Wednesday, May 4, 2022

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Under Fortunate Stars by Ren Hutchings

 



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 May 10, 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.

Under Fortunate Stars is the debut novel of author Ren Hutchings.  The novel is a character-focused space opera dealing with a time loop, as characters from 152 years apart in time wind up having to work together despite the fact that the past crew - legends in the future people's time - don't match up with what they expect from the histories they've been taught.  It's a novel I'd originally planned to skip, but someone recommended it on twitter, so I decided to give it a try.  

And well, Under Fortunate Stars is well executed, with a plot that is in many ways predictable, and yet works quite well with its character moments throughout as it jumps back and forth through time.  The characters are solidly done, particularly the quarter who get point of view chapters, and the flashback and "present day" chapters are interspersed well to show character development throughout, such that you really see growth and development as the book goes forward.  At the same time, there isn't anything truly special going on here, and some characters are wildly underdeveloped in favor of others, despite having hints of more going on that are never explored.  The result is a solid but not exceptional debut.  

-------------------------------------------------Book Summary---------------------------------------------------
Smuggler Jereth Keevan and his companion Eldric ("Leeg") Leesongronski are on what should be one big final smuggling job on their dilapidated freighter Jonah, though everything keeps going wrong: the war with the alien Felen keeps knocking out their potential stopping points, the passenger they picked up has taken one of the bunks on the ship, and they had to deal with a would-be-hijacker....who now lies imprisoned within one of the other bunks, forcing Jereth and Leeg to sleep on the floor.  And then, as they attempt to change course, they find themselves caught in a strange Rift, knocking out their entire communications and engines.  

152 years later, the corporate ship Gallion is on a corporate mission, carrying a Felen ambassador on a surprise journey.  It has been 152 years since the Fortunate Five and the legendary ship Jonah brokered the peace between the Union and the Felen on the planet Etraxas, and became the mysterious legends worshipped or praised by people like the Gallion's chief engineer Uma Ozakka.  But something has gone wrong with the journey, and the engines and communication have cut out, leaving themselves in a potentially very embarrassing predicament.  Until the sensors detect another ship out there and bring it in....only for that ship to be the Jonah itself.  

Two crews from 152 years apart meet in this strange rift, causing great confusion:  For the crew of the Gallion, the Jonah's crew doesn't match the historical record, and how can they really be so?  For the crew of the Jonah, this potential future makes no sense - they're no heroes, just a bunch of messed up smugglers and stragglers, how could they be heroes?  But to get themselves out of their own situations, and to set the timeline back right, the two groups will have to figure each other...and themselves out....before they get stuck forever.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Under Fortunate Stars is the type of novel that jumps around, with each chapter roughly taking place from the perspective of one of four characters - Eldric/Leeg, Jereth, Shaan, and Uma - and jumping back and forth in time.  And not just between the two time periods that the characters come from, but rather between the "present" where the two groups are mixed together and between the individual pasts of each of these quartets.  So we see the pasts of Jereth and Eldric that lead them to be together on the Jonah; we see Shaan's past that she's been on the run from; and we see more particularly how each character used to act and how they've been forced by experiences to change and develop.  

And this works well, which is pretty important because well, it's pretty obvious how a lot of things are going to go and the story barely tries to hide it.  Any genre savvy reader will recognize that the book is taking place in a stable time loop, and that the events of this story are going to lead to the Jonah completing their mission - with the characters in the past only gaining the knowledge they needed to make history from their interactions in the future (and that at least one future character is going to wind up going back to the past).  It's pretty obvious that the characters are going to find a way out of the Rift they're stuck in, that once a certain place from a person's past shows up in the present it's going to result in that character taking a bigger role, etc. etc.  It's not 100% predictable (for reasons I may discuss below) but there's a lot here you'll see coming.

Which again still works because your character arcs are enjoyable and done well.  In Jerith, you have the con artist who is still pretty reckless and way too self-confident...and yet is far more tempered than he used to be, when his nihilistic greed essentially screwed over his best friend in Leeg.  With Eldric/Leeg, you have the mathematician who loved but let himself be led astray by Jerith, where he didn't quite know how to listen to what the woman he loves really is asking for.  The two of them you'd think would have a big fight over the consequence Jerith gets them into, and yet they really don't because each realizes how much of it was their own faults, which is a nice touch, and each develops fairly well in the present day into a better person.  Then there's Shaan, the Gallion employee who was secretly once something more and has to overcome her shame over her past and finds that with Jerith's encouragement - as well as Uma, who worshipped the "Fortunate Five" and finds ways to reconcile her understanding of the past with what is revealed.  None of these character arcs are tremendous, but they all work pretty well.  

Still, there are a number of character arcs that don't really go anywhere and really feel like they should - like the Corporate heir on the Gallion who acts like he's going to get in the way due to his pompous beliefs only to never do anything.  Or the famous physicist member of the Fortunate Five turns out to be the person who attempted to hijack the Jonah and was imprisoned, which you think would make a difference....but no, once the Jonah's crew is on the Gallion, the physicist is just wholly trusted by everyone and this never comes up again.  Or the researcher into alien-human relations who was on the run.....well you get the point.  There's a lot of potentially interesting characters here, but with the exception of the main quartet, they basically all get discarded for large segments of time until they become plot relevant again, if they ever do.  

The result is a solid debut novel, crafted fine, but not one that really did anything super special or memorable.  But taking a predictable plotline and working it this well is something, and definitely makes me interested in what Hutchings can do in the future.  

No comments:

Post a Comment