Shannon C.’s review of Dust by Elizabeth Bear
Science fiction novel released by Spectra 26 Dec 07
Sybil asked the duckies if any of us had read Elizabeth Bear a few weeks ago, and I decided that I should dig out the one Bear book I had TBR. Apparently, Ms. Bear has won all kinds of awards, and I know she is hyped all over the place. But that doesn’t always mean much.
Unfortunately, Dust didn’t work for me and didn’t live up to the hype. I enjoyed it while I was reading it, but it’s the kind of book that I plowed through just so that I could say I finished.
It’s a bit hard to describe the plot. Our characters are floating around in a generation ship, which is a huge ship sent out to explore and colonize other planets. only the ship has been badly damaged, and it’s been orbiting some stars that are about to go supernova. The story focuses on Rien, who starts out as a servant and comes to embrace her destiny, Perceval, her half-sister and an engineer, and Jacob Dust, part of the ship’s original AI. There are lots of other characters around their periphery, but those are the main three.
What I did like was the vivid description of the setting. I will probably never get to travel through space on a massive, crumbling spaceship, but I definitely got a sense of what that would be like through the writing. The prose is also quite vivid, although too often it drifts into the purple territory.
The characters, unfortunately, don’t stand up well. I got a distinct sense of who they were, but I didn’t ever connect with any of them. Also, there’s this weird incestuous thing that several of them have going on, which was all the more squicky, at least to me, because nobody particularly thought it was a big deal. There was also a lot of intrigue going on, which can sometimes work well, but in this case confused rather than, well, intrigued. And because of that disconnect, and the author’s tendency toward a bit of pretentious literary styling, I just didn’t get the suspense.
I’m not willing to write off Ms. Bear completely. I’m going to try one of her other books first, but this one is probably safe to give a miss.
Grade: C-
Summary:
On a broken ship orbiting a doomed sun, dwellers have grown complacent with their aging metal world. But when a serving girl frees a captive noblewoman, the old order is about to change…Ariane, Princess of the House of Rule, was known to be fiercely cold-blooded. But severing an angel’s wings on the battlefield-even after she surrendered-proved her completely without honor. Captive, the angel Perceval waits for Ariane not only to finish her off-but to devour her very memories and mind. Surely her gruesome death will cause war between the houses-exactly as Ariane desires. But Ariane’s plan may yet be opposed, for Perceval recognizes the young servant charged with her care at once.
Rien is the lost child: her sister. Soon, they will escape, hoping to stop the impending war and save both their houses. But it is a perilous journey through the crumbling hulk of a dying ship, and they do not pass unnoticed. Because at the hub of their turning world waits Jacob Dust, all that remains of God, following the vapor wisp of the angel. And he knows they will meet very soon.
Read an excerpt here
