Thursday, April 8, 2021

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Engines of Oblivion by Karen Osborne

 




Engines of Oblivion is the second book in Karen Osborne's "Memory War" space opera duology, which began last year with her Architects of Memory (which I reviewed here).  Architects of Memory was an....odd book for me: on one hand, its themes of the importance of memory to our own being was interesting and its dueling anti-capitalist and anti-nationalist (kind of, bear with me a bit) messages worked decently.  On the other hand, as the book went on, there were frequently points where I had honestly no clue what was going on, which prevented everything from hitting as hard as it could, and outside of our main duo of characters, everyone else really didn't get too much depth.  So I was a bit unsure of what I would find in the sequel, or even if I'd finish it.  

And yeah, Engines of Oblivion is as, if not more, confusing than its predecessor, at least to someone who reads like I do so quickly.  And it again doesn't quite have much depth in its side characters.  Yet despite my confusion, despite the lack of depth, the new* main character's storyline more than made up for all of that, as the story once again tells a strong story of memory, of individuality and personality, and of the monsters of capitalism, all in a space opera plot featuring strange alien tech and whatnot.  I probably wouldn't read a third book in this series (though I don't think there will be one), but I'm interested in seeing where Osborne's writing goes from here.  

*well, new to this book, the character was a side character in book 1.* 

Spoilers for book 1 follow: ---------------------------------------------------Plot Summary----------------------------------------------------
Natalie Chan left her father and the software cult Verdict where she grew up in to join up with the corporate military, figuring she could make it all the way to citizenship and into a freedom that offered her the actual chance to enjoy her life.  But her time in the military against the alien Vai was worse than she could have imagined, and then as an indentured for the Aurora corporation on the salvaging ship Twenty-Five she found herself confronted with the impossible: her team betrayed by its mad scientist Doctor Sharma, her friend and colleague Ash turned into a Vai weapon wanted by every Corporation in the galaxy, her captain Kate dead, and the use of Ash's device eliminating the memories of everyone in the space around Tribulation.  

Natalie didn't make it out of Tribulation unscathed - many of her memories were lost and what remains is only held in by a special device devised by the corporation.  But she has finally obtained the citizenship she dreamed of....so why does it all feel so hollow, even as she seems to be moving up in the corporation?  It's a question she finds herself asking even before the corporation uses her own work to commit another war crime.  

And as the corporation discovers that Ash and Kate are still alive, they send Natalie with the woman who caused the whole disaster, Dr. Sharma, to find them....but what Natalie will discover is a power so Alien that it will force her to reconsider what she wants from the world...and what she really remembers....
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Engines of Oblivion switches our perspective from its predecessor from Ash (and Kate as a secondary character) to Natalie Chan, their former crewmate.  In book 1, Natalie was Ash's friend indenture, with a potential romance in Len (their mechanic crewmate), who thanks to her history as a soldier fighting the Vai was seemingly unable to make the same transition as Ash in thinking of them not as an evil enemy but a misunderstood collective who didn't know what they were doing.  This time around, Natalie is sort of in shambles, missing a large part of her memories - including all of Len - and reliant upon a strange machine to help her remember what she still has....even though the machine glitches frequently and shows her memories at inopportune times.  

And Natalie is a fascinating character now that we know her in her own head.  Like Ash, she was desperate to try and become a corporate citizen as a way to obtain some level of freedom, some level of recognition that she is worthwhile, but unlike Ash that comes from a different background: she grew up in a software cult, where she was essentially free except for the fact that there was nothing for her to do, and she wasn't good at coding anyhow - so her choice to join the corporate world and its unfair system head on was a deliberate seeking of more.  And now Natalie may have lost half her memories but she seems to have everything she dreamed of - citizenship, a position at the head of a research division that might lead to more, and even a guy who seems to want her.....except it isn't satisfying at all because it isn't the freedom she expected.  The CEO can still trick her into committing war crimes by switching out an EMP payload she was delivering for a WMD at last moment, her boyfriend refuses to admit there's anything wrong with that because there's nothing they can do about higher ups making decisions they disagree with, and she knows that her friend Ash is still alive, probably dying, as a weapon on Tribulation.  And in a nice twist in this book, even when Natalie does obtain the rights seemingly to the even higher status of birthright citizenship, she finds it too comes with contractual strings attached - at no point in this capitalist system is she ever left to be truly free.  

This all leads to a plot that once again features heavily that conflict with capitalist greed, represented once again by the Aurora corporation and characters such as Aurora's CEO Solano, who simply wants more and more power and wealth, no matter what that does to others - whether they work for him or stand in his way - in the process.  Then there's the recurrence of Dr. Sharma, who was essentially an anti-corporate nationalist in the last book - she wanted to use the Vai weaponry against the corporations, but didn't care what it did to the Vai themselves...and that's still the case here.  And through it all is Natalie, left without many of her memories, left wondering whether it was all worth it, and seemingly unable to explain any of it all to anyone who could possibly understand...all alone, until she finds something else and the strength to fight back.  These themes and characters work pretty well from beginning to end.  

What doesn't work too well is again, the prose is written in such a way that it's really hard to tell what's happening, especially once we get into Vai tech and Vai-appropriated tech that deals with integrated minds and whatnot, which happens around the 33% mark and only gets more and more involved from there.  Again some of this is possibly on me, due to my reading style and speed not necessarily picking up every word and moving so quickly that I might be missing subtle implications, but I do slow down in reading in books where my mind feels every detail is crucial (usually for character development) and this doesn't really fit that mold for me.  Moreover, again some depth characters, particularly Natalie's new potential love interest Ward, do not get nearly enough depth to explain their character actions* and a late character reveal regarding an existing character's relation to other characters just feels completely unnecessary and out of place.  

Spoiler in ROT13:   Jneq vf rfgnoyvfurq rneyl ba nf gur pvgvmra sebz na rfgnoyvfurq snzvyl yvar jub jvyy nqzvg fbzr bs Nheben'f npgvbaf, fhpu nf pbzzvggvat n jne pevzr vf onq, ohg jvyy onfvpnyyl fueht gurz nyy bss naq svther gurl zhfg xabj orfg be whfg ershfr gb gel naq gnxr n fgnaq orpnhfr ur qbrfa'g unir gur cbjre.  Ur'f yngre erirnyrq gb pbzr sebz onfvpnyyl n onfgneq oenapu bs gung snzvyl yvar, nyjnlf srryvat yvxr ur unf gb cebir uvzfrys, naq qbrf uryc Angnyvr trg nebhaq gur fuvc....bayl gb fhqqrayl fgneg urycvat gur PRB bapr gur PRB unf Angnyvr ng uvf zrepl, rira nsgre gur PRB rffragvnyyl fgnegf gelvat gb pbageby uvf zvaq guebhtu n zrzbel qrivpr...orsber n ynfg zvahgr ghea gbjneqf tbbq ng gur raq erfhygf va uvz svanyyl fubbgvat gur PRB.  Gurer whfg vfa'g rabhtu qrcgu be ybbxvat ng uvf punenpgre gb rkcynva jul jung unccraf gurer, nsgre fgvpxvat jvgu gur PRB guebhtu RIRELGUVAT ryfr, jnf rabhtu gb znxr uvz ghea.  Vg whfg qbrfa'g jbex.

But the themes are stronger in this book and more conclusive, and Natalie is easily the most interesting and well developed of the three main characters we've had through these two books, so Engines of Oblivion did work for me in general....even if I had trouble understanding what happened inside the book.  So it's kind of hard to judge.  

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