Microreview: The Fallen by Ada Hoffmann

 The Fallen continues Ada Hoffmann’s story of Jasira and Tiv, whose inadvertent rebellion against the Gods and the Angels that serve them has irrevocably not only changed them, but the planet of Jai as well.

When last we left the pair, after Jasira’s contact with the Outside and the eruption of the Plague literally bringing down the wrath of heaven on them, they had managed to escape the Angels and set themselves up in a region of the planet Jai where the laws of physics were...different, and malleable. Destroying the region and all within it is a last resort the Angels are not yet ready to implement, but their forces are waiting just outside the Chaos Zone, ready to pounce. The problem for Tiv, is that she is trying to hold together the fragile society they have built in the zone, Jasira herself is very much not holding herself together, when Tiv, and the others, need her the most.

This is the story of Ada Hoffmann’s The Fallen, sequel to The Outside. [I reviewed The Outside here in 2019: http://www.nerds-feather.com/2019/07/microreview-book-outside-by-ada-hoffmann.html ]

What happens after the heresy and defying the Gods, and having to actually build and hold things together in the wake of the drama of the first novel and the contact with things outside reality. After you make the dramatic break, how do you hold things together, especially built on such a slippery foundation?  Hoffmann’s story explores this in detail, showing how the society within the zone on Jai depends strongly on Tiv and her counterparts. It’s a precarious situation for Tiv and company and the story of them trying to hold the Zone together itself could be the mainline of the novel.

The novel, however,  provides much more. I was conflicted at first by the novel taking Yasira off of the table for much of the novel, relying on Tiv, but I realized the clever switch of the major POV here to Tiv and it works rather well, and like this. Yasira, with her contact with the Outside, is now something much more than human, and the Seven (including Tiv) have to hold the Zone together, help their people and keep watch on what the people are doing. Yasira is not quite a deus ex machina, but keeping her offstage, and mostly out of sight, and keeping her power at bay does mean that Tiv and the others have to find other solutions to the problems besetting them. This is accentuated by the narrative cruelty of Tiv, among the Seven, not having any “superpower” granted to her by the Plague. She can’t manipulate reality as the others can (who really do some across as “superheroes”) and more so, is the ostensible leader with Yasira incommunicado (and clearly in distress for all of that). 

There are some interesting narrative tricks, too. In addition to Tiv, and in the end, some from Yasira, the point of views we get in the book help illuminate the narrative. Elu and Akavi, the former angels of Nemesis now on the run from the Gods themselves for failing to stop Yasira, Tiv and Dr. Talirr from unleashing the Plague, definitely want to finish the job, regardless.  I also particularly liked Enga as a point of view character here, getting inside of her head and how she thinks was effective on two levels--first, it helped illuminate a rather mysterious character (or more of a force of nature) and second, like with the stories of Tiv and Yasira, it helped strengthen and promote the neurodiverse voices and  overall diversity in the book. Hoffmann’s protagonists, Enga included, are fascinatingly flawed individuals who nevertheless try the best that they can.  Rather than making it a black and white story of those who support the gods and those who oppose them, the use of character voices like Enga also show other sides of the conflict in Hoffmann’s verse.

And then there are the “Story” bits. Throughout the narrative, we get some short sections where the Gods tell the “Story” of the Chaos Zone from their point of view. This point of view is very much skewed on their point of view, and is uniformly hostile to all of our protagonists, and Elu and Akavi do come across in a new light as they are ostensibly trying for these goals, as well as their own agendas. All this complexity enriches the narrative of the universe and the narrative of the characters as well. 

The narrative tricks also extend to the timelines and order of events in the novel as well. There is a lot of hopping around in time and events throughout the book, which makes sense given that the characters are quite literally in a zone of reality where the rules of the universe don’t quite work the way they are supposed to, this makes sense. The novel disorients a reader in its experience, and I think that is a deliberate choice on the part of the author.

But this also illuminates a weakness for me for the novel. Where I think the novel doesn’t quite hit the worldbuilding, characters, representation and other elements is the plotting. The through line of the plot isn’t as strongly delineated as the other elements of the book, and I think that is a weakness. It’s not a fatal weakness for the novel, and I delighted in the other elements of the book, but for those who want a strong overall plot, this novel feels a bit of a step back from the first book, whose inciting incident definitely kept the plot rolling with its implications and results. Here, the novel begins sometime after the end of the Plague, but there isn’t the same sort of narrative drive. The hopping around  in time and space masks this problem rather than solves it in my view.

Overall, for all it discomfited me, and the plotting frustrated me, I enjoyed this long awaited followup to The Outside. The world that Hoffmann creates here, particularly, is one I would like to spend some more time in. 

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The Math

Baseline Score: 7/10

Bonuses: +1 for continued interesting worldbuilding and asking the question of “what happens next” effectively

+1 for interesting use of point of views to illuminate the narrative.

Penalties: -1 A lack of narrative plotting drive in the plotting is a real weakness of the book.

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10 

POSTED BY: Paul Weimer. Ubiquitous in Shadow, but I’m just this guy, you know? @princejvstin.

Reference: Hoffmann, Ada The Fallen  [Angry Robot, 2021] 

Microreview [book]: The Outside by Ada Hoffmann

Ada Hoffmann’s The Outside is an extremely successful fusion of Space Opera and Lovecraftian motifs to tell the story of AI Gods, Angels, and an autistic engineer co-opted into an interdimensional conflict.

Thousands of years in the future, humanity has spread out to the stars and has a presence on numerous planets. However, in getting to an interstellar civilization, humanity managed to accidentally create a set of superhuman AIs who, like the old short short story stinger (“Now there is a God!”) decided to transcendentally become Gods. With a strong hand on human culture by means of their augmented humans known as angels, these Gods watch over humanity, especially when they meddle with extra dimensional forces that threaten to undo reality.

Enter Yasira Shien, whose new reactor is unwittingly set to do just that. Yasira will find that the price of doing this is not death, but rather being tasked to find someone who is working with these forces deliberately--her former mentor. Her former mentor is a threat to reality, and Yasira is the best tool for the job of finding her. But Yasira may find that the ruthless angels are less trustworthy than the woman seeking to broach the walls of reality.

This is the story of Ada Hoffmann’s debut novel. The Outside.

The world that Hoffmann creates in the novel is intensely rich and interesting. Although the action is relatively limited in where it takes place, there are plenty of implied and referenced locations, cultures, and elements that give it a feel of a well designed universe. There are a number of different planetary cultures, a few aliens, interesting bits of technology (including a division between technology that humans have, and the technology only the Angels and Gods have) and plenty of spaces that feel lived in and real. There are a few references to the Mythos here, too, but Hoffmann keeps a relatively light hand on that. 

And then there are the theological aspects to her universe Mixing religion and space opera convincingly into a novel is a tricky task that few authors attempt with any sort of rigor. Herbert’s Dune is far less common than much more sterile rationalist space future, or futures where religion feels perfunctory and tacked on. Perhaps it is because of the nature of the AI Gods and their very Olympian God meddling into daily life, but the theistic aspects of Hoffmann’s universe feel organic and tied to the setting. But of course AIs afraid of contamination of the Outside would be watching scientific research, and intervene when such research threatens the stability of all and sundry. A hierarchical bureaucratic vision of servants of various Gods? Yep, that really feels how “it would go”. Yasira’s girlfriend Tiv (short for Productivity) is a genuinely devout character whose faith and belief is treated with respect. And while movies like Event Horizon do nibble at the idea of using Lovecraftian motifs in space, this novel runs with that idea. The Outside is no less dangerous and threatening in an interstellar civilization of high technology. And the novel also makes clear in the building of this world just exactly why, after becoming Gods, why these AIs still bother with humans instead of going off and ignoring their creators.

The novel also gets a lot of good love for its characters, especially its nuanced and sympathetic depiction of neurodivergent characters. Yasira is autistic, and I found her as a protagonist relatable, grounded, believable and extremely interesting. Her neurodivergent nature is not just there for plot reasons or for color, it is crucial to understanding her and with her as one of our major point of views, we really get a sense and feel of how an autistic character might thrive and act in a weird and wondrous future. Unlike, say, Elizabeth Moon’s The Speed of Dark, which also revolves around an autistic character and a potential cure for it, the future that Hoffmann posits has standard and well accepted practices and techniques for autistic characters to adapt to society. Yasira is not the only neurodivergent character, either, as her mentor (and antagonist) also shows neurodivergence. And then there is Enga, one of the more martially inclined Angels, who has a speech deficiency which is compensated with her using a speech to text device. She’s ferocious, unrelenting, sometimes dryly funny and definitely someone I’d rather have at my back in an alley rather than the other side. 

The other characters in the novel come off very well, too. The angel Akavi, head of the angel team under the Goddess Nemesis that takes Yasira into custody, comes across as a more than a little charismatic Lawful Evil angel with goals, plans and drives of his own. He’s hardly autonomous, though, and has to report to hierarchies above him, leading him to have to make sometimes unorthodox and bold choices--as well as frankly evil and unappetizing ones. Having him for point of view does allow us to see his point of view, and he also provides a lot of mental infodumping on some of the aforementioned worldbuilding.

With a rich, inventive world and characters to populate it, the plotting of the novel shows a few signs of first novel lack of polish. I am very impressed otherwise with the novel and would be definitely amenable to having a follow up novel or other novels set in the universe that the author might write. More, please. 

***

The Math

Baseline Assessment: 7/10.

Bonuses: +1 for excellent and inventive worldbuilding

+1 for a strong set of interesting characters, especially the neurodivergent. 

Penalties: -1 for a few first novel bits of roughness in plotting

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10 well worth your time and attention

Reference:  Hoffmann, Ada  The Outside  [Angry Robot 2019]

Paul Weimer. Ubiquitous in Shadow, but I’m just this guy, you know? @princejvstin.

Summer Reading List 2019: Paul

While winter is for reading and trying to stay warm in the Great White North when the Ice Giants and the White Dragons roam the wastelands of Minnesota, summer is for getting out there and enjoying the all too brief warm weather. That hardly means, however, that reading comes to an end, far from it. It does mean that reading time on weekends is while having lunch somewhere on the North Shore, or even more distant destinations, and audiobooks consumed to eat up the miles driving on the highways and byways in search of photographic subjects. So here, find a list of six of the books I am looking forward to getting to before Summer turns to Fall, and green shifts to hues of red, gold, and orange before a clattering change to brown.

I read five out of the six on my 2018 list. Let’s see how 2019 stacks up!

1. Priest of Lies, Peter McLean.

I was favorably impressed with McLean’s debut novel, Priest of Bones, which worked very well as a cross between The Godfather and The Prince, set in a Renaissance fantasy world. There were hints of a greater and wider scope in store for the characters and the world by the end of the first volume, and I am looking forward to the fulfillment of that in the second book of the series.

2. Empress of Forever, Max Gladstone.

I came about a year late to the start of Gladstone’s Craft sequence, and have been rapidly playing catch up ever since. The high concept, an Elon Musk like character who is catapulted into the future and becomes a central figure against a tyrannical Empire, seems to foreground themes of freedom and justice that Gladstone puts in all his works, and I look forward to seeing what  his deft hand with worldbuilding can do.

3. Gideon the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir.

I’ve heard nothing but good things about this debut novel, which has, as one of its pitches as “Lesbian Necromancers in Space”. That sort of peanut butter and chocolate mixiing of science fiction and fantasy tropes is, quite frankly, catnip to me, and I am very curious as to where that concept will lead the author.

4. The Outside, Ada Hoffman.

Another debut author, this novel has been pitched as AI Gods force a scientist to hunt post-human angels on their behalf after one of her experiments badly warps reality. It sounds a bit like the gonzo work of Hannu Rajaniemi, combined with something of a Lovecraftian mentality.

5.The Gossamer Mage, Julie Czerneda.

Czenerda is one of the small select group of authors that, after years of buying and reading her stuff, is now on my auto-buiy list, even if its in a subgenre she is not known particularly for. While most of her work is SF in genre, the author has written a couple of fantasy novels, and this, The Gossamer Mage, looks to be a new world and a new series in that tradition. Mage vs tyrannical Goddess with heavy consequences if the Mage succeeds? Yes, please and thank you!

6. A Sword Named Truth, Sherwood Smith.

Smith’s fantasy novels are set in a complex and intricate world with realistic politics, strong characters and intriguing situations into which she dumps her protagonists. She loves to put young, wet behind the ears protagonists into the deep end, and this forthcoming novel, which sets a number of untested rulers against an enemy arrayed against them. Misunderstandings, inexperience and a lack of trust between the young rulers makes it sound like it will be a tough row to hoe for  the protagonists.

POSTED BY: Paul Weimer. Ubiquitous in Shadow, but I’m just this guy, you know? @princejvstin.