This book is a study in misery. I loved it.
The first part of the book takes place in Shadrapar, the last city on Earth. It’s millions of years in the future and the sun is bloated; dying, perhaps.
There is a recurring theme throughout the book of lost technology and information. There are a lot of archaeologists and scavengers and small factions of people who have knowledge that no one else has. There is also blatant corruption and devious political intrigue happening in the background. The culture of Shadrapar could be described as dystopian, but it’s so far in the future that things are almost unrecognizable (and wonderfully original in vibes). The one thing that is abundantly recognizable is the selfish human nature on all sides.
The second part of the book takes place on the prison barge that trawls the water between the city of Shadrapar and their destination, a prison island. The main character has been condemned to suffer. Just in traveling through the swamp and seeing the bizarre creatures that attack them, a lot is revealed about the planet.
Essentially, the planet is going through another phase of accelerated evolution, like the Cambrian Explosion. They theorize that the planet is trying all sorts of things to adapt to Earth’s changing conditions. Life is growing really fast and they encounter all kinds of unknown and dangerous things in the swamp, both in this section of the book, and again later. Not only are there all kinds of wonderfully horrifying monsters, but there are several species with varying degrees of sentience.
In addition, there are different human factions that are creating artificial humans of different kinds, and so between those and the sentient monsters there is a lot of interesting shades of intelligence and self-awareness, which gets really interesting.
The next part of the book, taking up the most pages, takes place on The Island, which is a floating prison in a swamp-jungle with no solid walls—just cane bars everywhere. No one has any privacy and monsters from the water come to prey on the prisoners in the lower levels. The prison exists to mine minerals from the water. The Island is floating, sustained by four huge pumps. There is a filtration system to remove living stuff from the water, and that stuff is made into a stew that is all the prisoners have to eat. The prisoners are also subject to the capricious whims of the Marshall, whose true name is never discovered, and who enjoys killing people for the sake of perceived order.
A bunch of people die every time you turn a page in this book. It’s a killfest. The prison culture has a complete disregard for the value of human life.
The book is largely about surviving prison, and all the brutalities of that. But there is also so much more. There is a whole part about developing psychic powers, there’s this last book of a famous evolutionist scholar who was imprisoned at the end of his life (the main character is set to the task of translating it), there is an underworld with an alternative government system, there’s SO MANY fascinating things in this book.
And most importantly, there is a veritable host of interesting characters, some of which seem to represent different aspects of humanity in an almost elemental way, but others of which are complex and nuanced.
This is a great book in so many ways. I realize not everyone enjoys reading about so much misery, but I do. Well, I mostly do. There was one catch for me. As it got to the end I developed a feeling that this book’s outlook on humanity was increasingly pessimistic. As if there isn’t anything good about humanity. Humans only do allegedly good things out of actually selfish reasons. Humanity has just screwed up and not done anything right. And humanity is just all dying; everyone’s going to die.
So the question formed in me, is this book’s tone meant to be just depressing and hopeless?
The answer to that is complex. On the one hand, everyone dying kind of makes sense with the theme, because after all, this is the story of the end of humanity, and the end of the world. It fits with the setting.
On the other hand, what about the fact that humans seem incapable of having any actual love and compassion for each other? As I thought carefully, I realized that might not be completely the case. There are some instances where you could argue either way. But I can’t think of a single instance where the author makes clear that someone did something truly altruistically. Or at least, where considerable doubt isn’t cast on them.
I whole-heartedly reject pessimism. I’ve experienced my fair share of selfish people doing evil things. But I’ve also gained some perspective of why people do evil things when they themselves don’t want to be evil. And I’ve also experienced a lot of people doing truly altruistic things when they “shouldn’t” have from a psychological perspective. Humanity has all the most beautiful things inside them as well, not just all the most ugly things.
But you could say, does this story have an element of the truth by representing humanity’s ugliness? Sure, an element. I just don’t think it’s very balanced. So that’s why I can’t really give this a perfect rating. It just doesn’t give me hope and seems to be lacking in some relational ways. Out of this entire host of characters, not one person really loves anyone? Ugh. It is mostly set in a prison, so there’s that.
But essentially, while I loved the world, the ideas, the variety of characters, the high kill count, and the prose in general, it’s the tone that didn’t land for me.
All the same, this is still a great book worth reading, so long as you can handle all the misery without it depressing you. It does have worlds of things to say about what is really human, the relationship between man and nature, and ideas about the end of the world. It is vast and varied in its exploration of its worldbuilding and despite its length I found it very engaging.
This is probably a book I will be rereading; it’s written well. I’m very grateful to the Tchaikovsky for having written it. He’s rapidly becoming one of my favorite authors.
