Best of 2017 as read by G

A pretty underwhelming year of reading...

The best (5 stars):

• None! :(

Special mentions (4.5 stars):

• The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu and Ken Liu
• Seveneves: A Novel by Neal Stephenson

The Fifth Season by N.K Jemisin (4 stars)

Hugo winner! This is very unusual fantasy. The world building is complex, it's about as far from your standard medieval setting with elves, swords, and magic as possible. It's a very messy and believable world, no cardboard cutout characters - there's various gender identities and sexual orientations. There's racism, governmental oppression and desperate people surviving a hostile world.

The narration itself is highly unusual, the novel spends a large amount of time in a second-person POV. It's honestly pretty annoying to read:

For the past ten years you've lived as ordinary a life as possible. You came to Tirimo from elsewhere; the townsfolk don't really care where or why. Since you were obviously well educated, you became a teacher at the local creche for children aged ten to thirteen.

At times it feels much more like a puzzle with hints, than a regular novel:

There are things you should be noticing, here. Things that are missing, and conspicuous by their absence. Notice, for example, that no one in the Stillness speaks of islands.

I've waited too long to write this review, so I don't have too much to say.

4 stars.

The Book of Life by Deborah Harkness (1 star)

You read an entire trilogy that you rated as one star each? Yes, I did. I really wanted to see how this thing ended.

Spoilers ahead.

This whole novel lurches from one inconsistency to another, with lots of attention and focus on boring detail that doesn't advance the story at all.

It starts out with implying that a major character Emily Mather has died, which is a fairly crucial plot point given that Knox kills her. Why does that happen off the page? Harkness seems to be deliberately keeping away any scenes that are remotely interesting. I mean Diana and Mr. wine list could have time-traveled back to just after when they left and avoided this weird time gap in which Emily gets killed, but of course that fits with how poorly thought out all the time travel logic was.

There's yet more family squabbles and tense dinners over Diana's acceptance into the family (essentially the same plot as the entire first two books). Matthew gets into doing a bunch of gardening and house renovations to the witches' house, which is described in lots of boring detail.

“If you keep Matthew from renting that steel roller he’s been talking about to resurface the driveway, 

Easy-to-grow plants like elfwort and yarrow helped the children understand the seasonal cycle of birth, growth, decay, and fallowness that guided any witch’s work in the craft. A hollow stump served as a container for mint and other invasive plants.

Matthew is constantly running his fingers through his hair, whenever he's worried or needs to think, which is every couple of paragraphs:

Matthew drove his fingers through his hair.

Diana has this whole dragon familiar thing, which basically hardly ever features in the novel apart from when it needs to be a deus ex machina. It reads like it's some sort of neglected pet.

Harkness introduces a ton of new characters for no real reason, apart from padding, and continues to ignore the most interesting characters:

Fernando was a domestic tyrant—far worse than Em ever was—and his changes to Sarah’s diet and exercise plan were radical and inflexible. He signed my aunt up for a CSA program that delivered a box of exotic vegetables like kale and chard every week, and he walked the property’s fence line with her whenever she tried to sneak a cigarette.

Matthew and Diana continue to be Mary Sue's in a very self-congratulatory tedious way:

“I can create because my father was a weaver, and I can destroy because my mother had the talent for higher, darker magics.” “A union of opposites,” Matthew said. “Your parents were an alchemical wedding, too. One that produced a marvelous child.”

A incredibly implausible best friend Chris turns up that has literally never been mentioned in two whole previous novels:

Why didn’t you tell me? Where have you been? Why didn’t you let me help? 

Yeah, Diana, you are a seriously terrible friend. What was this guy supposed to think happened to you? And of course, Chris drops his entire professional career direction to go off and research all the crazy shit that his supposed best friend is talking about. Seems plausible.

We find out Ysabeau has PTSD or something since she's created an insane set of alarms that are going off multiple times a day:

Other alarms marked the hour of Hugh’s death and Godfrey’s, the hour when Louisa had first exhibited signs of blood rage, the hour when Marcus had demonstrated definitively that the same disease had not touched him.

There's a weird "drinking during pregnancy is OK" message being pushed, it's mentioned more than once:

“My own mam drank whiskey every day of her pregnancy—and

Marcus had assured me that a single glass every now and again wouldn’t affect the babies, provided I waited a couple of hours before I nursed. 

The whole Congregation is apparently on the hunt for Diana and Matthew, but they are telling their story to pretty much everyone, so the Congregation is pretty terrible at being an ominous all-powerful organization. A sentiment which is reinforced by turning scary vampire Gerbert into grandpa-on-the-internet who gets viruses and needs to call up geek squad:

Sadly for Gerbert—though happily for Ysabeau—an addiction to the Internet and an understanding of how best to use it did not always go hand in hand. Because of the sites he frequented, Gerbert was plagued by computer viruses.

Still with the yoga.

Matthew continues to make completely unilateral important decisions without consulting Diana:

“What is this about?” I asked Matthew when he opened my door. “I thought we should divide the ceremony into two parts: a pagan naming ceremony here, and a Christian baptism at the church,”

and Phoebe quits her career at Sotheby's: another professional woman enters an abusive relationship and throws her life away. Great role models in this book.

There's nothing satisfying about any of this, and I have no idea why these books are rated so highly on Amazon.

1 star.

Shadow of Night by Deborah Harkness (1 star)

Well, here we are, second book in the terrible series that I'm reading for no good reason. Spoilers ahead.

This has got to be hands-down the least plausible conception of time-travel that ever made it to print. But first some background. So Matthew picks a time (the year 1590) seemingly pretty much at random, but presumably because Harkness had done the research for that time period and wanted to show it off.

There's literally no good reason to pick that time in history - Matthew doesn't know any powerful witches to train Diana alive at that time, and people are being executed left and right for witchcraft, whether they are actual witches or not. So you know, asking around for a witch to learn from isn't going to exactly be easy. Not to mention that Diana is going to stick out like a sore thumb: she is a modern woman and doesn't know anything about how to live in 1590. Cue long boring sections about how to write with a quill and get dressed.

So poor life choices, but fine. Here's how the time travel works. Matthew shows up and 1590 Matthew just disappears....Umm. OK. Sure. What happens when they leave? Apparently 1590 Matthew just reappears and he is going to be confused AF because for a good few months he was apparently hanging out with some crazy woman, who he married, and carried on with at Queen Elizabeth's court, adopted a kid etc. But 1590 Matthew is just going to pop back into being and what? Be really confused? And somehow he doesn't remember that experience a few centuries later when he starts hanging out with Diana? This situation is just so dumb.

That's why most time travel fiction actually tries to avoid your real self in the past. But no, that would get in the way of making Matthew THE MOST IMPORTANT MAN IN HISTORY. I mean he's friends with literally everyone famous from that era, which seems like a poor decision for a creature who's supposed to be hiding, since you know, he doesn't actually age at all. It's all just so implausible.

Anyway, the novel continues in it's boring way, with even more abusive terrible relationships, this time modelling spectacularly bad behavior towards Phoebe:

Phoebe’s hand was trembling. That man—that strange man with no grasp of proper etiquette and startling blue eyes—had kissed her. At her place of work. Without her permission.

Kit's obviously the largest danger to Diana, but everyone seems implausibly oblivious to this. Especially Diana and Matthew themselves. It allows Diana to get into a slow-motion bond-villain death trap with a jousting mannequin.

I'm pretty sick of hearing about Ashmole 782.

1 star.

A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness (1 star)

Occasionally I look at the most positively reviewed books on Amazon, and peruse "top 100" lists. I'm not sure which one of those led me here, but that's my excuse. On the upside I get to indulge in a negative review, which is a lot more fun to write than a 3-4 star review, which is most of the books I read.

First up it's not fantasy, it's a romance novel. The magic, vampirey and time-travel bits are thrown in haphazardly and in a way that destroys any credibility of a well-thought out world. We follow a young witch as she discovers her powers and then throws her future away on a sick relationship with a rich controlling asshole who happens to be a vampire. If that sounds like the twilight series to you, it should.

We start with Diana, smart intelligent researcher, world-renowned expert, and modern woman. By her own account she has a very healthy respect for how dangerous vampires are, but within a few pages she's jumping in the car of an incredibly powerful one. They head out to a yoga session for vamps, daemons, and witches at this guy's house, at which point I realised this was actually a romance novel.

Dozens of daemons, vampires, and witches dipped and swooped their bodies into graceful, upward curves.

Ugh. From here on in, it's just Matthew showing off ridiculously expensive wine/real-estate/antiques/art and Diana ignoring all the relationship red flags anyone should ever need. I thought she was supposed to be a strong-spirited intelligent modern woman.

“This is Château Margaux from a very great vintage. Some people consider it the finest red wine ever made.”

 She hands over her blood sample and he proceeds to dictate everything about her life, including who she can talk to, and then starts physically assaulting her.

“Let me go, Matthew.” I struggled in his arms. “No.” No man had ever refused when I asked him to stop doing something—whether it was blowing his nose in the library or trying to slip a hand up my shirt after a movie. I struggled again. Matthew’s arms got tighter. “Stop fighting me.” He sounded amused. “You’ll get tired long before I do, I assure you.”

 Miriam sees the same thing:

“She told me I needed to learn how to take care of myself and stop relying on you to protect me. She basically accused me of playing the damsel in distress.”

That was your intervention Diana, I feel sad that you couldn't see it. Oh well, back to Matthew dictating everything about your life and you being passive:

“You’ll stay at Woodstock until Peter Knox leaves Oxford.” My face must have betrayed my dismay. “It won’t be so bad,” he said gently. “You’ll have all the yoga you want.” With Matthew in bodyguard mode, I didn’t have much choice.

“This family is not a democracy, especially not at a time like this. When I tell you to do something, you do it, without hesitation or question. Understood?”

“Do you understand why you must not question Matthew when he tells you to do something?”

 I mean, you're an expert horse rider, but sure, let him treat you like a baby:

“I can get onto a horse myself,” I said hotly. “But you don’t need to.” Matthew’s hands cupped my shin, lifting me effortlessly into the saddle.

It makes me sick to think that all the people giving this 5 stars on amazon apparently might actually admire this kind of relationship with Mr. patronizing wine-list:

“You’re tired,” he said, “and hungry. Maybe we should wait until after lunch.”

Surprise! Time for some time-travel, don't bother asking when/where you're going though, your husband can decide all that for you:

I still knew nothing, except that I was headed to a time before 1976 and a place where Matthew had played chess.

Spoiler from the next book: Matthew had no idea what he was doing when he picked the time and place.

There's just barely enough interesting stuff happening in amongst the cringeworthy relationship bits and girlfriend-meeting-the-family boring drama, the woke-up-and-went-out-for-breakfast bits, then-I-went-rowing bits, and then-we-had-dinner bits to make me want to read the next book to see if there's more interesting fantasy world stuff happening in the new time period.

But really I don't have a good reason to read the next one, this was terrible, maybe I just like writing negative reviews.

1 star.

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin (4 stars)

I can see how this was very groundbreaking in 1969. It is a well written thought experiment on gender and sex, and how it influences so much of society structure and behaviour. Amazingly it has stood the test of decades and much progression in our thinking about gender and sexuality to still be readable and relevant to the modern reader. There's plenty of old sci-fi that hasn't aged nearly as well, and shows it was definitely deserving of it's Hugo and Nebula awards.

We follow a human ambassdor's experience on the planet Winter where:

Cultural shock was nothing much compared to the biological shock I suffered as a human male among human beings who were, five-sixths of the time, hermaphroditic neuters.

Consider: There is no division of humanity into strong and weak halves, protective/protected, dominant/submissive, owner/chattel, active/passive. In fact the whole tendency to dualism that pervades human thinking may be found to be lessened, or changed, on Winter.

Le Guin leads us through many facets of the society and ambassador Genly's realisation of just how different this gender neutral world really is to a human male:

The First Mobile, if one is sent, must be warned that unless he is very self-assured, or senile, his pride will suffer. A man wants his virility regarded, a woman wants her femininity appreciated, however indirect and subtle the indications of regard and appreciation. On Winter they will not exist. One is respected and judged only as a human being. It is an appalling experience.

In addition to the gender thought experiment there's also plenty of other issues touched upon, including how damaging rabid nationalism can be.

If you're after a rollicking plot and scintillating adventure on another planet, this is not the book for you. It feels like reading a documentary about another planet, a super-interesting one, but the plot isn't the strongest part of the novel.

4 stars.

Absolution Gap by Alastair Reynolds (3 stars)

There's a lot of crazy stuff in this novel. Quaiche's Cathedrals, Skade being a psychopath, ship completely controlled by plague assimilated captain, and more. I'm honestly not really sure what to think, but I left this whole series fairly unfulfilled. It's an awful lot of words to read to have that feeling, and I struggled to get through this one. It's been too long since I read it to put down anything more coherent.

 3 stars.

Redemption Ark by Alastair Reynolds (3 stars)

Book 2 of the revelation space series. It's been too long since I read this to give it a proper review. Mostly what I remember is that it was a fairly boring chase for these fancy weapons through a whole lot of space, when probably what they should be doing is actually using the weapons.

3 stars.

Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds (3.5 stars)

This Revelation Space series followed on in a very similar vein to the three body problem, but was less memorable. Maybe I just got burnt out on hard sci-fi. In this series there's a race of aliens crushing intelligent life in the galaxy that trips technological triggers by getting too advanced, as well as a plague ship that has consumed it's captain, and lots of relics of dead civilisations.

 I've waited too long to review these books so it's going to be a short review.

The frequent POV switching was quite annoying. Especially since they happened just with new paragraphs and without any headings.

 The Mademoiselle was cringe-worthy Dr. Evil overplayed bad guy, all it was missing was a white cat to stroke:

“Oh yes,” the Mademoiselle said. Then she snatched at the globe with her hand, crushing it between her fingers, rivulets of dust pouring between them. “Very much more.”

And this description of security controls made me laugh out loud. Sounds like something from a kids TV show:

“Access counter-insurgent protocols; lambda-plus severity, maximum battle-readiness concurrence and counter-check to be assumed, full autonomous denial-suppression, criticality-nine Armageddon defaults, red-one-alpha security-bypass, all Triumvirate privileges invoked at all levels; all non-Triumvirate privileges rescinded.” 

3.5 stars.

Death's End by Cixin Liu (4 stars)

Another impressive, thoughtful novel by Cixin Liu, closing out the series. I'm finding these fairly hard to review, mostly because I've waited too long to write the reviews, but here's some random thoughts.

The thought experiment of what would happen if humanity developed highly reliable hibernation technology was interesting and fairly horrifying:

Once the technology was successfully commercialized, those who could afford it would use it to skip to paradise, while the rest of humanity would have to stay behind in the comparatively depressing present to construct that paradise for them.

Shooting a brain out into space with a series of nuclear weapons was badass.

The transition from Luo Ji to Cheng Xin as swordholder was brilliantly executed and shocking.

The specific focus on Australia as a refugee settlement was fairly weird.

4 stars.

The Dark Forest by Cixin Liu (4 stars)

Sequel to the excellent Three Body Problem. Less Chinese history, even more crazy thought experiments. Some serious spoilers ahead.

What would you do if your mortal enemy could observe even your most secret discussions and all strategy was essentially an open book? Humanity comes up with a really novel solution in the form of the Wallfacers and Trisolaris counters with their Wallbreakers. Great stuff.

The Wallfacer Luo Ji is obviously set up to be the real danger, by appearing to do nothing for a very long time.

How are we supposed to know whether or not you have already started work?

The Trisolarans recognise the threat and come up with a super sophisticated assassination method. Meanwhile Zang Beihai is also coming up with his own amazingly complex murder plot to remove opposition to technological research: it involves creating bullets out of meteorites....

The central realization of the book is that the universe is a dangerous dark forest where voices are silenced quickly, which is a neat explanation of the Fermi paradox.

“The universe is a dark forest. Every civilization is an armed hunter stalking through the trees like a ghost, gently pushing aside branches that block the path and trying to tread without sound. Even breathing is done with care. The hunter has to be careful, because everywhere in the forest are stealthy hunters like him. If he finds other life—another hunter, an angel or a demon, a delicate infant or a tottering old man, a fairy or a demigod—there’s only one thing he can do: open fire and eliminate them.

A very interesting and thought-provoking read.

4 stars

The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu and Ken Liu (4.5 stars)

In Part I: Silent Spring, the book begins in the Chinese Cultural Revolution from the perspective of Ye Wenjie, and gives us some insight into that time. There's a lot of little footnotes dotted through the text that explain some of the Chinese context when pure translation falls short.

Spoilers ahead.

Reading Silent Spring shakes the foundations of Ye Wenjie's life, and causes her to question almost everything and then betray humankind in a very surprising way:

If this was so, then how many other acts of humankind that had seemed normal or even righteous were, in reality, evil?

Wenjie extends a deliberate invitation to a powerful alien race to invade and cleanse Earth of humanity. This was unlike any other first contact story I've ever read. Wenjie's actions start a doomsday clock ticking that will expire in 450 years.

As a society how can you possibly plan a project that will a) determine whether your species continues to exist, and b) spans many many generations? It's a fascinating thought experiment that Liu explores from a number of angles, not least of which is the anticipated demoralization and fatalism that is expected to overcome future generations.

Many factions react differently to the news of a powerful alien race coming to take over the Earth. The "Saviors" develop a video game as a recruiting tool which is a fantastic and surreal exploration of the Trisolaran world that includes a player solving mathematical problems by developing an entire computer architecture based on humans moving around on a field:

“Your Imperial Majesty, this is the Qin 1.0 operating system we developed. The software for doing the calculations will run on top of it. That below”—Von Neumann pointed to the human-formation computer—“is the hardware. What’s on this paper is the software. The relationship between hardware and software is like that between the guqin zither and sheet music.”

Complete with progress bars made from people carrying coloured flags:

“Self-test complete! Begin boot sequence! Load operating system!”

Rehydrate! Dehydrate!

The next thought experiment is: how could you hold back all scientific innovation of a global society with the smallest amount of effort? The Trisolarans want to hamstring Earth science and defense to meet minimal resistance in 450 years. So with very limited resources they decide to disrupt fundamental physical particle research.

It's a really really odd book. It's not particularly easy reading and it's fairly slow to start. But it is fascinating.

4.5 stars.

Modern Romance by Aziz Ansari and Eric Klinenberg (4 stars)

This is a great read, and I was surprised to find it is actually very scientific. Ansari and Klinenberg (who is a sociology professor) conducted a lot of research as well as literature review, and present the information in a engaging format with plenty of humour sprinkled throughout. Aziz reads like how he speaks, I think the audio book might be even better.

Some of my favourite quotes below.

It made me wonder whether our ability and desire to interact with strangers is another muscle that risks atrophy in the smartphone world.

On the amount of time to wait before texting back:

“There is this desire, for me at least, to have the upper hand. I have to have it. So if I text someone, and they wait ten minutes to text me back, I wait twenty.

The amazing things people write in their profiles:

“No fatties, no alcoholics,” proclaimed another. “I’m currently cleaning up toxic waste” is how one man described his professional life, while another described himself as “an executive by day, a wild man by night,” and a third proclaimed, “I’m interested in all aspects of data processing.”

On the fundamental problems with online dating:

But our research also convinced me that too many people spend way too much time doing the online part of online dating, not the dating part.

4 stars.

 

Mrs. Kennedy and Me: An Intimate Memoir by Clint Hill and Lisa McCubbin (4 stars)

Clint Hill has written a very personal account of his time protecting first lady Jacqueline Kennedy. It casts Mrs. Kennedy in a positive light and doesn't raise any scandal, as you may expect from someone writing about their former employer and not interested in burning their bridges. It also gives the reader a good insight into the lives of the first family and what it's really like to be a Secret Service agent on protective detail. Protecting the first lady is considered a second-string detail compared to the president, but despite that, Clint Hill was amazingly steadfast in his devotion to the job and obviously had a strong personal relationship to the family.

Mr. Hill assumed great personal cost to do his job. He was rarely home, and Mrs. Kennedy's choices to travel constantly and evacuate DC at every opportunity essentially blocked him from being involved in his child's early years.

As a taxpayer I was fairly horrified by the immense costs incurred by Mrs. Kennedy's jet-setting lifestyle. Lavish vacations overseas and semi-official tours of India and Pakistan driven by personal interest were all huge logistical operations for the secret service that would have resulted in large costs borne by the taxpayer.

While it's tempting to see these visits as pure junkets, I somewhat agree with this statement that building personal capital via the first lady can be useful for the leader of the free world. Sadly he probably didn't get the chance to call in these favors:

You don’t even realize the impact you have, how much you are admired, how you just single-handedly created bonds between the United States and two strategic countries far better than any diplomats could have done.

For Mr. Hill the Secret Service job was everything from security and logistics to shopping for swimsuits and transporting horses gifted to Mrs. Kennedy back to the US:

Thus it was that I became a frequent shopper on Worth Avenue, buying swimwear for the president, toys for the children, and personal items for Mrs. Kennedy. This was not in the job description the Secret Service had for me, but it was just one more way to make life a lot easier and less confrontational for Mrs. Kennedy. She appreciated my efforts, and I considered it a good protective move to remove her from public exposure as much as possible.

...all I could think was how the hell are we going to get this damn horse back to Washington? 

It's an interesting read, even if it skips over the more scandalous events such as rumored affairs, and Hill's own deep personal struggles after JFK's death.

4 stars.

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood (4 stars)

This novel has been getting a lot of attention recently, so I decided I'd better take a look. It's a near-future dystopian USA called Gilead where society is completely run by white men, and women have lost essentially all privileges to have any kind of control over their own lives.

I'm going to get straight into spoilers, so be warned.

How did today's America get transformed into Gilead? Offred (literally Of-Red, after the male commander she serves) our narrator drops a lot of clues about being unreliable, but here's what I cobbled together. Most of this isn't revealed until close to the end:

1. There are riots about porn and abortion, the implication being either that the ultra-conservative government has taken both away completely, or that an ultra-conservative group wanted them taken away and the government wouldn't. "it was during the time of the porn riots, or was it the abortion riots, they were close together." 
2. "...they shot the president and machine-gunned the Congress and the army declared a state of emergency. They blamed it on the Islamic fanatics, at the time."
3. "...they suspended the Constitution. They said it would be temporary. There wasn't even any rioting in the streets. People stayed home at night, watching television, looking for some direction. There wasn't even an enemy you could put your finger on."
4. "Newspapers were censored and some were closed down, for security reasons they said."
5. "They said that new elections would be held, but that it would take some time to prepare for them."
6. Fire all the women from their jobs, transfer their money and assets to their husbands or male next of kin. "It's the law, I have to. I have to let you all go". "They've frozen them...Any account with an F on it instead of an M." "They had to do it that way, the Compucounts and the jobs both at once. Can you picture the airports otherwise?"
7. "There were marches of course, a lot of women and some men. But they were smaller than you might have thought. I guess people were scared. And when it was known that the police, or the army, or whoever they were, would open fire almost as soon as any of the marches even started, the marches stopped."

This seems like a scarily plausible playbook for creating a dictatorship, and despite being written 30+ years ago, it's a cautionary tale that is still very relevant. Offred's experience and this dystopian world is chilling in many ways. I think mostly it shows the reader that modern values, rights, and cultural norms are all just ideas and conventions, that can be swept away with sufficient force.

It isn't running away they're afraid of. We wouldn't get far. It's those other escapes, the ones you can open in yourself, given a cutting edge.

There is more than one kind of freedom, said Aunt Lydia. Freedom to and freedom from. In the days of anarchy, it was freedom to. Now you are being given freedom from. Don't underrate it. 

4 stars.

Seveneves: A Novel by Neal Stephenson (4.5 stars)

The Earth will very soon be unlivable. How could we survive? That's the thought experiment that occupies the first two thirds of this very lengthy novel. This is a exploration of an idea that progresses in a similar way to The Martian, i.e. with plenty of detailed technology discussion and little character development. It's a book about tech, and some macro-scale politics, but individual character study it is not.

 I loved this book, but it I can see why those less interested in pure technology "what if" imagination didn't like it at all. I was quite happy to read pages and pages of orbital mechanics discussion, but others may not be. Here's my somewhat random list of annoyances:

• Probability of pulling off space scenario seems far, far, lower than digging into the ground scenario at multiple sites. Many similar challenges except transport is way harder for space.
• Why morse code with the father? It was cute, but they could have sent voice just as easily and had higher bandwidth comms.
• Why did Earth stay functioning for so long? People are still driving trucks, working in factories, stocking shelves in the stores. Why?
• The third section probably should have been a completely new book, since it required completely new world building.

Annoyances with spoilers:

• I don't buy the submarine survivors at all. Was there a massive submarine building program started at the same time as the space one? How did they keep that quiet? How could they maintain equipment on the ocean floor for thousands of years?
• The the re-population from 7 eves seems equally implausible. Too much to go wrong in a very fragile space environment before population reached viability.
• In this future they have incredibly advanced micro robotics, but no basic cheap silicone storage? Having small robots like that requires advanced chip manufacture. Doesn't make any sense, and offered explanations aren't convincing.

But really, it's a great thought experiment and delves into many interesting areas of space exploration. How fast could we build in space, especially with a higher acceptance of risk? What would we need to mine an asteroid? How could we find water? Would society even survive when confined to such close quarters? If we rebuilt the entire human population would there still be racism?

4.5 stars.

Babylon's Ashes by James S. A. Corey (3.5 stars)

The expanse series continues. This one is pretty much a holding pattern for the protomolecule story, in favour of following the human war of everyone vs. the Free Navy. This storyline is OK and has some interesting thought experiments about space warfare tactics like this one:

If Earth hunkered down and rebuilt, it would take them years to get back to where Ceres had been, pinning them to the station like insects against a board. If Earth chased and attacked the Free Navy, they would be firing on ships carrying refugees. If they abandoned the station, millions of Belters would die under their care and push anyone still sympathetic to the old ways toward the new. Anything they did would be a victory for the Free Navy. They couldn’t win. That was Marco’s genius.

But overall it felt pretty meh. The number of POVs explodes and I didn't care about most of them. The continuation of the Rocinante being at the absolute center of all the action was perhaps necessary for the plot, but it was delivered in such an implausible way as to be grating. Lets bet the outcome of the war on a secret mission that must stay low profile from the enemy for it to succeed. How about we pick the most high profile ship and crew in the entire galaxy to run it? Who could be watching? Turns out, everybody.

You'll read it because the series is great, but I can't wait to get back to some protomolecule craziness. 

3.5 stars.