Tuesday, May 21, 2019

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling




The Luminous Dead is the debut novel from author Caitlin Starling, and it's a book that's tricky to describe.  The tags on Amazon promote it as almost a combination between Annihilation, Gravity, and The Martian, and while it kind of has the existential/psychological horror aspects of Annihilation and the limited characters of the latter two works, the comparison doesn't work.  It IS a claustrophobic scifi story featuring a character struggling to survive in an alien setting that threatens to kill her at any wrong step, but its lead character and center conflict is very different from the above three works, which really breaks the comparison.

That's not to say that The Luminous Dead is not as good as those works, because it definitely is up there.  It's a story that features only two characters, but both are incredibly strong, and the interplay between them is really well done.  Moreover, the atmosphere of the story kept me always tense and on-edge and in combination with the characters made me want to keep reading to the point where I finished this book in around 24 hours - and it's not a short book.  I.....have some questions about whether I am okay with the ending, but I think that'll be depend upon the read, and it is a satisfying resolution overall in terms of wrapping up the story.  In short, The Luminous Dead is definitely worth your time.


-----------------------------------------------Plot Summary-------------------------------------------------------
For Gyre, this Caving Expedition job represents her key to getting offplanet - the pay from the job being so high that it will allow her to pay for travel and to help her find her lost mother.  Gyre knows she has the skills necessary for the job, despite having never professionally caved before....as long as her forged qualifications aren't discovered by her employers.  All she needs to do is explore deeper into a cave system than she ever has before, get whatever her employer wants, and after all, she should have a team of professionals monitoring her customized suit that feeds, relieves, and manages all her necessities - and can even inject her with medication/drugs in a pinch.

But it soon becomes apparent that Gyre's assumptions for this job are way off.  For it seems Gyre doesn't have a team behind her, just a woman named "Em," who claims to also be the one who hired her for this job....and to know about Gyre's deceptions.  And Em seems to have no issue doing whatever it takes to move Gyre towards Em's mysterious goal - whether that be secretly drugging Gyre with various drugs to make her go forward or repeatedly lying about the truth behind this job.  Instead of a dependable team to keep Gyre safe, it soon becomes apparent that all she has is a woman that Gyre cannot possibly trust...and with all of the power over Gyre's suit.

And that's before Gyre discovers the first dead body in the cave, the remains of a prior Caver hired by Em.  Or before Gyre begins to see signs that someone might still be alive down here....

Em is clearly unbalanced, and Gyre soon becomes determined to be the last person whose life Em has the potential to destroy, by completing this deadly and crazy job, filled with atmospheric dangers, as well as the alien tunnelers that threaten to destroy anyone and anything in their past.  But as Gyre goes deeper and deeper, and faces more and more danger, she begins to see more and more parallels between herself and Em....and to maybe feel something for this clearly broken woman.  But can Gyre complete this job without becoming broken herself....assuming she manages to survive at all?
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The Luminous Dead is told entirely from Gyre's third person perspective, which means that what we read of the setting is entirely based upon what Gyre sees....and what she thinks she sees.  And with the only other actual character in this book - Em - being clearly unreliable from the start.....the book essentially keeps the reader guessing about what really is happening in the cave with Gyre, as the stress of the solitude and claustrophobia of the cave, to say nothing of the dangerous situations Gyre gets herself into, causes Gyre to herself doubt what she's experiencing.  This is Gyre's story and we are just as in the dark about it as Gyre herself.

And Gyre is an incredibly strong character - one who changes quite a bit throughout the story (I'm using the word "change" instead of the word "grow" deliberately here).  When she starts this story, she's a brave, daring woman who prefers narrow claustrophobic spaces to open ones, who fears discovery more than actual dangers, and lack of control more than anything else.  The weeks in the caves in this book change her, but in ways that are very believable, and her feelings towards Em are very very believable as she deals with this woman who is her sole "companion" for the entire time and yet is absolutely someone she cannot trust.  And of course, the toll everything takes on her sanity is really well done, and her determination and how it wavers from time to time (combined with some of her inventiveness) makes her easy to root for.

The other character, Em is......interesting.  Em is quite clearly messed up, even from early on, and it becomes apparent fairly quickly that something in her past has broken her, causing her to do some pretty horrible acts (Spoilers below).  And yet the book does a fantastic job making her actions at least somewhat understandable and in demonstrating how she could feel a connection to Gyre.  Unlike Gyre, we never get to see directly what Em is thinking, and her words are by their very nature unreliable, but the picture we get is a really interesting puzzle, which the reader and Gyre has to figure out as events go on.

The book's third "character" really is the cave itself, which contains a serious of six camps separated by dangerous obstacles, which threaten death to a caver who makes even one misstep.  Gyre's suit itself requires occasional battery replacements and food fill-ups which can be found only in caches located at each camp, meaning that if something causes her to take longer than expected in-between camps, she could die from her suit/body giving out on its own as well.  And then there's the Tunnelers, the alien creatures that tunnel through rock unexpectedly and can destroy the passages and anyone in them at a whim.  The book does an utterly fantastic job in making this setting itself a character - it feels utterly alive and deadly and a true antagonist for Gyre to try and deal with, with its features never growing stale even at times when Gyre is forced to double back.  The result is that this setting provides all that is needed for the conflict in this book, from beginning to conclusion, and it works incredibly well.

Still while the plot is fantastic and kept me on edge throughout, and I really enjoyed the characters, and the ending is satisfying.....I have some issues with it, as to be non-spoilerific, I kind of wanted something very different for one of the characters based upon the actions within.  Spoilers below, and I'm not sure it's something I really dislike about the book....but it bothered me in the end.

Spoilers in ROT13:  Tler vf gur 36gu crefba gb nggrzcg guvf wbo sbe Rz, jvgu gur wbo'f tbny ernyyl orvat fbyryl gb trg fbzrbar gb gur erznvaf bs Rz'f sngure naq uvf sevraqf (naq cbffvoyl ure zbgure, jub qvfnccrnerq cbffvoyl onpx vagb gur pnir nsgre fur jnf gur bayl fheivibe), qrrc vagb gur pnir flfgrz.  Gjragl Frira bs gur bgure Guvegl Svir pniref gb nggrzcg gur wbo unir QVRQ va gur nggrzcg, nyy whfg gb fbbgur Rz'f tevrs, naq Tler orpbzrf qrgrezvarq jura fur svefg ernyvmrf guvf gb or gur YNFG bar gb gnxr guvf zvffvba, ab znggre jung: svefg ol gelvat gb pbzcyrgr gur wbo, yngre jura gung frrzf vzcbffvoyr, gb qryvorengryl fnobgntr n pnpur fb gung Rz xabjf vg pna'g or qbar ntnva.

N znwbe fhocybg bs gur obbx vf ubj oebxra Tler naq Rz obgu ner naq ubj Tler, juvyr gelvat abg gb snyy gb Rz'f zragny yriry ol gur raq, vf nggrzcgvat gb trg Rz gb zbir gur shpx ba.  Naq jryy, gur raqvat bs gur obbx frrf gung unccra, jvgu gur gjb svanyyl havgrq va gur syrfu, naq n gnkrq naq sberire-punatrq (abg ernyyl sbe gur orggre) Tler nfxvat Rz gb pbzr jvgu Tler nf Tler pbasebagf gur zbgure jub nonaqbarq ure.

Naq gung'f zl vffhr urer - Rz onfvpnyyl tbg gjragl frira crbcyr XVYYRQ jvgu ure npgvbaf, naq Tler vf sberire tbvat gb ng yrnfg or cnegvnyyl hanoyr gb rfpncr gur pnir va ure bja zvaq.  Naq lrg....Rz jvaqf hc orggre bss?  Vg'f n yriry bs xnezn ubhqvav-vfz, gb hfr n gigebcrf gebcr anzr, gung whfg xvaq bs obguref zr....Rz'f npgvbaf va tevrs ner haqrefgnaqnoyr ohg vg qbrfa'g erqrrz ure gb unir ure zbir cnfg gurz, naq vg whfg srryf jebat sbe ure gb trg bss jvgubhg nal pbafrdhraprf.  Rz vf rffragvnyyl gur evpu fcbvyrq tvey jub va ure tevrs xvyyrq crbcyr jub jrer zber qbja ba gurve yhpx ol cenlvat ba gurve arrq sbe zbarl, naq gur obbx yrnirf ure fgvyy va gung cbjre, rira vs fur'f abg tbvat gb fgvyy or qbvat gung shegure.  Fur qbrfa'g QRFREIR n unccl raqvat.  Fur trgf bar.

Anyhow, I definitely recommend The Luminous Dead, and if you do read it, I'm curious how you react to that ending spoiler I have above...would love to talk about it.
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