Dickinson, John: WE
WE (2010) -- Amazon UK link
Written by: John Dickinson
Genre: YA/Science Fiction
Pages: 302 (UK Trade Paperback)
Why I Read It: If not for The Book Smuggler's, I would've never heard of this book. Between the pretty cover and the high rating, I was ticked when I discovered this was only available in the UK, and I figured I'd just never be able to get my hands on it. I was shocked when I found it in TJ's book giveaway pile, and snatched it up ASAP. This book seemed just up my alley, and I couldn't wait to read it.
The premise: ganked from publisher's website: WE ARE THE ONLY HUMANS LEFT. . .
In the furthest, coldest, darkest reaches of our solar system, Paul Munro is on a mission from which he can never return. A desolate ice-covered moon will be his home for the rest of his life. And only from here can he see what humanity has become.
A thriller to freeze your blood. To absolute zero.
Spoilers, yay or nay?: Nay. There's a lot of things I want to talk about in terms of where this book fits in terms of the bigger SF genre, as well as why it really isn't YA but how categorizing it as such isn't wholly a bad thing. Safe to read even for spoiler-phobes, though I know: if you're paranoid, you're gonna want to skip down to "My Rating." Everyone else, onward!
I must have hit a rut with the some of my choices lately, because this is the second book in a row I've finished reading and felt rather ambivalent about. It's not a bad book, but it's not outstanding either, yet the key factor is perhaps my personal expectations, which had me wanting to believe the book is better than the sum of its parts. It's never fair to judge a book based against how you WANTED it to be versus for just what it is, but let's face it: it's rare to read a book where you have no expectations going into it.
I want to talk about my disappointments first, before going into what I think works in this novel.
During my commentary for the film Apollo 18, I talked a bit about my enjoyment of the SF/Horror/Thriller genre, and when reading WE, I felt this book would firmly fit into that mold. Certainly, the back cover copy of the book promises such, and all the ingredients were there: four people alone on a space station, a mystery surrounding both their equipment and their personnel, and an increasingly paranoid main character in Paul. Yet the first thing I discovered that turned me off is that while I sometimes enjoy watching paranoia play out on the screen, I really don't care for reading it. Being stuck in a main character's head who's second-guessing everything and acting according to his paranoia really isn't fun. In fact, it makes me want to smack him upside the head, tell him to shut up and be reasonable. So that reaction clearly takes away the thriller/suspense elements out of the story, because I'm not buying into the paranoia.
It also didn't help that I don't feel the author did a very good job at stating what the mission of this station was. I mean, it's sort of talked about in hard SF terms, but not in a way that had me going, "Oh, okay, I totally get it," and while one may argue that's kind of the point, it doesn't help readers like me who want a solid motivation to start with to compare actual facts and data with later. I want to be able to say, "Well, the purpose of this station is X, but what they're actually doing has nothing to do with X, so what's really going on?" I never understood the point or purpose of the place, so I was less invested.
Pulling my interest away even more was the fact that the author can't be bothered to name the planet and moon that's our setting. Maybe if I were more of a planet-geek, the answers would be obvious, but I started questioning where I thought they were (Europa) against the fact it's never named, so what if they're farther out than I thought? Some undiscovered planet past Pluto? It's very possible, but I resented not having a firm grasp of setting in relation to Earth, despite the excellent details given of the surface of the moon as well as how long it takes for information to travel as well as people. Again, maybe if I were better versed in the details of the solar system, I would've been able to put it all together on my own. Thea from the Book Smugglers certainly seems to have done a fabulous job doing so (you can see her examination of it at the bottom of her review here).
And while the writing style certainly isn't bad or offensive; indeed, it allows for the reader to turn the pages at quite the quick pace, sometimes the narration would slip into a kind of omniscience that would describe what was happening when our POV character couldn't, and that jarred me a bit (probably because I don't particularly care for that style).
I also found myself wondering what this book was really trying to say. At first, I thought it may be anti-space exploration based on rant from Lewis on page 92, where he's complaining that the space elevator's just one giant dick used to fertilize the galaxy, but the expense put into the thing doesn't improve the individual quality of life for any human being. But then as events unfold, and the notion that the four on this station are the last true humans left in the galaxy, I started thinking it was about the nature of humanity and what it means to evolve and whether or not that evolution is a good idea. Because regardless of where humanity resides, on Earth connected to the World Ear, or on this station and beyond, bodies adapted for low gravity, humanity definitely doesn't resemble the humanity of today's day and age.
But here's the thing: the questions Dickinson raises? They're not original or new to the genre. That's okay: they don't have to be. But going back to initial expectations, the back cover blurb promise that this thriller would freeze my blood to absolute zero, makes the questions raised and the answers that come out of that something of a disappointment. All that build up, for such little pay off. Hell, even the notion of first contact was a little too close to Dom Testa's The Web of Titan, so even that familiarity had be less interested than I may have been otherwise.
I don't want this review to be all about what I didn't care for, however. Dickinson does a great job weaving hard scientific fact into a fictional story, in such a way that it doesn't feel like a lecture, so it doesn't feel jarring. Showing the reader how bodies change when exposed to low-gravity environments was one great example of this, and I liked how Paul's perspective of this as frightening and unnatural changes over the course of the book to where he realizes he finds this normal, and more to the point, he's able to look past it to find beauty in others. I really, really appreciated that this was hard YA SF, because that's something you rarely see. Too much SF for YA is obsessed with relationships and love triangles and not the SF stories themselves, so Dickinson's novel is a welcome addition to the YA SF field. Yet I've read that Dickinson never intended this book to be YA, and it kind of shows. None of the characters are teens; they're all adults and they pretty much act like adults. Perhaps one could argue against Paul, given how he's being weaned from the World Ear and learning how to speak and emote properly, but still, each of these characters have adult lives -- even Paul left behind a wife and child to take this position, though whether or not he truly consented for this position is a matter of some debate in the book, a debate that goes back to the right of choice and whether or not the World Ear has irrevocably changed that.
Yet I will say that the writing style itself? A little more suited to YA. I can't put my finger on way, especially since part of the reason may be the way I'm perceiving the format (the book may be 300 pages, but it's a rather large font), but perhaps something's to be said for Dickinson's rather minimalist style. I never felt truly absorbed in the world, despite all the great details provided, and rightly or wrongly, something about that light-handed touch lends itself to YA.
My Rating: It's a Gamble
Truth be told, a lot of whether or not you enjoy this book will probably depend on whatever SF baggage you've got coming into it. And then there's more practical issues about the book itself, like how the book just rather stops instead of rounding out a conclusion. It's possible the author intends this to be the first in a series, and if that's the case, the ending makes a little more sense, but it's still not very satisfying. When you consider that a lot of the big ideas introduced are nothing new to the genre, and that they come at the end of the book, the build up seems like much ado about nothing, you know? Still, the book does manage to create a nice SF/thriller/suspense atmosphere, and Dickinson's hard SF details really fit well into the story, which is a thrill to see in a book that's being marketed as YA SF. It is a rather smooth read, something that can be devoured in the span of a day or two, depending on your schedule, and while I'm ambivalent about this book, there are things to enjoy about it. However, if a sequel was made available, I can't say I'd be in any hurry to read it.
One important note: in the afterword of the book, the author admits to not being aware of Yevgeny Zamyatin's dystopian classic We until after he'd drafted and titled his own book, so fans of that dystopia who are perhaps looking for parallels won't find anything intentional, as the author certainly didn't have that book under his belt when writing this one.
Cover Commentary: It's a very, very striking cover, and one of the first things that grabbed my attention about this book. Online, it looks like a space photo, and in person, there's the faintest wisps around the edges where you can tell it's been painted, and it's all very lovely. Look! In the crevice! It's the habitat!
Next up: Remnant Population by Elizabeth Moon