![]() This is another example of how Chambers lets her broad knowledge of biology inform her writing and reminds us that biologically remarkable people don’t have to be aliens from space. The “enhanced” have made all sorts of changes to her DNA, including enhancing her immune system, so hairlessness could easily be one of those intentional changes instead. Alopecia, a hair loss condition, may be connected with Turner syndrome, and may be the cause of Jane’s hairlessness, but it’s not stated explicitly. Jane herself has Turner syndrome, as we learn in a scene where she analyzes her DNA with the ship’s onboard computer and learns that she has only one chromosome. In typical utopian sci-fi fashion, amazing future technology fixes her up in the end to make sure she gets the happy ending she deserves. A wise survivor once told me “the body keeps score.” But don’t worry. Lingering physical evidence of what she survived matches my understanding of how trauma works. I suppose I shouldn’t say I “enjoyed” hearing about the effects of Jane’s severe malnutrition, but the unhealing sores and the swollen belly are immersive touches, all remarked on in a matter-of-fact tough-girl voice. When I got back to it, moody teenage Jane and severely malnutritioned young adult Jane dropped the simple English since Jane’s own ability with language has improved, and it made for a much more pleasant read. This continues for several chapters, and it’s all written in something like simple English. Then Jane learns what an animal is, then what a plant is, then what rain is, then what death is, and so on. Then Jane learns what the sky is and escapes. These are the sort of details that get Chambers’ books reviews like “feels like a warm hug.” Frequent references to the joy of sleeping next to other people and the quiet comfort of touch resonate with me in that same way that the affection aboard the Wayfarer did in book 1. The next thing that stuck with me was Chambers’s characteristic evocative depictions of platonic affection, which run strong in Jane’s early chapters. Not a subtle one, but well written enough not to be distracting, either. Jane’s suffering and hate for the apathetic ignorance of the glitter cities offer a critique of the unequal distribution of wealth in the real world. We never meet anyone on the planet outside the garbage dump that Jane seeks to escape, but frequent references are made to the glittering cities whose lifestyles a legion of clones lives and dies on a garbage island to support. Thematically, the Jane chapters evoke the desperation of poverty and social marginalization and by extension the guilt of privilege. Eating raw algae from a fuel pump sets our expectation of Jane’s station in life that Chambers calls back to later to show how far she’s come. For a clue about why Chambers included this algae-sucking scene, we can leap to the end of the book where Jane samples a spaceship pantry-full of alien spices and thinks back to it. It’s strange how we respond to things as readers. Somehow grosser than all the corpses hanging from rafters with their intestines hanging out that I read about in George R. Jane’s earliest memory is sucking algae slime from beneath her fingernails. ![]() Finally I’ll close with the radical ideas that arise from an analysis of the Aandrisk and Aeluon approaches to childrearing. Next week I’ll cover my favorite Chambers character thus far, Sidra, the android who identifies as an interstellar spacecraft. There’s so much to discuss in this book that I’ve split my comments over three blog entries. As if to make up for the purported lack of plot in Book 1, in her sequel, Chambers writes two. Together, Pepper and Lovey will discover that, huge as the galaxy may be, it's anything but empty.After her breakout hit The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet Becky Chambers’ second book, A Closed and Common Orbit reads a little bit more like a conventional story. Because Pepper knows a thing or two about starting over. ![]() Pepper, one of the engineers who risked life and limb to reinstall Lovelace, is determined to help her adjust to her new world. When she wakes up in an new body, following a total system shut-down and reboot, she has to start over in a synthetic body, in a world where her kind are illegal. ![]() Lovelace was once merely a ship's artificial intelligence. 'Chambers is simply an exceptional talent' Tor.com The stand-alone sequel to the award-winning The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet. SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2017 HUGO AWARD AND THE ARTHUR C CLARKE AWARD. ![]()
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