one of conflict and resolution so much as self-discovery and self-determination. It starts with a panic attack and ends with a hug, which feels exactly right.
