Wednesday, October 20, 2021

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Far From the Light of Heaven by Tade Thompson

 



Full Disclosure:  This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on October 26, 2021 in exchange for a potential review.  I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.

Far from the Light of Heaven is the latest book from celebrated British/Nigerian author Tade Thompson, author of the Rosewater trilogy and the Molly Southbourne novellas (plus much other short fiction).  Thompson's debut novel, Rosewater, was an absolute triumph and one of the few books to which I've ever given a perfect score, and although I didn't love either of the sequels (which came out the last two years), his work has always been ambitious and interesting to me.  So I was excited to get an early copy of his latest novel, a scifi locked room mystery in space - a genre I'd seen done before by other authors to great effect.  

And like Rosewater and his other work, there's a lot of interesting ideas present in Far from the Light of Heaven.  However, unlike that trilogy (especially the first novel) which felt utterly unique, this novel feels very similar in concept to a bunch of other novels and doesn't quite measure up to some prominent ones that I've read (most notably Six Wakes by Mur Lafferty).   As noted by the author in the Afterword, the book also is the result of Thompson's attempt to portray realistic issues involved with dealing with what goes wrong amid a murder mystery on an actual ship in space, and that kind of in-book accuracy isn't really the type of thing I'm looking for in novels, so there's that as well.  The result is not a bad novel by any means - Thompson's craft remains excellent - but one that just doesn't really come together in a successful way, although if Thompson was to write a sequel, he does leave this world in an interesting place.  

-------------------------------------------------Plot Summary--------------------------------------------------------
The colony ship Ragtime's journey is supposed to be routine.  Michelle "Shell" Campion knows that, knows that her role as "first mate" is largely ceremonial, that her choice to work for the private corporation behind Ragtime is as much about her famous father's journey into space, that she's going to sleep for ten years and everything is going to be done for her.  Still, she is finally going into space, so she's going to work her ass off preparing for the journey so that she knows every little bit about Ragtime, its AI Captain, and the mechanics of the ship.  It may all be for nothing, but it's what shell is going to do.  

Ten years later, the colony world Bloodroot gets a distress call from Captain Michele "Shell" Campion of the Ragtime, asking for help, and reciting a code for multiple fatalities.  To get to the bottom of the mystery they send Fin, a disgraced repatriator of the alien Landers, to investigate along with his artificial partner Salvo. 

Meanwhile, Ragtime's distress call is also heard by Space Station Lagos, whose no nonsense woman in charge is desperate to ensure the Ragtime at least appears to finish its mission, so as to pass off the buck to someone else.  But figurehead governor Larry, a family friend of Shell, takes it on himself to make the journey to the Ragtime to see how he can help - along with his half-Lander daughter Joké.  

But the situation Shell has found herself in is far more dangerous than any of Fin, Salvo, Larry or Joké could have expected, with mysterious dead bodies, a strange animal guest, and some unseen force threatening big plans that could change this part of the galaxy forever.....
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Far From the Light of Heaven is a space opera locked room murder mystery at its heart, for better or worse, set from the perspective of a cast of characters with their own unique backstories, issues, and hopes.  But as you would expect from Thompson, the world this story takes in is far deeper than just the ship with its locked room mystery - and so you have a space station created by dreaming afrofuturists, who white supremacists cheered at first (because the Blacks were leaving!) only to greet it with dismay when the space station (Lagos) wound up being highly successful.  You have the colony world of Bloodroot, who survived when another earlier colony didn't by not trying to earthnorm its planet and instead tries to live with what's there....and to deal with the alien Lander species there in peaceful fashion, despite their odd effects on humans.  You have issues of class, of trauma, and a bit more here as well, which makes this world fascinating as more and more is revealed.  

Still so much of this world, is for better or worse (and again more on that later), secondary to the attempts of our five main characters to figure out what's going on, to find the culprit and to get everything under control.  Thompson makes it a point in his afterword to emphasize how he wanted to do justice to the idea of how a murder mystery would be affected by being in space - both mechanically and emotionally, and that poses a lot of the challenge for Shell and the cast, and allows them all to show their personalities (for example, Shell maintains a rigid sleep schedule for herself and others, even in the midst of the chaos, because she knows its easy to forget to sleep which will only make things worse).  So with Shell, you have the problem solver who is willing to do what it takes to get her remaining crew to the ground safe, no matter the cost; with Fin you have the investigator desperate for redemption who is similarly one-track-minded towards finding answers; with Larry you have the man tired of being just a symbol and instead wanting to do something, and finding an excuse in helping the girl he thinks of as an honorary niece; etc. (Salvo and Joké's motives are a bit more obscure).  It's a solid cast who plays well off each other, as things get more and more out of control as things are revealed about what's really going on.  

Unfortunately, what's really going on isn't really resolved particularly well, with the murder mystery's resolution just basically not being set up well at all.  The best murder mysteries are ones which tease out clues to give you a chance to, if not guess it, feel satisfied with the answer even if its not one that the reader could've expected.  Instead, Far From the Light of Heaven relies on a dump of plot reveals 2/3 of the way through, which reveals things that there was no hint or setup for to be significant parts of the answer, which just makes it all before feel kind of pointless.  The motivation for the eventual antagonist is generic and underwhelming and again not setup at all before the reveal, which also makes things kind of feel pointless.  And so much of the central part of this book is the murder mystery, so when that isn't really handled well, it kind of weakens the book significantly.*

*It's hard also not compare this book to Mur Lafferty's Six Wakes, another locked room murder mystery on a colony space ship, which has similar themes, but doles out its reveals over times in ways that make the reader satisfied with the resolution, and never feel like it was pulling things out of its ass.*  

And even the setting, which is fascinating at times, often feels disjointed and not connected with whats going on in the main plot.  Thompson basically admits in the afterword that he threw in Space Station Lagos and its Afrofuturist origins in because its what he likes, and he successfully makes that part of the setting fascinating....but it feels disconnected and totally separate with the main plot, and could've been removed without changing the murder mystery at all.  The same is true with the alien Landers, who are interesting but otherwise have little impact, as well as many other parts of the setting that I'm forgetting as I write this.  All of these aspects are interesting, and given where the book ends up, I'd be really interested to see where Thompson could take the setting from here, but as part of THIS book, they feel kind of a waste and a little pointless.  

So yeah, that's Far From the Light of Heaven, a book driven by ideas that don't really connect, centered around a murder mystery that doesn't really work, and with solid characters that are interesting but aren't special enough to make it all work despite its own flaws.  The first clear non-winner for me of Thompson's works.  

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