DThoris reviewed Machine by Elizabeth Bear
Review of 'Machine' on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
Amazing follow up to the first book, which was also amazing! Complex themes about personal choices and responsibility in a society. Also, cool scifi stuff. ;)
audio cd
Published Oct. 6, 2020 by Blackstone Pub.
Amazing follow up to the first book, which was also amazing! Complex themes about personal choices and responsibility in a society. Also, cool scifi stuff. ;)
Elizabeth Bear's second White Space novel is, in some ways, better than the first. Once again, the story is told through the eyes of a compelling and complex character. The setting of the novel—a post-scarcity interstellar polity called the Synarche—is once again central to the novel, but the this time the inner workings of the Synarche, the relationship of its various citizens to it, and its flaws are examined in greater detail and from a more internal perspective, which makes the setting more interesting.
The novel suffers from pacing that could be better at times. We get to hear a lot of what the protagonist's thoughts are, but sometimes this feels redundant, with her explaining her already previously stated feelings on the situation multiple times, which does help to establish the stakes and motivations, but past a certain point feels a bit redundant.
Once again, this is an entertaining novel …
Elizabeth Bear's second White Space novel is, in some ways, better than the first. Once again, the story is told through the eyes of a compelling and complex character. The setting of the novel—a post-scarcity interstellar polity called the Synarche—is once again central to the novel, but the this time the inner workings of the Synarche, the relationship of its various citizens to it, and its flaws are examined in greater detail and from a more internal perspective, which makes the setting more interesting.
The novel suffers from pacing that could be better at times. We get to hear a lot of what the protagonist's thoughts are, but sometimes this feels redundant, with her explaining her already previously stated feelings on the situation multiple times, which does help to establish the stakes and motivations, but past a certain point feels a bit redundant.
Once again, this is an entertaining novel akin to the Culture series or Star Trek, in its depiction of a utopian-but-perhaps-flawed spacefaring future, though it is less epic space opera and more character-focused.
Bear continues to impress with her utopian series. It's optimistic without being pollyanna, and we can all use some competency porn. People (of various species) doing their best in the universe - love it.
This book started out so strong with the setup of an interesting mystery on a generation ship floating through space--so much potential for a fun story.
Unfortunately, the author basically throws that setup away and just makes it a tangential part of what felt like a totally slapped together conspiracy story. It turned into a slog, and the plot became really unbelievable and borderline incoherent.
The author herself even says it in the afterword there were "seemingly infinite revisions it took to get the (hopefully entertainingly) Rube Goldbergian plot of this book to hang together correctly". Unfortunately, I'd disagree with her--the plot of this book does not hang together at all, and "Rube Goldbergian" is not a desirable trait for a novel.