Tuesday, March 24, 2020

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: A Song for a New Day by Sarah Pinsker




A Song for a New Day is a near future dystopian (sort-of) SciFi novel by author Sarah Pinsker, a multiple time Nebula (including one win) and Hugo Award nominee for her short fiction.  It's also her first novel and managed to also snag a Nebula Nomination for best novel.  The ostensible subject of this book - the fight over the restoration of live music instead of just listening to prerecorded works - wasn't of major interest to me so I skipped it at first, but with the Nebula nom, I picked it up to see how it would work.

And what I found was a book about more than just music, and one that is really interesting and well done and worthy of the nomination.  While its major topic in general is about music, the book portrays a world in which America has responded to terror/plague with laws banning congregating in groups for any reason, which extends the theme beyond just entertainment/music to the very topic of safety vs freedom, to go along with corporate greed/individualism.  And given the coronavirus epidemic and panic, the setting of this story is very believable, to go along with its very real and well done characters.

More after the Jump:


-------------------------------------------------Plot Summary----------------------------------------------------
Luce Cannon was about to be a rock star, with one of her songs taking off and becoming a hit.  And then it happened, as Luce was about to play a concert, massive terrorist attacks/threats hit the United States.  When those attacks were followed by the spread of deadly diseases across the country, everything shut down, with no one really willing to congregate-en-mass anymore, for fear of further attacks/dangers.  Luce's last concert wound up being the last one in public history, before the country banned all mass gatherings, so that physical concerts and performances were a thing of the past.

Rosemary Laws was born a few years Before it all happened, and has grown up in the After times.  She works from home for a massive corporation using a VR system known as Hoodspace, helping customers with their drone deliveries, never seeing anyone physically but her parents.  Yet when she sees a virtual concert through her job, she begins to wonder if there was something more, and soon finds a job for a company that hires music artists to make digital performances to send out to the world.

Unfortunately for Rosemary, that job requires her to actually go out into the world for the first time of her life and to find new musical talent - something that seems impossible.  Rosemary's search will lead her to underground music clubs and Luce, and the realization that the safe world she's grown up in may not be all there is - and that something big may have been lost in the process.

In order to try and make things better, Rosemary and Luce will need to step further out of their comfort zones, to see if there's anything they can do to bring the world back to the soul of music - and the soul of music back to the world....
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A Song for a New Day is built off of its two leads: Luce and Rosemary, who are very different people.  Luce's story is written in first person whereas Rosemary's is in third, but that's honestly not much of a big deal - since we still get Rosemary's internal thoughts, it's hardly noticeable.  What is a big deal is how their backgrounds reflect their views on this near future: Luce knows what was had in the past, and had a childhood where she already once fled from a status quo that wasn't her, so she's unable to simply accept the changes and not try to challenge what's become of the music world.  By contrast Rosemary wasn't even at the age for grade school when the disaster hit, so to her, the idea of anything but this new world is hard for her to accept, and every new experience she has has a habit of overwhelming her.

This leads to honestly my least favorite part of the book, which is not really a fault with the book itself.  Rosemary's naivete leads to her making choices that have some major consequences for others around her, and the book makes it clear that those consequences are coming a good bit before Rosemary realizes it - which is painful for me to read.  Again, this is not necessarily a fault of the book itself - Rosemary's growth from naive girl who knows nothing other than the inside of her parent's farm to someone desperate to find a way to promote the music which has gone underground, but doesn't quite want to give up all the advantages in technology, is extremely well done over the course of the book.  She's an easy character to root for, and the solutions she comes up with in the third act are not necessarily what you'd expect, and solid enough.

Luce on the other hand is an easier character to read, if still just as effective as Rosemary.  Having grown up in an Orthodox Jewish community and then left after she realized there was no place for her as a queer woman there, Luce has always been willing to do things for herself that she needs, regardless of what others say.  So she begins her underground club for the sake of her music, and after Rosemary's actions, begins to tour, to get that feeling of music out.  She's a bitter woman both stuck in the past and angry a the present at times, and it takes others such as Rosemary to bring her out to try and move things forward towards a better future.

The very aspects of this setting help really carry the themes incredibly well, even beyond the idea of the need for live music.  Not everything is worse - by moving everything online/into-VR, one character notes, the impact of racism and prejudice is lessened as everything is available to all, with accessibility being much better than in our present world - even if it comes without personal contact.  If change is to happen and reach the most people, using this technology is necessary - and it may even be more effective than any older method ever was.  Still, even the benefits of acceessibility aren't perfect, as Rosemary notes that the execs tend to choose avatars which are White (something she doesn't quite understand, but the readers do), and the corporations use their virtual control to try and dominate and monopolize, pushing out all who stand in their way.  Pinsker uses his setting to showcase a story in which the characters can be seen not just to be fighting for the right to congregate for music, but for anything, as people have to overcome their fears of leaving safety to fight for freedom.  This is a story about how being with others may lead to harm, but there's no escaping how it can also lead to so much right.

Honestly, as an introvert who would hate the clubs Luce creates, it's a bit of an interesting book to read - since despite me not living in this dystopia, I'm not sure I'd like what Luce and Rosemary find either.  It isn't for me.  But, it should be something available, for the good of all, and this book does a damn good job making that point.
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