Monday, May 25, 2020

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Vela (Season 1) by SL Huang, Yoon Ha Lee, Becky Chambers, and Rivers Solomon


The Vela is yet another SF/F offering from Serial Box Publishing, known for its weekly release of episodic content for its series, as if it was offering TV Shows and not the written word.  Sometimes this results in really fun and/or interesting stories, sometimes it does....not.  But their SF/F offerings have often led to collaborations from incredibly diverse and impressive authors, and The Vela is no exception: featuring four of the most impressive authors out there - both in award wins/noms and just talent - All four of these authors have managed at least one work I've graded out to a 9 out of 10 or better, and I don't give that grade lightly.  So I was always interested in trying out The Vela, and finally got the chance after a giveaway gave away the season a few weeks ago.

And The Vela has some really strong setup and a cast of some really interesting characters, dealing with strong themes such as the plights of refugees, nationalistic jingoism, and peoples who exploit natural resources for short term gain but long term devastation, mostly being felt by those less fortunate (except instead of this being Global Warming, this story is literally about a dying Sun mined for hydrogen by richer planets).  On the other hand, it also struggles with the episodic format, ending on a unsatisfying cliffhanger and having some gaps between episodes that are a bit annoying.  Overall, I enjoyed The Vela and would be happy to see where it goes from here, so I guess the cliffhanger ending, while annoying, still worked.

Note:  I mostly read this in audiobook format, which Serial Box does very well with background music and appropriate sound effects that add to the story and don't get too annoying (compare the Star Wars audiobooks, which definitely get annoying). So if you're looking for audio material, this is not a bad choice at all.

------------------------------------------------Plot Summary-------------------------------------------------------
The Solar System is dying, with the Sun running out of fuel due to the Inner Planets overmining of its Hydrogen.  The outer planets have been getting colder and colder until they become inhospitable, leading their peoples to flee for their lives.  But the inner planets - dying far more slowly but still dying - are not so welcoming to refugees, and the Planet - Gan Da - standing between the refugees and the inner worlds, has stopped letting any refugees through altogether.

Asala was once a refugee from Hypatia, 34 years ago as a little girl.  She has since made a new life for herself as a special ops agent for Khayyam, working directly for the inner planet's president and trying to forget her old life.  But when the president sends her on a secret mission to find and retrieve a missing high profile refugee ship - The Vela - she finds herself on the way back to Hypatia, the world she left her family and most importantly her sister behind.

But Asala isn't alone on the mission - she's joined by the president's child, Niko, an idealist who hates how the inner planets, including their own, have treated the refugees.  Niko's idealism conflicts with Asala's survival instincts, but their computer skills come in handy, and soon Niko and Asala will discover that the Vela's disappearance hides an even greater secret, one which threatens to overturn everything they know and change the future of everyone forever....
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The Vela has a setup that is really great at hammering home its themes.  You've got an environmental disaster caused by short-sighted greed-driven behavior by the well to do - the Inner Planets - that will doom everyone eventually, but will naturally be felt first by the less fortunate (in the Sun dying out).  You have a refugee crisis, as the sun's fading naturally creates more and more refugees from the outer planets, seeking anything that can be better than freezing to death on their homelands, no matter how inhospitable.  And you have a racist nationalist country - or world in this case - refusing to take the refugees despite having plenty of space and knowing they will suffer the same fate in only a short while.

And these themes are hammered even harder by the contrast between its two main characters.  Asala is one of those refugees, but she has spent her life desperately trying to make a life for herself that isn't 100% defined by her original homeworld, and puts survival first and foremost.  The result is a badass operative willing to do whatever it takes to complete her mission....but with a survival instinct like none other.  And yet, Asala still mourns what she left behind as a child, particularly her sister, and she can't help have her childhood come back up as she travels back to Hypatia.  And she finds herself conflicted by both wanting to not be seen as Hypatian and to be seen as such as she finds herself more and more among the refugees.  And through it all however, she doesn't allow herself, seeing how everything is first hand now and having gone through it in the past, to be anything more than practical.

Which causes her to butt heads with Niko, who is a type of character one can easily analogize to today's world.  Niko is a possibly elite computer hacker, and the child of a powerful inner planet (well off) president, and yet despite it all they're an idealist.  They can't understand why someone like Asala would work for their father, or why she won't be full on committed to helping the refugees.  But what they also can't understand until they see things with their own eyes, and still don't a bit even then, is how its easy to play the idealist, even working directly with relief organizations and more shadowy groups helping refugees, when you're from a position of privilege.  The series smartly shows this through another character's perspective, that of a woman who heads the refugee camp for Hypatians who can't get into Gan Da, who has no choice but to deal with Niko but also has no time for them.

These character dynamics and themes inform the plot, which snakes around in interesting ways, beginning with the search for the Vela and turning into a far more reaching mission (this isn't really a spoiler as anyone can see this coming, especially after the first episode ends in a cliffhanger that clearly suggests as such).  It's a plot that works mostly pretty well to take our characters to places that demonstrate its themes, introduces some solid side characters, and allows for some really great action sequences - after all, Asala is a badass and Niko even gets in some moments of their own.

That said, the plot is hamstrung by the episodic format pretty badly.  Time jumps between certain episodes often don't really make sense (a jump between episodes 3 and 4 is particularly bad, as it never explains why the characters don't take their own ship instead of the dangerous ship they're apparently wound up taking between episodes).  Character dynamics often waver between episodes - Niko in particular goes from a child craving acknowledgement for their achievements to being absolutely in favor of radical idealism depending upon the chapter: and while these character traits aren't actually in conflict, there's never a consistent fusion between the two, and it feels like two different traits.  And the story tries to manipulate its character viewpoints to hide twists - Niko's view disappears for long stretches and only Asala is a consistent narrator as a result - which makes them feel kind of artificial....especially as they wind up not having a real impact on how things play out.

And then it all ends in a major cliffhanger which, while extremely intriguing for another season, is absolutely not satisfying.  Of the Serial Box works I've read, this has been a consistent problem with the more recent ones like Born to the Blade or Ninth Street Station, like they want to be TV shows that are begging for renewals instead of telling complete stories.  By contrast the oldest one, Bookburners, had satisfying ends to its seasonal arcs every season.  And well, it's kind of a lousy TV trope to import to literature that's not any better here.

So yeah, I liked the setting and character ground work for The Vela, and really hope it gets a second season.  But if it does, I hope the writers are given more liberty to craft a complete plot arc, rather than to treat it simply as an origin arc for more to come.  These writers are too good for that.
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