Thursday, August 6, 2020

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: After Atlas by Emma Newman


After Atlas is the second book set in Emma Newman's Planetfall universe (which began with, naturally, the novel Planetfall).  I use the phrase "set in" there because the book isn't a direct sequel - it takes place in the same universe at a time that I think is before the events of Planetfall but in a totally different place:  Earth, the planet the characters in Planetfall had long left behind.  It's also sort of a different genre, with the plot taking the form of a scifi dystopian mystery for much of its runtime, which makes it very different from Planetfall in some ways.  I'd liked Planetfall a bit (my review here), and was curious to see where the series would go from that point, so it was inevitable I'd get to this sequel at some point.

And After Atlas is....interesting - like its predecessor it has a compelling narrator who makes it hard to put down and the book even has some similar themes, but its themes are far more cynical than its predecessor.  It's also far more dystopian in its future setting, featuring a world in which corporate entities have replaced governmental ones, with certain people being literally owned by such entities for many different forms of indentured service.  And the book's character work isn't quite as well done as in Planetfall, with it being devoted a bit more to ideas than that book was, which makes it a little less effective as a sequel.  Still, it's certainly a fascinating read that captured me from the beginning and I'll be back for book 3.


---------------------------------------------------Plot Summary------------------------------------------------------
Detective Carlos Moreno has never been free his entire life.  His mother abandoned him to go to the stars on the ship Atlas and this resulted in his father joining a prominent cult: The Circle, known for its charismatic leader Alejandro Casales and for its anti-technology attitude: with members known for not even being "chipped" with the internal communication technology with which everyone in the rest of the world functions.  Carlos' escape from The Circle was a series of bad choices that have left him the property of the Noropean Ministry of Justice working off his debt by performing one investigation at a time....with every moment of pleasure Carlos takes only being added to his debt.  But those moments are Carlos' own and his choice to make, something he has resigned to live with now that the past is behind him.

But when Alejandro Casales is found brutally murdered in a hotel in England, Carlos' background with The Circle results in Carlos being assigned the case.  But the case isn't just painful for Carlos due to the bad memories it presents, it also carries with it political entanglement like Carlos has never seen before: as all three major corporate entities - Norope, Europe, and USGov - are breathing down Carlos' neck at all moments of the investigation, searching for an answer.

Carlos' investigation will call into question all that he knows about the cult he once escaped from - and perhaps will make him question far more about the society he thinks he's grown to know.  Why would anyone kill a charismatic cult leader, even one so world-renowned as Alejandro?  What was Alejandro doing in England and why are all three governments so suddenly interested in him?  Carlos' one obsession has always been trying to figure out puzzles, but this puzzle's resolution will change everything.....
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If you couldn't tell from the plot summary, After Altas is a very different novel from Planetfall.  Planetfall was set on a strange other planet, and while both novels feature similar types of technology - talking via chips implanted in one's head, printers that can print materials and food, etc. - After Atlas is instead set on a very recognizable if dystopian Earth.  Moreover whereas Planetfall was a story about humans reacting to alien things and the mysteries that resulted, After Atlas is framed and indeed spends nearly all of its runtime as a scifi dystopian noir.  It's in more than a few ways a story that traffics quite heavily in some classic tropes: so you have bureaucrats trying to obstruct the investigation and prematurely close it, a potential governmental conspiracy, a nosy journalist, a jilted lover....etc.  This makes it all the more familiar as a kind of story than Planetfall honestly.

And yet all these familiar tropes are put together in ways that are very different than usual.  A classic noir story might have Carlos - the investigator - have a background with the victim like this, but Newman layers more on top of that by adding in that Carlos hasn't escaped his past even before the case came to him: he's almost literally a slave to the government, with any pleasures literally being added to his "debt."  The people who in other such noirs would wind up being sinister actually wind up here not being so - definitely not what they appear, but not necessarily sinister.  And despite the noir feel, there is absolutely no moment in which Carlos feels any romantic or sexual inclinations towards anyone so that's never a conflicting point in the novel.  So despite the familiar tropes in the setting, the book constantly subverts how they're used, keeping everything fascinating throughout.

And Newman's setting for this mystery is dystopian to its core and very cynical but rather compelling.  Like a lot of settings, you have multinational governments replaced by corporate entities (Norope, Europe, and USGov), and yet those entities don't behave too much differently than governments except that they're just a bit less constrained by moralities - which makes sense, since if given the power why would they behave too much differently?  Debt here has become a literal thing for many people such as Carlos, who literally cannot make any wrong steps - or steps for his own wellbeing - without adding to his indentured servitude.  And vast sums of money are still what can make individuals incredibly powerful in this world, to chilling effect in the story.  So this is a really cynical dystopian future...but one that's also not too far off from the directions our world is today, which makes it hard to disbelieve.

That said, while the mystery and setting are compelling, the characters involved in this story are less so.  Carlos is the only character we really ever get to know - the only other major characters whose stories we seem to know have those identities turned around by the plot - and while he's a strong lead as a man whose tragic past was followed up by more and more tragedies, there isn't really much to him besides the struggling noir investigator you see in other stories.  He works, but he's not particularly special in any way.  And the rest of the characters are largely archetypes - the one character who kind of isn't spends most of the book on the outs with Carlos, and as a result is cast to the side.  And the villains are kind of cardboard cutout level evil.  This is not a character focused book, which keeps it from being truly tremendous and memorable all the way to the end.

Still the ending packs a punch as the story ties itself back in to the world of Planetfall, to incredible effect.  It's an ending that the reader will likely see coming about two chapters before the characters do, but it still hits hard.  So yeah, After Atlas, despite not featuring as interesting characters as Planetfall, got my attention and I'll be back for book 3 in this series, to see how and if things are followed up.
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