I'll start of this post by giving my rating of 1/5. This book absolutely didn't work for me and in the paragraphs below I'll highlight why. I'd recommend you read the book before reading this review as it contains spoilers. There'll also be a brief comparison with Ancestral Night (the first novel in the series) because I actually did enjoy Ancestral Night.
1. The main character (Brookllyn Jens). It felt like Bear wanted to create a nice and caring character by creating "Llyn" but imo failed quite massively at it. In theory (I say theory because it didn't come across on the pages) Llyn is a doctor. However, throughout the book she acts mostly like an angsty, self-absorbed, and reckless teenager. She's also very much a Mary Sue who can do everything if necessary for the plot. Apparently she's great at relationships (despite telling us throughout the book she really isn't) and care (This being illustrated when other characters recognize her skills and send her to help a mentally unstable AI and a newly re-awakened human from a few centuries ago through talk-therapy) even though there is constantly a lot of emphasis on how she didn't get along with her wife and doesn't really speak to her daughter (like at all). She's also super strong due to her exo-suit and super knowledgeable about just about anything. The only things she can't do (there are a few, such as find an anti-virus for a virus that's been rampaging through most of the book) is done off screen within two pages- so not really an obstacle.
2. So much internal dialogue and ranting! I have absolutely no patience for these kinds of books. There were multiple times where Llyn (the main character) just went off on tangents in her head about various issues that had nothing to do with plot. There was a ton of social-just-warrioring, browbeating people who don't think "a certain way", tons of hypocrisy (example: Llyn really likes a character who is homophobic- although he really isn't- despite being a lesbian), and virtue-signalling. After approximately five such scenes, I very much had enough and started to skim the rest. I get it. Bear thinks humans are all bad and we need devices installed in our head to tell us how to behave. Oh-kay... I was very much on the side of the characters (the "archaic" and "atavistic" humans who did not have such devices) because yes please I'd love to keep my emotions and integrity of thought even if they're sometimes destructive. (Never mind that in the novel, even the people who have such mind-altering boxes behave "wrongly" and have mental breakdowns, make the wrong choices, are not always pleasant.)
3. The mystery had a cool setup- This is why the book is actually getting a single star (even though as a whole I'd probably rate it 0). The book introduces an emergency doctor who breaks into spaceships to save the people (potentially trapped) inside. She's been sent to an old generation ship that's been traveling for 600 years and hasn't gotten very far because they didn't have warp drive back then. She finds it abandoned- when it shouldn't be- and all its citizens in cryosleep in the hold. There's only one alive (sentient) being on the ship and that's the shipmind called Helen. (Hellen Alloy, which somehow is supposed to read as a pun on Helen of Troy, which has no impact on the story since Helen doesn't turn out to be a/the Trojan horse and also why the fuck would a spacefaring civilization that's had aliens around and various other things going for centuries still remember Helen of Troy unless they were a historian- which Llyn decidedly isn't? There are so many of such historical reference in the novel... I can't even describe how jarring it is to stumble upon these and be like "wtf why does Llyn know about Cromwell and Helen of Troy?") So, the setup is curious, but unfortunately, there's where the story's integrity stops.
3. There are so many things that pissed me off towards the end.
So there are conspiracy theorist rebels who are trying to uncover a devastating secret about "the hospital". The only issue is that the secret is neither very horrible, not even illegal, and the motivations for having/keeping this secret are much, much more reasonable than anything Llyn angst-warbles about in her internal monologues.
The secret is that rich people (how can they even become rich? I thought this society was utopian and had some communism thing going on. This isn't at all explained.) are cloning themselves and downloading their brain (via the aforementioned mind-altering boxes) into the new body. The issues the main character has with this is:
But the clones are peeeeople!
And also: These rich people are so baaaad! They're getting better treatment than anyone else! It's not faaaair!
Oh and: The doctor who set up this scheme is baaaad! This one is the worst. The doctor who set up the scheme was doing it to obtain resources FOR THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE HOSPITAL. Literally the space-spanning intra-species hospitel WOULD NOT EXIST if this doctor had not started the program to let rich people download themselves into cloned bodies! All throughout the book we're told how Llyn looooves the hospital. The hospital is her life and the only thing she believes in. Then she learns The Secret (TM) and decides "this doctor must be punished" and "the cloning and brain transfers must stop"... like what? You realize that this doctor saved the hospital in its infancy and that you'll run out of funding if you actually do stop them?
But no. This is not the kind of logic Bear goes with. Instead it's all about how wrong cloning is and the clones (who're only sleeping in their pods but are "individuals because they dream") are being treated unethically! This isn't really explained or extrapolated on. It's just: "they dream so it's unethical to load them with new brains". There's also a character who was a clone and who woke up and freed herself. That's fine. I liked her. But then the "good guys" fucked with her brain and so she's also a victim.
I don't even really know where to begin picking this apart. Sure, I can get behind the "the clones dream so they are people" but on the other hand the author goes into much detail how all the clones experiences and physical exercise are done by the evil doctors through stimulating their muscles and their brains. So there's no real experience and the clones don't "live". They just dream. Ok. I still think this is valid. The clones dream. They're real people when they wake up. But who's to say the downloaded brain of the old rich person whose clone it isn't wouldn't a) enhance the clone's own experiences and life (such as it is) and b) allow them to actually live? I guess there's some ethics there that I can't unravel.
The huge gaping hole (that bugs me the most) still remains: supposedly Llyn loves the hospital and lives for it. But she still easily decides that the clone doctor is wrong (hello, newsflash, the hospital wouldn't even exist without her!) and that she must be punished (hey, newsflash again, your own fucking ambulance ship will probably be decommissioned/not have any more resources if you reveal the clones and clone doctor and secret). Through this punishment the hospital will suffer/lose funding/perhaps be closed down entirely since basically all the funding (according to the book) for the hospital and all its operations comes from these rich people who want to live forever in their own clones.
This is grossly glossed over in the book and comes to no real resolution. It's just how it is. Llyn doesn't even try to empathize with the doctor who made her whole life as it is and her love of/belief in the hospital possible. Her only thoughts on the matter are: You're wrong and what you're doing is unethical. Thus I will smite you.
??
At least here an angsty passage about what might happen if she reveals the secret would be appropriate (unlike the other 600 times Llyn just goes off topic and warbles about unrelated things to the scenes previously or adjacent).
All right. This section has gone on very long. I guess it shows how annoying it is to have to deal with illogical character decisions and nonsensical plots. Was Bear trying to make a point about AI/clone ethics? I can't say. I would have been along for that ride and I would have loved to get the above argument resolved. Is it okay to make a few clones suffer in order to help thousands of thousands of people of various species (human and alien)- especially if these clones don't have any personal experiences and are basically made for the purpose in as little an invasive procedure as possible? Do the clones even care (unless they are woken prematurely like the one character I mentioned). They didn't get a choice in being made- they don't get a choice in whether they want to be awake or whether they would find it okay to serve as a "new body" for another person either. This is another huge problem with the book and these are questions that need to be answered when you're dealing with sentience (in the form of AI, clones, whatever) and it wrong-footed me that Llyn became a social justice warrior for people who she doesn't know/in a situation where she doesn't know what they want.
The entire book has the same issue with AI. The AI are basically like humans but with more information storage and nothing else. All the aliens are. There is no distinction between their psyches. The only differences are physical (most aliens are either trees or animals slightly changed) and most of them are quite... boring. The mantis-like AI that eats its males after mating? The giant elephant/hippo alien that trumpets and walks around the hospital like "an elephant in a china store"? Their descriptions are uninspired to say the least. Their speech (or: communication to put it more accurately) and their motivations are very human. There is no thought given to what a different species (AI or alien) might think/articulate differently or whether they're thinking in the same way as humans at all. There's nothing to distinguish aliens from humans. The characters could all be human and nothing much would change about the book.
This is getting long.
So to sum up: while the book was overly critical about issues such as gender and race and had plenty of passages browbeating the reader into what the author wants them to think it utterly failed to take into a count diverse minds. The book continuously blabbers on about how we shouldn't assume gender and how the "ancient" humans from the spaceship are wrong because the one guy Llyn speaks to has an emotional outburst (never mind that she has plenty of those on the regular) and because he says "I am not gay" which is taken to be homophobic (I don't see it). He's also "afraid to cry" (like a few masculine stereotypes) even though he comes across as otherwise pleasant. Llyn, a lesbian, still seems to have no problem with him anyway. So is he homophobic (and then I'd expect her to have an actual problem with him) or not? Never mind here that this all starts BEFORE she even meets one of the "ancient" humans (in particular the one guy she does meet) alive/talking. The rest (before the dude is thawed) is just her projecting and complaining about how bad it will be to wake them up because they're all archaic and don't have mind-adjustment boxes in their heads.
I can't really explain how hypocritical the whole books sounds to me. The above is really just an excerpt. The rest contains endless musings about how it is wrong to do x, y, and z and how this is all because humans are so archaic and don't have mind-control boxes. According to Bear, we're apparently all too stupid to get along if we're not brainwashed, so brainwashing is the solution! Yeah, I don't buy it. Especially because all the brainwashed people still act dumbly, wrongly, make terrible decisions with terrible consequences, don't treat each other that nicely, and still suffer under various doubts and angst in their own heads.
Yeah, gonna be a nope from me to install this kind of brain-control-box utopia.
The remainder of my thoughts really circles back to the uninspired aliens. Sure, they look like something in my mind because Bear described them physically a lot, however, they're just like a human wearing a costume, and nothing special. They all have the same goals as humans, they're all very humanoid (in manner, thought, communication, goals), so there was nothing really special there. No mystery, like there sometimes is in Star Wars about various creatures (not that Star Wars is that much better, mind), so for a book that tries very hard to invent a ton of alien species, even explaining some of the science (methane-breathers for example) well, it fell completely flat in the sociology department.
4. Lastly, a small comparison with Ancestral Night, which was published a few years ago in 2019: Ancestral Night was fun. There was some philosophical yapping but not nearly as much as in this book. The main character was a lot more interesting and easy to form a connection with. She was just a spacer doing her thing. Llyn, on the other hand, has very rigid morals (for a supposedly free-thinking character) and agonizes constantly about various bullshitty social issues of 2021/22. Her baseline is: ancient (21st century) humans are bad. Only humans with mind-control boxes are good. It really makes me wonder why she knows so much about "ancient" humans and why she (a very supposedly-liberal) character constantly sees the need to point out to said ancient humans how wrong they are for thinking like they do. So maybe the "ancient" guy mentioned previously is slightly uncomfortable with homosexuals (though nothing in this text actually convinces me he is) but it doesn't reflect poorly on him so much as on Llyn. Llyn treats him differently/thinks poorly of him because she thinks he is archaic/homophobic/"ancient" even before she meets him! He does not treat her any worse/different after he learns she is a lesbian. He remains cordial and in the end saves her life. And was he ever homophobic in the first place just because he told her that he is not gay? (In no way it is even hinted at he sees "being gay" as a bad thing. He just tells her he isn't gay and has a wife. So?) I believe Bear's own vendetta is coming out a bit too much- despite agreeing with the general idea that homophobia isn't desirable. I want to liken the homophobia (as portrayed) a bit with the aliens and especially "ancient" guy's reaction to them. Ancient guy is initially worried/afraid of the giant mantis introduced to him. He gets over it within the course of a scene. So what if he was initially worried about people different to him (homosexuals or otherwise?). He gets over it very quickly (if it was even there in the first place) and acts perfectly fine towards everyone (homosexual, butch girl, and aliens). And I think that's reasonable. If you're not used to something, it can take you a while to get used to it, and yes, this includes different sexualities and different skin colours. It's all in how once you've gotten in contact with new experiences you react to them and behave around them. It's all in whether you're an asshole to someone (for reasons not limited to the aforementioned) or humanity in general or if you are decent even though initially you were worried. (Worry usually comes from fear. It's all about how you deal with that fear.)
I guess this has gone long enough and I've gotten angry enough in the course of writing it that it's turned into a small essay. The last thing (seriously. This is the last) I want to say is that I don't think Bear's intentions are bad. She's made an effort to be inclusive and speak about recent topics. I just don't think she's done any of them justice and some of her views (or her characters' views) are contradicting and hypocritical. That's fine. The book is long. I know from experience of being a writer myself that you can't keep track of every single detail. But then again: maybe she should have cut out all of Llyn's internal rants and the chunk of text minus those 300 pages would have been easier to manage. /shrugs I'm not a doctor, but I'll prescribe Bear a healthy dose of reading Life 3.0 by Max Tegmark and Other Minds by Peter Godfrey-Smith to iron out the issues with her non-human characters.
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