Thursday, June 29, 2023

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Aestus: Book 1: The City by S.Z. Attwell

 

Aestus is the first book in a self published epic sci-fi duology. The story, which takes place in the far future after a climate apocalypse seems to have reduced humanity to living in an underground city, has been named a finalist in this year's Self-Published Science Fiction Competition (#SPSFC2 - See my earlier SPSFC2 reviews here). Despite this book not being stand alone in any way, the book is by far the longest of any of the SPSFC2 finalists, clocking in at over 700 pages although the book reads fairly well - I finished the book in 3 days, whereas I normally manage to read typical sized SF/F books in 2. Whereas there was one book of similar length that my team was assigned for the semifinals that I was unable to finishs, Aestus* drew me in effectively and made me want to keep going, so I could see quite easily how such a long book could make the SPSFC2 finals.

The title of this series is technically "Aestus" with this book being "Aestus: Book 1: The City" but that's a mouthful, so I'm going to refer to this book solely as Aestus for the rest of this review.

This is because the book's protagonist - engineer Jossey - is extremely compelling as she deals with trauma from an encounter with monsters that resulted in the disappearance and probable death of her brother, an extremely shifty Uncle who asks her to join the city's military unit and to take part in an important engineering project, several potential love interests, and a discovery that not everything she knows is as it seems. The book is in large part somewhat predictable in its reveals but manages them well, and deals with strong themes dealing with autocratic governments keeping secrets, oppression and exploitation of minority groups, and more. And so I was hoping as the book neared its end that I would give this one a really high score...but the book ends on an extremely frustrating cliffhanger that provides no resolution whatsoever and is incredibly unsatisfying - both for how it just cuts off the plot extremely abruptly and is based upon a reveal that oddly isn't foreshadowed very well and thus seems to come out of nowhere. For such a long book, that's a major problem to have.

More specifics after the jump:
Plot Summary:
15 years ago, thirteen year old Tark snuck his ten year old sister Jossey up to the surface, in violation of City rules, to show her the stars and moon. No kids were supposed to go up there - certainly not unsupervised - but the two of them didn't care about that...or the threat of the monstrous Onlar who were said to roam up there and to kill the city dwellers they found up there without proper arms. Jossey wasn't sure the Onlar weren't just some children's tale told by her parents to frighten her...until the green eyed monsters showed up and attacked and left her with a huge wound on her face...and took Tark away.

Now, with a large scar on her face, Jossey has become an engineer who leads a team of engineers who work on and maintain the City's essential solar plants - working in the tunnels near the surface. Joseey has dreams of using greater engineering feats to better the city, but there's little time for such dreams in her life. But when disaster strikes and her team is attacked by an Onlar who has somehow gotten into the tunnels, Jossey is forced to act...and in the process somehow manages to kill the Onlar and save her team, despite taking another serious wound. And Jossey's acts bring her to the attention of not just her brother Tark's best friend Gavin - now the famous and valiant head of the Patrol military - and a handsome fellow engineer/former-Patrolman name Caspar, but also to her powerful Uncle Pyotr Sokol, the City's Minister of Intelligence. And her Uncle gives her a new job: to join the Patrol that fights the Onlar on the surface and to help set up a new solar array to help power the City's needs.

It's a job that promises more contact with the Onlar, something Jossey never wanted, not to mention it being a more physically brutal job than Jossey ever felt capable of. But struggles to keep up with her new Patrol teammates - and to earn their respect - are the least of Jossey's problems. For what she'll discover on the surface above the city is that not everything she knows about the Onlar, about the City, and about her own past is what she believes it to be, and her discovery will require her to make decisions that will change both her life and the City possibly forever...


Aestus is largely Jossey's story, although it does on a couple of occasions switch the story's third person perspective to two of its other major characters - Gavin and Caspar. And it's a story that I've seen others complain can take its sweet time having things happen, with the story being very devoted to developing its main character and some of the side characters, even at the cost of forward momentum. It's also a book that can quite often foreshadow or hint at plot reveals to come ridiculously hard, as if its trying to hit the reader over the head with a sledgehammer that certain characters aren't quite what they seem (one character is so obviously a spy for one of two possible groups that you'll just be begging the book to reveal the answer already for pages and pages) but this foreshadowing manages to work usually pretty well. And despite there being a few instances where the book struggled with describing some action sequences early, I found this slow style of prose to be very effective at drawing me in and keeping me invested with everything - I've complained that other books in this competition have had skin deep characters, and that's very not the case here, even when certain characters do fit various very common archetypes.

And so we have Jossey, the talented engineer who struggles with her tragic past, who is embarrassed by her scars and hates getting extra attention for her name but also wants to prove herself worthy of respect in her own right...and who will fight if pushed but would prefer not to (again, she's an engineer by trade!). Jossey cares about people and cares about the greater good, which naturally makes her an easy protagonist to root for, even if she's not some idealistic do-gooder. She might be a little bit clueless about other people's romantic interests in her, but it's not too distracting of a negative trait and it kind of works. In Gavin we have a similarly idealist do gooder, but in this case he's a fighter as the most famous member of Patrol, the city's military unit that serves to protect its people from the Onlar and the rumored human rebel group...and of course to protect Jossey, the sister of his best friend who he promised to protect. And then in Caspar...well you have a handsome man who's suspiciously capable with fighting for an engineer, as if he's hiding some secrets....(yeah of course he is, I won't go any further here for spoilers sake).

These characters, especially Jossey and Gavin, are very likable, even when they're doing something the book has revealed is foolhardy or wrong, as they try and do what's best for the people they care about. And the book uses its plot to throw these characters for a loop with some reveals that change things up in how the characters and the reader sees this world. The reader should expect most of these twists for a while before they're revealed, because the book teases these ideas relentlessly, but the twists work and deal with some strong themes - themes of how the City's seeming to be the last bastian of humanity on a way too hot planet allows it to hide secrets and enforce an autocratic rule; themes of how the City secretly oppresses various groups and individuals and may in fact be choosing one group of humans as being worth more than others; and hell themes of how certain minority groups are not even allowed to be considered humans at all. None of these themes or how they're presented here are original, but they work generally really well and the themes are well traveled because they're very relevant to today's world. I should add here as well that, as the author is a muslim woman, the story contains a light bit of muslim representation, even if the explicit naming of modern religions is never seen in this book.

Alas, the book does all of the above so well....and then kind of ruins it a good bit with its ending. The book's middle hints that the book's plot will be heading towards a climax and confrontation over a certain event....but then the book's last thirty page throw in a new twist reveal that prevents the book from getting ever to that event. The fact that this twist reveal isn't really foreshadowed well if at all doesn't help, but even worse is the fact that the book then abruptly ends on a cliffhanger after that twist reveal, which doesn't allow the book to try to actually show off the implications of this reveal, leaving all of that for the books' sequel. Obviously a book that is part 1 of a duology is going to end with some cliffhanger or sequel hook moments, but you would like for such a book to also contain some resolution to plot events that provides you with some satisfaction so as to make you come back for more. Aestus provides none of that...which is especially frustrating for a book this long.

So yeah, you have a book that I really liked that just does not satisfy in the end, which makes it one that's hard to grade and also one where, while I see how this is a finalist, I also don't really wan to see it rewarded with a win. Sigh.

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