The Stars Now Unclaimed (The Universe After, #1) by Drew Williams
This is definitely a Your Mileage May Vary review. This was not the book I thought I'd be reading, and it's not one I would've chosen if I had known. With that in mind....
I heard "smugglers, spies, a telekinetic girl, and a snarky spaceship," like it would be found family, space adventures, saving people, sassy spaceship. What I got was a book that's about 90% war killings. Fighting and killing. Lots and lots of killing. It became wearying to me.
Sure, the hundreds of thousands of deaths are an enemy worse than our protagonists, most of them cannon fodder brainwashed slaves for a fascist force that offers only two choices: join us in subjugating the universe as more of our brainwashed slaves or die. It's a force that conveniently can't be reasoned or negotiated with, the only option is to kill them all hard and fast. They're a literally faceless evil since they all wear suits that camouflage all individual features. Unlike the enemy, the protagonists don't see the strong always having to destroy the weak, they protect some of the weak, especially if they're useful. Our protagonists' side don't like to kill, except when they do, but they have to! The other, lesser, enemy to be slaughtered is a race that's devolved to an intelligent-for-an-animal predator level. They'll kill and eat you--and you need to gain the massive cannon they live near to save your millions of people--so kill them first.
I'm not a "pacifist at all costs" person. There are things and people worth fighting for, evils worth fighting, and you can't give in to bullies. But this is killing and killing and killing and killing. Person-to-person or starships fighting each other and massive cannons. Most war stories you get more stops for breath, personal time, other things. Not so much here for about 90% of the story.
The conveniently faceless evil to mow down isn't the only plot mechanic thing that stood out for me. The main protagonist picks up two totally new people from a pre-internal combustion engine world at the beginning of the book and has to info-dump a lot of things onto them.
It didn't help that I didn't care much about the characters.
Also, the pulse seems too much like magic to me. Even the protagonists agree that it defies physics. It spread throughout all of space, randomly busting down worlds to varying degrees of technological status for no rhyme or reason, but it does pass over the machine race as its creators had intended because. Because. Its radiation on individual planets can keep a society busted down to pre-internal combustion engine for over a hundred years somehow. It's part of the book's thesis that sapients will inevitably war against each other even if you bust them down to sticks and stones. Just accept it.
This is apparently the first book in a series. I won't be reading the next one.
You can comment here or at the Dreamwidth crosspost.
comments at Dreamwidth.
I heard "smugglers, spies, a telekinetic girl, and a snarky spaceship," like it would be found family, space adventures, saving people, sassy spaceship. What I got was a book that's about 90% war killings. Fighting and killing. Lots and lots of killing. It became wearying to me.
Sure, the hundreds of thousands of deaths are an enemy worse than our protagonists, most of them cannon fodder brainwashed slaves for a fascist force that offers only two choices: join us in subjugating the universe as more of our brainwashed slaves or die. It's a force that conveniently can't be reasoned or negotiated with, the only option is to kill them all hard and fast. They're a literally faceless evil since they all wear suits that camouflage all individual features. Unlike the enemy, the protagonists don't see the strong always having to destroy the weak, they protect some of the weak, especially if they're useful. Our protagonists' side don't like to kill, except when they do, but they have to! The other, lesser, enemy to be slaughtered is a race that's devolved to an intelligent-for-an-animal predator level. They'll kill and eat you--and you need to gain the massive cannon they live near to save your millions of people--so kill them first.
I'm not a "pacifist at all costs" person. There are things and people worth fighting for, evils worth fighting, and you can't give in to bullies. But this is killing and killing and killing and killing. Person-to-person or starships fighting each other and massive cannons. Most war stories you get more stops for breath, personal time, other things. Not so much here for about 90% of the story.
The conveniently faceless evil to mow down isn't the only plot mechanic thing that stood out for me. The main protagonist picks up two totally new people from a pre-internal combustion engine world at the beginning of the book and has to info-dump a lot of things onto them.
It didn't help that I didn't care much about the characters.
Also, the pulse seems too much like magic to me. Even the protagonists agree that it defies physics. It spread throughout all of space, randomly busting down worlds to varying degrees of technological status for no rhyme or reason, but it does pass over the machine race as its creators had intended because. Because. Its radiation on individual planets can keep a society busted down to pre-internal combustion engine for over a hundred years somehow. It's part of the book's thesis that sapients will inevitably war against each other even if you bust them down to sticks and stones. Just accept it.
This is apparently the first book in a series. I won't be reading the next one.
You can comment here or at the Dreamwidth crosspost.
comments at Dreamwidth.