Thursday, November 1, 2018

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Lockstep by Karl Schroeder




Lockstep is a SciFi novel by Karl Schroeder which was first released in 2014.  It came to my attention recently when I picked up Schroeder's 2018 novella, "The Million" (Review Here), which I liked a good bit and takes place in the same universe (obviously, since the Novel came first, no knowledge of the novella is needed to enjoy this book).  So I'd had Lockstep requested from intra-library loan for a while.

And it's an enjoyable thriller, using an interesting SciFi plot concept (which is shared by The Million to a certain extent) to create a really interesting thriller based upon the mechanics of that world.  None of the characters are amazing, but they work well enough within this world to make everything work well, and the plot is resolved in a rather interesting way at the end.  I didn't enjoy it as much as The Million (which has stronger characters honestly and is tighter in execution), but it's still a fairly solid thriller for anyone who's looking for a SF thriller to pick up.

 
-------------------------------------------------Plot Summary-------------------------------------------------------
Toby McGonigal's family left Earth and the known human settlements, ruled by the Rich Trillionaires, in order to setup a new and better world on an outer planet seemingly outside of humanity's reach for colonization.  But on a mission to claim a moon of that world, Toby's ship was lost in space, with Toby stuck in hibernation.

When he's found and awoken he discovers 14,000 years have passed, the universe has changed in ways he could never have imagined.  Humanity throughout the galaxy have decided to spend most of their time in life in hibernation, with much of the galaxy living one month awake for every 30 years asleep - in a system known as The Lockstep.  And even stranger, Toby's brother and sister are still alive....and have become tyrants ruling the most popular Lockstep....and have made Toby out to be a messiah in their religion.

Now that Toby has re-emerged, his brother seems to have ordered Toby's death, and individuals both allied with him and against him wish to use Toby for their own schemes.....but Toby finds himself unwilling to go along with others' schemes.  Still, if Toby can't find someone to trust, he'll find it impossible to survive as he tries to unravel the mystery of what happened to his family while he was asleep....
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Like The Million, The Lockstep gets great mileage out of the book's central mechanic: the titular Lockstep, where most of humanity hibernates for years on end and only stay awake for short periods on each planet, with bots taking care of the worlds during hibernation.  The result is that colonized worlds are able to replenish their resources easily enough to allow human life even on difficult planets, and worlds in the same Lockstep (the same cycle of months awake/asleep) are able to support trade with one another, as travelers between the worlds hibernate during travel only to awake at the same time as their destination worlds, with no time appearing to pass between these periods.

Schroeder gets a lot more out of the concept than just that, which makes what sounds on its surface to be a silly concept into a plausible one.  For what happens when people travel between different locksteps, where people are essentially aging at different rates?  Are those people the same between them?  It's a really interesting use of the idea and this book uses it to make this not just an interesting thriller, but sometimes a heart-wrenching one as well.

Lockstep's characters are a bit less interesting than its world, though they're not bad.  Toby is kind of annoying at first as he seems like a whiny brat unwilling to trust people he obviously should in a world he knows little about - but he gets better as the book goes on and builds into a really interesting character as he tries to shirk the messiah role that others try to force on him and to solve the conflict through means of guile (and more use of the Lockstep mechanics) rather than violence.  His second half self is really fun to read as he tries to solve everything.  The other main group of characters are solid if unspectacular, fitting some classic archetypes decently (we have the love interest affected by the Lockstep, the tech guy, and the death seeking person wanting vengeance, Lockstep style), with those archetypes affected by the Lockstep in different ways.

The antagonists are less good.  The person portrayed as the main antagonist (Peter)doesn't show up after the prologue til near the very end and his motivations are fine, but he's not very convincing, and the other main antagonist (Evayne) is a little cartoonish.  And one potentially interesting side character is introduced early, made to seem like she should be important and then never appears again after the midway point of the book.

Overall though, Lockstep is a rather interesting book that's worth your time due to Schroeder's use of the central idea and worth reading if you want an interesting SciFi thriller.  I'd read another book in this world (or a sequel to The Million of course)
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