SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Edges (Inverted Frontier 1) by Linda Nagata

Advance SciFi Book Review: Edges (Inverted Frontier #1) by Linda Nagata: https://t.co/rR3fu8cYXH Short Review: 8 out of 10 (1/3)

— garik16 (@garik16) February 22, 2019

Short Review (cont): High-Concept Space Opera novel featuring nanotech, virtual reality ghosts, avatars, sentient/murderous spaceships and more doesn't feature stand out characters, but all the ideas really work together to form a really satisfying and interesting work (2/3)

— garik16 (@garik16) February 22, 2019

Full Disclosure:  This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the novel's release on April 2, 2019 in exchange for a potential review.  I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way (if I'd not liked the book, I just would not have reviewed it). 

Edges is the first in a new Sci-Fi Series* - the Inverted Frontier - by author Linda Nagata.  I've read Nagata's "The Red" trilogy, which was a fun and interesting MilSci trilogy that I enjoyed but didn't quite love, and her short story from last year which I ranked #2 on my Hugo list (The Martian Obelisk).  So when I saw this book pop up on Netgalley, I was interested to see how much I'd enjoy her work when it's not in a genre I have a history of not particularly caring for (MilSci)

*Note: Edges is the first in a new trilogy/series which takes place in the same universe as Linda Nagata's "The Nanotech Succession" universe, and judging from the book summaries on Amazon, several characters and parts of this setting were first introduced in those books.  However, I haven't read any of those prior books and had no problem following along with this story, so there's no need to go read those earlier books to enjoy Edges, though I may go back and try to track those novels down anyhow.

Edges is a high-concept SciFi novel, and it works particularly well after perhaps a rough start.  Like some other books (Yoon Ha Lee's Machineries of Empire trilogy comes to mind), Edges shows no interest in holding the readers hand as it introduces SF concepts without much explanation whatsoever (although it's possible explanations are in prior works of this universe), and the result is that it's kind of an awkward read for its first 20%.  But the result in the end is really well done and definitely different from what I'm used to, so I look forward to seeing how this series plays out.

-------------------------------------------------Plot Summary----------------------------------------------------
Humanity has spent the last few centuries hiding out in a planetary system known as the Deception Well, where ancient alien technology has kept humanity protected from the Chenzeme - alien spaceships that travel the stars with a mission of genocide of all intelligent life they come across.  The remnants in the Deception Well have no idea if any other humans are still alive out there in the galaxy, and the remnants of the systems near Earth, once known to contain megastructures such as Dyson Spheres, are now simply known as the mysterious "Hallowed Vasties."

But when one of the Founders of the Deception Well colony, a man named Urban, returns having commandeered a Chenzeme Ship, he expresses a desire to return to explore what is left in the Hallowed Vasties, if anything at all....and the interest he finds in the journey is far greater than he anticipated.  And so a crew of humans, in the forms of physical avatars filled with nanotech or virtual reality ghosts, join together on the ship "Dragon" to explore, but the journey is far from simple.  For the Chemzeme ship is far from completely under control and still seeks to purge anything of human origin from its insides...and over 60 such individuals are now present in some form aboard.

And out there deep in space is the remnant of another civilization, a being long lost in space, but technologically capable enough to deal with the Chenzeme, and its own agenda it wishes to enforce.  A being that will seek to take advantage of Dragon's journey to the Hallowed Vasties, no matter the cost to the remnants of humanity contained within.....
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My favorite books in general tend to be books built upon strong characters, with me favoring character work above descriptions and technological overload, and Edges is not that type of book.  It has some pretty decent characters, mainly with its lead duo of Urban and Clemantine, but the book is very much more about seeing how characters in general react in these Sci-Fi situations, with the book throwing a lot of sci-fi ideas out there (some of these, in addition to some of the characters, may have been present in the prior works in this universe I haven't read).

So as background, this is a world in which humans can exist in multiple forms - as "Avatars," physical beings made up of nanomachines that function for various purposes - or as "Ghosts," non-physical forms in virtual reality - or in sleep/archive, where a being's mind is stored for later restoration as a ghost or avatar.  Moreover, by creating a new ghost or avatar, a human can split their identity by having multiple existences at once undergoing different experiences and memories, with the existences later being able to merge their memories so that they each have experienced the same events (or so that after one existence is terminated, another will know everything it did).

Other concepts that form core parts of the plot are the idea of the Chenzeme ships being made up of "philosopher cells," which seek to eliminate anything non-Chenzeme, and how Urban and Clemantine have to try and enforce their wills upon it.  Then there are the "Apparatchniks," the Ghost copies of Urban which he's altered to have specialized roles (like "engineer"), who the characters have to interact with as they try and troubleshoot the problems involved.

All of these concepts come together to form the plot of this story, which is basically our characters using and manipulating all of these concepts to try and solve the issues faced by the journey to the Hallowed Vasties, a journey that now includes far more humans than expected on board a ship that well...wants to kill all the humans on board.  Every now and then we see glimpses of an unknown entity that eventually interacts with our crew and causes new problems, as it has its own agenda that isn't necessarily friendly, requiring even more quick thinking and manipulation of these concepts in order to save the crew.  The results are really interesting and well done, with ethical concepts of the technologies, unintended implications, and other ideas examined quite well by the text as things go on, making this book rather easy to read despite all of the ideas involved.

The book has a few issues mind you.  Like I said above the jump, the first 10-15 % of the book introduces these concepts with little explanation or character work, resulting in the book reading kind of awkwardly and stunted at the start, but if you can power through that the book gains momentum and becomes rather interesting.  The book also has occasional chapters from the antagonist's point of view in the Second Person, which feel a little awkward, especially in the first 1/3 of the book where the antagonist is far far away from the action.  And while there are 3-4 characters with decently interesting personalities, the book kind of doesn't bother to go into the backgrounds of anyone (some of this may be due to the prior books in this universe, but not all of it) resulting in the characters, especially some of the minor ones who become more present in the final act, feeling more like skeletons than anything else.  I didn't really care too much about any specific character in general, but I did manage to care about the crew as a whole, which was enough to make the plot work.  And the ending ends on a pretty major cliffhanger but resolves at least the major plot arc that is kicked off by this book, so it is rather satisfying.

All said, definitely worth a read if you're interested in high-concept SciFi - despite not being the type of character-driven work I kind of prefer, I'll definitely be going forward with this series when the next books come out.