SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Our Blue Beautiful World by Karen Lord: https://t.co/kASRfpvSPV
— Josh (garik16) (@garik16) May 24, 2023
Short Review: 7 out of 10 - A first-contact esque novel that is a sequel to two prior Lord works, this novel features a set of characters - both from outside Earth and within it - who
1/3
Short Review (cont): are trying to prepare Earth for integration into a galactic society that is already filled with factions, some of which might look to exploit the Earth and place it into a subservient or colonized position. Interesting ideas, but maybe too short.
— Josh (garik16) (@garik16) May 24, 2023
2/3
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 August 29, 2023 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.
The Blue Beautiful World is the latest science fiction novel from Barbadian author Karen Lord, one of the more recent greats of Science Fiction and Fantasy, at least in my opinion, even if she's not well known by many even within that space. The book is technically the third book in a series which began with The Best of All Possible Worlds (a book I absolutely love) and was continued a while later with The Galaxy Game (which I didn't really like), although the novel is not advertised as part of a series at all. The series has always dealt with human connections, anthropology, and how people come together (the first book was part anthropological sci-fi, part romance, the second book featured magic-like technology that used personal and emotional connections to impact the real world) and this book brings that to a future version of our planet Earth, one which has seemingly convalesced into a global society....even as outside forces begin to make contact.
And the result is...interesting, for sure. The story uses its third person narration to follow a number of characters, dealing with lots of ideas based upon the darker history of the world - colonization and human domination - and how to try to avoid those situations going forward. It features a bunch of interesting tech ideas and more far out concepts, some of which are based upon ideas from The Galaxy Game, and features as its protagonists a number of younger people all trying to work to help the Earth move forward as part of a well established and somewhat fractured at times galactic society. And yet the book doesn't keen in on this idea until its second act, with the narrative suddenly switching course after its first third in what seems possibly like a jarring fashion. It's an interesting book and I'm not sure how well it works - certainly I'm curious how well it works without having read The Galaxy Game (although I think it works significantly better than that novel) - but I'll try to review it anyway.
Note: The novel features references to the prior two novels, especially the events of The Galaxy Game, although those references are minor for the first third before becoming more prominent thereabout. There's also a conclusion to a plot thread from that book....sort of....in the book's ending (I think that'll be dealt with more fully at this point in probably a future book. So you may want to read the prior books first, even if this is not advertised as part of a series.
--------------------------------------------Plot Summary-------------------------------------------
In the near future, in a seemingly more tight knit global society on Earth, a pop star named Owen is somehow constantly making waves - despite not being the most beautiful or having the best voice or even having his own songs. But there's something unearthly magnetic about Owen that makes people drawn to him, and makes him connect with so many around the world....and also for some reason, puts him and his crew in the targets of some unknown adversary. For Owen is not some ordinary pop star, and his agenda is to do something far more comprehensive than merely getting famous, but to put together a team of technological, analytical, and philosophical experts and geniuses to connect the world through art, sports, and more. And Owen's adversaries will do whatever they can seemingly to stop him from upending the world order for Owen's mysterious purposes.
Years later, a group of aspiring government servants - mostly young people, with the oldest a mere 26 year sold - from small nations will be brought together to be part of the Global Government Project's first ever Diplomatic Group. Assigned to be part of that group, Kanoa, from the Federated States of Polynesia, isn't quite sure what to expect - he's still struggling with the loss of his father, and of strange dreams of his father still being present in the Sea somewhere. But what Kanoa and the rest of the Diplomatic Group soon learn is that they are being set to examine a first contact scenario, one in which Earth is the latecomer to galactic society, and where joining that society will require the utmost skill to avoid Earth being placed in an inferior position to its conquering or colonizing betters......
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The Blue Beautiful World is a difficult book to talk about, because honestly both the plot summary provided on Amazon and on the book's back cover and the one I've provided are kind of mildly spoilery, in that they both deal with a character who doesn't appear until 1/3 of the way through the book and after an 11 year time skip. But to be fair, there's no way to really talk about this book otherwise, with the book's first act following Owen as he galivants around the world putting together a team of experts in various technological and psychological fields and also performing as a pop star for unknown purposes while unknown probably alien adversaries attempt to threaten him and to stop him....and then pivoting to seemingly a different more first contact-y plot focused on different characters thereafter. The different parts of this book are clearly all related, and if you have foreknowledge of who Owen is and what his abilities and intentions likely are you'll be able to get that sooner than someone going in fresh, but it's kind of misleading to just describe part 1 in the plot summary above.
That said, Lord does make each part of this book read incredibly well and in an incredibly compelling way - her prose just somehow reads so easy to me and allows me to consume it incredibly quickly, and made me care about each of the characters really really well, even with the books' faults on other levels (discussed below). In the start, Owen's quest to gather people around the world without taking a dangerous heel turn and his manager's struggle to help him with that while being in the dark about who Owen actually is works far better than it should (even if said manager basically disappears after that first act). In the middle, Kanoa's struggle to deal with both his own grief and his attempt to do good for the world with the young people of the Diplomatic Group is really strong, with it being really easy to care for both Kanoa and the rest of the group as they struggle to deal with the ideas of dealing with a strange far more advanced and dangerous new alien galactic civilization (and even go overboard at times, which honestly is kind of delightful). And the book's final act, as things all come to a head is written as well as it probably could have been.
That said, I'm not sure that conclusion works, for similar reasons to that of The Galaxy Game - there just isn't enough time for the ideas involved that Lord is playing with (Saving the world and bringing it into galactic society not as a colony or a conquered world through mental connection and cooperation) to really be explored such that it feels like the conclusion kind of comes so abruptly that I had to read it multiple times to get what was happening...and I still don't get fully how it worked. This is another short book and it honestly shouldn't be - and that doesn't even go into page length that is devoted to small running plot threads from the prior books that advance only a little and don't really matter to this book.
Lord makes Our Blue Beautiful World still interesting because of how well she writes, mind you, and others might find it works better for them, especially if they liked the Galaxy Game. And even for me there's enough here that I enjoyed reading this, even with my confusion, and would be back for Lord further exploring this universe. So this is a solid book, It just didn't hit that super high level of amazingness that some of Lord's other works have hit for me.
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