Monday, April 15, 2019

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Ancestral Night by Elizabeth Bear




Ancestral Night is a stand-alone novel that's also the first in a new space opera trilogy* written by the prolific SF/F author Elizabeth Bear.  My experience with Bear has been mixed - I enjoyed her lesbian steampunk noir adventure Karen Memory (and really enjoyed its sequel novella "Stone Mad") but could not finish her epic fantasy The Stone in the Skull.  So I had no idea what really to expect from Ancestral Night, but it had some good reviews so I figured I'd give it a try.

*Apparently this is in the same universe as one of Bear's earlier trilogies, centuries later, but if it is, I missed any references to the earlier trilogy, which I have not read.

 And I'm really happy I did - Ancestral Night is a really strong Space Opera story with a really well done central idea: in a galaxy where a person - and others - can control their own emotional and hormonal reactions via altering their own (or others') biochemistry, what really constitutes one's own "self"?  And what really constitutes freedom? The book builds a really strong lead character around this concept as well as a pretty solid and oft-unpredictable space opera story, and is well recommended as a result.


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Halmey Dz and her partners - her good friend and pilot Connla and her ship's AI, Singer - are salvage operators lawfully operating under the multi-species government known as the Synarche.  To justify their continued operations, the crew needs to come up with a major salvage find, and so they set off into uncontrolled space without registering a flight plan to examine a found-object caught between White Space (essentially hyperspace) and normal space.  If they fail to bring back something of much value, it could be the end of their salvage operations, and Halmey - who had a disastrous childhood and has Singer control her own emotions by making alterations to her biochemistry in real time - doesn't know what she'd really do with herself if things fall apart.

But what Halmey and her friends discovers on this find is not what she could have expected: a dangerous secret and a powerful alien technology that grafts itself onto her own body.  This technology will lead Halmey and her friends on a trip across the galaxy to discover secrets of incredibly advanced aliens, secrets which possess the possibility of changing the world.

But they're not the only ones after the technology: coming after them are Pirates, people who reject both the Synarche and any use of biochemical control to alter one's own mind, and who seek nothing but absolute freedom - and who seek the technology for their own dangerous ends.  Halmey's past once resulted in her crossing paths with the Pirates, and the result was something she has desperately tried to bury....but as she and her friends try to figure out the mystery of the alien technology, she'll be forced to remember once again.  And as Halmey crosses paths with the Pirates once more, she'll have to decide who she really is herself and what she wants, because her old life may not be around much longer.....
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Ancestral Night is, like more than a few books I've read recently, a science fiction book that doesn't try to hand-hold its readers as it introduces new ideas and concepts into the narrative.  Concepts relevant to the backstory or mechanics of this world are introduced without explanation at the time, with the reader trusted to either figure it out or to be patient and wait for further elaboration as the book goes on.  But Bear makes this work, and I never really felt lost or that confused about what was going on (this isn't quite Ninefox Gambit), and the result is a setting that is really well done, which serves as a strong backdrop for both the galactic and personal stakes at the heart of this novel.

And it's really personal stakes that are at the heart of this novel, as so much of this story is a question of self and freedom for its main character, Halmey.  I say this a lot in these reviews it seems, but Halmey is a really interesting character - which is good because the entire story revolves around her and her first person narration.   Halmey is both antisocial and reliant upon the few friends she's made.  She's even more reliant upon her Fox, the implant she has that lets her not only receive communications in her head, but to adjust her own biochemistry - for example, for reasons that become apparently clear later in the story, Halmey has turned off her hermones to prevent her from getting sexual attractions.  She's even surrendered moment to moment control of her Fox to her AI, Singer, trusting the AI to reduce her stress levels when appropriate and to make her best able to react to certain situations.  And it's into this status quo that an alien element is introduced into her body, altering her own sense of control, and as events progress she is pushed more and more out of her comfort zone, leading to the real question for her at the heart of this novel:  if so much of her reactions are regulated by chemicals, often not in her own control, who really is Halmey herself?  Is her default reaction - the reaction to try and chip in support towards the greater good, really her own?  Or is it something someone else has put in her, and if so, who is she?

Despite this story being very much Halmey's story, the other characters are really well done as well. AI Singer has some really interesting views on freedom, debt and obligations toward the greater good and best friend and pilot Connla is a great counterpart to Halmey, far more social with strangers but just as needy of his companions, with the habit of turning off his own conscience via his Fox in order to be willing to take psychopathic risks without worry causing him to screw up, a rather interesting concept the book explores rather well.  And then there's the praying-mantis-alien cop and the pirate antagonist, both of whom are rather well done and fresh in their roles in the story.

The overall plot, as you should've figured out by now, is excellently done, with the more personal plot of self discovery (more literally here than in most books) being the core of the book but the overall space opera plot also being done well and never feeling like an afterthought.  Bear does a great job with action scenes, and the themes of the book are generally well developed.  A few twists are predictable but most aren't but they all make sense, and the ending is rather satisfying - this is apparently the first in a new series (in an old universe) but the story is entirely stand-alone.

It's not a perfect book - the alien entity Halmey contracts feels like a deus ex machina at times and the one theme the book doesn't really explore is notable in that it's pretty interesting (the merits of the way the "government" controls its populace vs the freedom of the Pirates), but even that theme is still explored a little and it overall works quite well.  I tore through this book even though it wasn't short in 48 hours, and I did not regret it.


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