Wednesday, March 2, 2022

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Arkhangelsk by Elizabeth H. Bonesteel

 




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 March 8, 2022 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.


Arkhangelsk is an upcoming scifi novel from author Elizabeth H. Bonesteel.  Prior to me starting this blog, back in 2016, I read the first in Bonesteel's space opera "Central Corps" series, which I didn't quite love (and thus didn't continue).  Still it had enjoyable prose, so I was curious to see how her other work would turn out when this popped up on NetGalley, 

And Arkhanelsk is a pretty interesting novel, even with a premise that will be very familiar to those who read a bunch of scifi: a long lost space colony, struggling to survive on a harsh world while thinking they're the last humans in the universe...only to be found by a new starship from Earth, who left a very different planet than their ancestors.  Add in some noirish elements - colonists who go missing, parts that are breaking down and/or sabotaged - and two protagonists: a well meaning colony security chief and an unwilling ship captain, and well there's plenty here that's familiar.  But it's done rather well, as its two protagonists are quite strong in their perspectives, troubles, and relationships - and even some of the setup is slightly different than usual, as it tells a story of the tough choices peoples make when desperate, and the costs they are willing to pay.....


-------------------------------------------------Plot Summary---------------------------------------------------
Anya Savelova is the head peace officer for the city of Novayarkha, a city struggling to survive and a tough ice-bound planet.  Hundreds of years ago, their ancestors left an Earth that was falling apart and destroying itself on the ship Arkhangelsk, using technology to try to ensure their gene pool remained viable when they reached their eventual destination.  And so now Anya and their people try to survive in a rigorously hierarchal way of life, and try not to grieve too deeply when their loved ones don't make it.  It's a life that should be typical and ensure a future for them all, but Anya knows some things aren't quite right - raids by exiles living away from the colony rob them of resources, cancer is common throughout the colony, their gene preservation tech is damaged....and people keep winding up missing, assumed to have been either murdered or having committed suicide by going out into the ice.  

And then even that strangeness is turned upside down when a starship from Earth, said to have left Earth only 40 years ago, shows up in orbit.  

On board the ship, The Hypatia, Commander Madeleine "Maddie" Loineau tries to figure out what to make of a world that was not expected to be there when they set off as children on a mission to build a communication device to communicate with the Earth.  These people with their guns, fear of outsides, and hierarchal ways, not to mention their ruthlessly cold leader Yulia, intimidate and confound her with their ways. But the Hypatia is damaged badly, with much of their crew lost, and the chance to obtain help from these people - not to mention discover who they are - is just too great to pass up.  And at first, Maddie thinks she's found a kindred spirit in caring for their own people in Anya....

But the people of Novayarkha are deeply skeptical of strangers from a world their ancestors fled, and conflict arises between their ways, conflict that unearths some long forgotten truths about the colony, truths that threaten to throw the tenuous equilibria found by Novayarkha and Hypatia out of control....
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Arkhangelsk is told in two formats: the majority of the story is told from Anya's point of view in real time (with some excerpts from logs from the ship Arkhangelsk popping in as interludes on occasion), as she tries to investigate one girl's disappearance to see if it was foul play and then tries to deal with and learn from the visitors from Hypatia.  The other parts, which amount to significant parts of the book, are logs/communications-to-Earth from Maddie as she encounters the people down below and tries to reconcile her ship's mission of building a communication device and their way of life from what she knows.  The fact that Maddie's point of view chapters are told as part of a log don't really have much of an impact - except for the times she's cursing at her far away listener - but just really serves to make clear who's the point of view character for a given segment, with the story usually featuring multiple segments/chapters in a row from one specific character's perspective.  

And both Anya and Maddie are strong main characters.  Anya may be the head security officer for the colony, a position she was drafted for at first reluctantly by the governor Yulia, but she's a person who knows grief and kindness, and tries to approach it all with caring.  She still struggles with the loss of her daughter Irina, who she sorta hallucinates alongside her at times - but at the same time, she's not in denial about it, never really believing Irina is physically there or forgetting that she's dead.  And so when she's investigating a child's disappearance that she thinks is foul play, and knows that the other disappearances aren't normal, she isn't willing to let it go and just excuse it as a suicide, because she knows people care.  And she isn't willing to let torture or rough methods be used if not necessary.  At the same time, Anya is a product of her culture, deferring to Yulia quite often because it's part of who they are and how they've survived.  

By contrast, while Maddie is also caring for her crew, who are really her family, especially their one child, they aren't hierarchal because it's just the 9 of them onboard, so they really can't afford to be anything else but equals.  And so it unnerves Maddie not just to see the colonists with weapons and afraid of her, and not just to see how sick they are, but to also see how tightly they restrict each other.  Maddie recognizes that someone like Yulia is doing what she thinks is best for her people, but at the same time, the way she rules with an iron fist is just hard to deal with, and when she sees how Yulia enforces a criminal punishment, she is utterly outraged and horrified, such that she doesn't even want to speak with Anya, who she mostly recognizes otherwise as a kindred spirit - and even begins to love.  (In a nice touch, the book hints and shows genuine feeling developing between its two leads, but on page romance and sex never happens, because it just never gets there even as they do essentially wind up in a relationship of kinds.  Not that Maddie is that interested in sex anyway per her monologue, even if she's not fully asexual.)  

And Maddie and Anya's caring about their people is a common trait in this novel, which makes this a really interesting story at times, especially as it gets into the mystery of what's behind the disappearing people, and whether the two peoples can coexist.  There are no sniveling evil antagonists here, and everyone involved actually cares about doing the best for their people....its just some characters have lines that seem unforgivable about what they'll do to ensure the best for everyone, and secrets that threaten to throw both groups into disarray.  Even Anya's apprentice, who other books could easily make into the cruel monstrous cop character, is just very very aggressive and believing in ends justify the means rather than actually cruel at heart, as he seems to be hinted at being at first.  It's not a really all that surprising mystery honestly and one whose answer you'll have seen similar takes of before - and the mysterious "Exiles" who go on raids are incredibly obvious as to what's their deal based on how similar they are to other groups - but it does work.  

The result is that Arkhangelsk is a rather well done colony-noir-scifi story, even if it never hits any particularly special points.  But the two very enjoyable main characters, each trying to do good as their worlds intersect and challenge their beliefs, work rather well enough to make this worth reading.

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