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 21, 2024 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.
Escape Velocity is the second novel by Filipino author Victor Manibo whose prior novel The Sleepless was an anti-capitalist sci-fi Noir exploring a world where some people no longer had to sleep. It was a really interesting debut and made me very intrigued to see what Manibo would do for an encore. Escape Velocity is the result: a novel that takes the anti-capitalist themes up a notch, as the novel is centered around an elite prep school reunion for the ultra rich and powerful on a state of the art luxury space station....above an Earth those same rich and powerful have left devastated, such that the average person is barely able to survive a constantly changing for the worse climate.
The book is marketed as a thriller and contains elements of a mystery and yet...isn't really either of those things and yet it's still very interesting and very good. Most of the book is centered around the past and present stories of the 1% main characters, who you will very much wish will get their comeuppance very soon into the book as they are largely assholes, even if they have some sympathetic moments (Ava, the trans girl who was abused by her murdered brother and whose poor lover was blamed for the murder, is the most sympathetic but even still). And then there's the workers on the station whose perspectives show them scheming in some fashion underneath it all, whom you will hope more and more to succeed. The result is really an interesting exploration of class and anti capitalist themes that is also kind of a commentary on other books which center such rich protagonists - I'll try to explain better after the jump.
Plot Summary:
It's the 25th year reunion for the Rochford Institute - the elite high school that teaches the elite of the elite and prepares them to essentially rule the world from the government or corporate positions their families have passed down from generation to generation. These reunions are known for being filled with orgies and scheming, and games of power and sex conducted there have massively changed the world. So what better place to host this reunion than the Space Habitat Altaire, the brand new ultra luxury space station orbiting their dying Earth....especially as just going to the Altaire will give each reunion member extra credit towards their application to leave that Earth and join the new colonies being set up on Mars.
For former teenage friends Ava, Sloane, Henry, and Laz, this reunion comes with its own particular opportunities. For Sloane, that's the ability to supplement his income, reduced by his family's ruin, by serving as in person Dom to one of the richer guests, even as he has a distaste for it all. For Henry, it's the chance to blackmail his way to Mars, in spite of a secret health ailment that should disqualify him. For Laz, it's the possibility of getting another chance to romance Ava, the childhood love who got away. And for Ava, it's the chance to figure out which of the three of the others was responsible for murdering her abusive twin brother Ashwin and who let Ava's poor drug dealing lover take the fall for the crime.
But there are non Rochford people on the Altaire with their own agenda - an agenda to take advantage of the fact that the most powerful people in the world, the ones who have ruined the planet for the rest of them, are all onboard and at their mercy.....
Escape Velocity starts in media res to heighten tension before flashing back to the main plot (and then occasionally flashing back further 25 years to what happened with Ashwin) and following a series of main characters - Rochford grads Ava, Sloane, Henry, and Laz as well as Cielo Mallari, the Head of Guest Relations....and also one of the heads of a plot with the rest of the workers of the Altaire to do...something. Notably, the book does a pretty good job getting you to generaly hate its biggest protagonists Henry, Laz, and Sloane (although Sloane is kind of self hating) and their ilk among their class. Ava, as the trans woman abused by her brother physically and emotionally abused by her family (and whose lover was killed because of it), is treated a bit more sympathetically, as she has faced genuine abuse and trauma....but even there, the book very clearly doesn't want you to really sympathize with its most frequent points of view.
The story takes place in a future Earth where the planet is getting hotter and more wrecked by climate change caused of course by capitalism and the rich. The poorer people have had to desperately scramble to find land that is livable as their older lands became too flooded, too hot, or too otherwise uninhabitable, while the rich have seized the best land for themselves and created luxury space stations to live decadently...and now are planning to leave the dying planet for Mars, where they've managed to set up what seem like self sustaining colonies. And they've limited immigration to Mars via a point-based "MERIT" system which is supposedly meant to ensure only the most useful people can go to Mars but really means only the most rich and connected can go....and said system is biased in other prejudiced ways - for example, Ava's father was so offended by her existence that he imposed a penalty for couples being unable to procreate...and thus a "gay tax" is part of the system. Meanwhile of course, the most useful people to any actual new colony would be those actually used to labor...but those people are of course excluded.
It's this setting that allows Manibo to contrast our asshole main characters with the help staff on the station who are plotting to upstage them. Adding to this is the flashback mystery of what happened to Ava's abusive brother Ashwin and who murdered him and how what happened back then shows just how selfish the other main characters - Laz, Sloane, and Henry - really are. They may claim to love others or to do things for others, but they really care about themselves, with Laz perfectly being willing to dominate in an orgy, even to the extent of making an actress remove her head covering when she doesn't want to, or Henry being willing to commit desperate actions to hide his illness to get to Mars, or Sloane being absolutely willing to blackmail and to be a hypocrite even as he recognizes how awful they all are. And while Ava is the best of them, she hasn't broken free from the system and remains absolutely a part of it, even as she knows how utterly broken it is and how her father and others like him have caused such tremendous damage. Manibo even throws in a seemingly random incident in which a satellite with ties to an oppressive government ignores calls for rescue from a person overboard to instead fire missiles at a political enemy down on the Earth below, so as to make it clear how hypocritical and awful those who rule the Earth really are.
And so we see Manibo show us everything getting more and more decadent and elite until the plot of the workers on the Altaire, led by Cielo, finally takes center stage in the book's final act. Those who are looking to see a clear and happy final result shouldn't expect one here, but this book does end on a kind of hopeful note with those we hate getting their comeuppance, so it is satisfying in the end. There really isn't a full plot to this novel but that doesn't stop it from being a very interesting second novel.
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