Book Review -- Jaydium
Jaydium by Deborah J. Ross
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Recommended. There is a special place in science fiction and fantasy for the “door in the wall” story. Sometimes it takes place on a completely different world; occasionally it takes place with alien minds front and center. In JAYDIUM, we have the repeating mirror of multiple times, the branching universe of “What if?” magnified and showing us different ways the universe has played out - and how one small world may be the home of a sentient alien species, the ruins of a once-great civilization, and a rock with a bonanza of energy wealth buried within it.
As always, Ross examines important questions through the thoughts and actions of her players. Our major protagonists include jaydium miner and pilot Kithri, left on a dying, outback world after her scientist father’s death, unable to raise the money to leave and find an education and a future. When ace pilot and war hero Eril arrives in port, and volunteers to help her make a valuable duo pilot run, Kithri agrees to take him out to the mines.
The mind link of duo piloting can cause strange intimacies and physical attraction, but the bizarre portion of their trip begins when an unstable jaydium deposit and a sparking force whip combine to cast the pair and Kithri’s ship adrift in time. Along this tunnel of possibility they pick up a spaceman from an earlier galactic civilization (one so old his entire culture has been forgotten in Kithri’s time) and an anthropologist from an alternate universe.
It takes them all time to trust each other, because no one knows which timeline is “right” and which history should be believed - and then the final snap of the wormhole drops them in what appears to be the past of Kithri’s planet. A past that was still a lush, watery world. The planet has an alien civilization so foreign to humans that it will take all their combined efforts to prove to this race that they are sentient, much less from the future, and bearing a warning.
Here Ross shows a touch of genius as she weaves together a new, sentient race struggling to determine if what they have found is intelligent with three very different human cultural attitudes to dealing with an alien civilization on the brink of their first interstellar war. Kithri’s universe has just been ripped apart by warfare. The spaceman Lennart remembers a galaxy at peace, at a price, while anthropologist Brianna comes from a vast interstellar alliance that is a strange mix of both peace and much higher levels of violence.
Do they interfere in the plans and discussions of these aliens? Should they? Was Kithri’s world born from the success of these creatures, or of their failure? And is there any chance of getting back to their homes, to their lives...and again, should they? Eril was looking for a partner pilot for the Courier Corps, and came to that port to meet Kithri. Can they find a future together - and where?
As she did in Northlight, Ross examines betrayal, survival, healing, second chances, even redemption. There is a lot of adventure, a touch of romance, and new worlds and aliens to examine. The question of what is sentience, and could we recognize intelligence so different from ourselves, adds to the story. Fans of the Miller & Lee Liaden books, the Cherryh Atevi books, the Smith Idomeni books or my Nuala books will probably like this one, too.
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