_Dust_, Bear
Andrew Plotkin
_Dust_ before I read the book. She says "very linear", "very
straightforward", "feels like a somewhat shallow treatment without a
lot of nuance". I got through _Dust_ and felt it was... kind of
straightforward, and linear, and not *shallow* but definitely not as
interesting as _Undertow_ or _Carnival_.
(On the other hand, people who fell off of the writhing ball of horny
snakes that are the Promethan Age plots may find _Dust_ a relief.)
But I *know* I'm impressionable when it comes to reviews.
Anyway, you've got a generation ship, which was crawling across space
in its SF-tropey way when a meteor took out most of the engines and
most of the central computer. That was five hundred years of patch
jobs ago. Now the descendants of the officer corps are hereditary
nobility (nanotech symbionts are what they inherit); the fragments of
the ship's AI are angels. The AI fragments are at war, the humans are
at war, and the patches aren't going to last forever.
The scenery is vivid and the characters are engaging. Nothing about
the book is bad. But not much is surprising either. All of the
technology winds up being fantasy tropes in an SF setting...
...which is exactly what I said[**] about _Undertow_, so I must pin
down why _Undertow_ worked so much better. I think it's this:
_Undertow_ was a deeply SFnal story that dealt with fantasy tropes in
a SF setting. _Dust_ is a fantasy story that uses fantasy tropes in an
SF setting. There's no tension between content and mode, only between
content/mode and stage dressing.
Or, to ground the point: we learn early in _Dust_ that the nanotech in
the blood of the House of Engine and the House of Rule is blue. They
have blue blood, and nobility is their role in the story. See?
Straightforward. The AIs behave like fantasy (fallen) angels. The
female knight plays the role of, well, a male knight in a fantasy
novel. Okay, she sticks to her vow of chastity, but that isn't *much*
of a departure; it's still recognizable, and therefore not interesting
beyond the initial surprise. (Contrast _Carnival_, where we got two
different sets of gender roles, both broken in not-quite-familiar
ways, instantiated in people and then driven into each others' teeth.)
There is a quest, protagonists suffer, some people die, the world is
saved. These things happen satisfactorily. The story comes to a point
of resolution, but there will be sequels. I'll read them. But this
series isn't the kind of Bear that kicks my ass.
[* <http://matociquala.livejournal.com/1293264.html> ]
[** <http://eblong.com/zarf/bookscan/rev-2007.html> ]
--Z
--
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."
*
Making a saint out of Reagan is sad. Making an idol out of Nixon ("If the
President does it then it's legal") is contemptible.