Gollancz, 2024, proof copy unpaginated. £22.99. Reviewed for ParSec 13.
AT THE REQUEST OF THE BOOK’S PUBLISHER MY REVIEW OF THIS NOVEL WAS WITHDRAWN FROM ParSec 13. I felt under no obligation to refrain from publishing my review here. As a result of that request, though, I have made an amendment to the original withdrawn review; the two words highlighted in bold below.
We meet Edie (Edith, but she doesn’t like it) Morikawa as she is about to be released on unexpectedly early parole after eight years in prison. The last person she imagined would meet her is Angel Huang, her former associate whom she assumes grassed on her to ensure her own freedom. On the way up to Kepler Space Station, which orbits the Rock, the planet where the prison is located and seems to be otherwise uninhabited, Angel offers her a place on a team to carry out a robbery with a potentially stupendous pay-off. Edie refuses since she desires to go straight in order to help her sister Andrea, who has two children, Casey and Paige, and another on the way, courtesy of useless partner Tyler. Paige has cancer and needs gene therapy, but there is no money to pay for that.
(I note here a failure in imagination. Perhaps that’s the way the world will go, but even in a supposedly distant future, light years from Earth, a more equitable health care system, or indeed social system, than that which exists in the USA of the present day seems to be inconceivable to the author. But I suppose it gives the author a lever to manipulate their heroine.)
Staying on the straight and narrow will require Edie to find a job, helping Andie out at the shop where she works won’t do. But Edie has been blacklisted by Atlas Industries, which seems to control everything on Kepler. Its head and founder, Joyce Atlas, (a man despite the forename) was the intended target of Angel’s planned sting. Angel’s offer is the one thing that promises anything hopeful. When the reader finds out Angel is Atlas’s chief of security s/he is well ahead of the narrative in knowing exactly who did the blacklisting.
A curiosity of this novel is that most of the main characters are of Hawaiian heritage and occasionally speak in Hawaiian patois. (The blurb describes the book as a love letter to Hawai’i.) No matter. SF readers are used to the odd unfamiliar word or phrase, such as the one used in the title. Hammajang is a Hawaiian pidgin word meaning in a disorderly or chaotic state; messed up. Mention is also made of a Korean heritage area of Kepler. Oddly, there seems to be little attempt to assimilate there.
We are shown as much of Kepler as is needed for the plot, which runs along the lines expected from its set up. The space station must be quite large what with Atlas Industries and the different environmental and maintenance levels described. SF elements to the book are fairly incidental though; not much has gone into fleshing out this future scenario. While Kepler has an artificial sun and a simulated night sky, there is the usual layering of habitats, the lower levels grimy and dim, the upper airy and bright. In Angel’s gang Cy has a cybernetic arm and Tatiana has mods. Atlas Industries is developing a method of accessing people’s memories, provided they have a mod. However, Joyce Atlas does not come over as the sort of person to accrue a fortune as a business head – and, if he was, he would surely not succumb to the sting as presented.
Parts of this scenario strike as being very old-fashioned. There is a railway station (and presumably others) on Kepler, plus buses and a monorail. It has the feel of a city on Earth in the late twentieth century rather than a future space habitat light-years away. People – well, Edie – smoke cigarettes.
It’s easy enough reading, and totally undemanding, but there is no particular reason why this novel has to be SF. It’s a crime novel with a few SF trappings.
Pedant’s corner:- I read an ARC (proof,) so some or all of these may have been altered for final publication. The spelling ‘jewellery’, though the text was in USian, “florescent lights” (fluorescent; used later,) “under Joyce Atlas’ watch” (lots of instances of Atlas’ for Atlas’s, of which latter there was one example,) “as a I left” (that ‘a’ is superfluous,) “savouring our respective vises” (I know vise is USian for the clamping device. Do they also use it for character flaws?) “no one would risk cross risking Atlas” (no one would risk crossing Atlas,) “grew into hotspot” (into a hotspot,) “Morris’ deal” (Morris’s,) “part of tWard 2” (of Ward 2.) “I creeped back” (I crept back.) “I was surprised by Tatiana’s alas to go after Solstice” (desire makes more sense,) “an empty k3rb” (kerb, though curb for kerb was on the previous page, so why the shift?) “of thieve’s self-esteem” (either thief’s or thieves’,) “from the keb” (from the kerb.) “‘Every one of his devices have backdoor accessibility’” (every one … has … accessibility,) “the hotel staff was clearing the breakfast table” (was there only one of them?) “Even professionals had their soft spots” (as a generalisation this surely requires present tense; have their soft spots,) “lined with dim white lights that lead to” (that led to.) “It’s jaws were closing” (Its jaws,) jerry-rigged (it’s jury-rigged,) “a conversation pitwhile Cy went to” (pit while.) “She took to naturally” (She took to it naturally,) “‘but that time will eventually.’” (will eventually what? [run out, presumably but the sentence just stopped],) “and made groaned” (and groaned,) “each of us were in…” (each of us was in,) “‘you weren’t going to come with, I didn’t want you to feel left out’” (to come with us, I didn’t,) “cold yet still – crunchy katsu” (cold – yet still crunchy – katsu.) “I watched her go. ‘Shoots.’” (why the spacing? And the ‘Shoots’ seems extraneous.) “I wish it didn’t. I wish I could have let her go” (the narrative is in past tense; therefore: wished, x 2,) “while Andie and Tyler talking” (while Andie and Tyler were talking,) “I grit my teeth” (I know USians use fit for fitted but grit for gritted?) “‘To no end’ Duke growled” (to no end does not mean – as was implied here – without end [that is just ‘no end,’] but instead it means ‘without purpose’,) “now he was surroundedone of the guards” (surrounded. One of the guards,) ‘incentive payments‘ (‘incentive payments’.) “I felt my heart’s quicken” (heartbeat quicken?)