Ocean's Godori
The Alliance series, Book 1
Elaine U. Cho
Zando - Hillman Grad Books
Fiction, Sci-Fi
*** (Okay)
DESCRIPTION: As a top-notch spaceship pilot, Ocean Yoon should have been the pride of the Alliance, the Korean space agency that dominates the solar system... but a hushed-up incident branded her as an insubordinate hothead, leaving her to scrape along in junker transport ships under questionable captains. It's just one more failure in a life that's been dominated by failures, ever since her prodigial elder brother died in a freak accident and devastated her family. Her Korean heritage should've been a bonus to her career, too, but she has spent too much time away to truly feel connected to her history, leaving her rootless, without a past and without a future.
As second son of the powerful Anand dynasty whose technology makes space travel possible, Teo has little to do but make an expensive spectacle of his life and disappoint his father, dating a string of celebrities (sometimes even for real and not for the cameras) and generally drifting through his life on the family name and bank account. Aside from his friend Ocean, he has few confidants who see behind the playboy mask, and no idea how to escape the gilded cage of his family.
Haven comes from a long line of outcasts, tenders of the dead often derisively called "Vultures" and who are considered unclean and untouchable. His father sent him away from their isolated colony to experience the wider world before settling into an arranged marriage, but Haven feels less at home in the wider spaceways than he did at home, where he was forever marked as a halfblood due to her light-skinned Alliance mother (who left the family when he was just a child). Still, he doesn't want to disappoint his father by returning without even trying, so he manages to land a berth as a healer on a low-profile ship, one whose captain is desperate enough to hire his kind (or greedy enough to accept the incentive money the Alliance offers to take on Vultures)... a ship whose executive officer is a surly outcast herself, named Ocean.
When a shocking terrorist attack brings the three together, exposing a nefarious plot against the corporations that run the solar system and the Alliance that protects the wealthy and powerful more often than the commoner, they must each confront the messes they've made of their lives, and finally decide what sort of future they want - what sort of future they're willing to fight for.
REVIEW: This Korean-spiced space opera looked like an interesting tale, with many familiar ingredients along with a nicely non-"Western" cultural focus. Unfortunately, it turned into a bland, under-cooked dish where none of the flavors came together in a satisfying way.
Ocean shows promise as a protagonist, even if Cho can get a bit too coy teasing the audience about her Scandalous and Hurtful Past that leads her to push others away and avoid close connections, earning a reputation for being rude and surly... wait, except for her eccentric (to the point where one wonders how they function in general society without a babysitter) crewmates aboard the Ohneul, whom she fairly dotes on and brings treats for and generally enjoys a better, closer connection with than their ridiculously incompetent captain, and completely-out-of-her-social-strata Teo. Haven's unhappy with everyone and everything, sick of being treated as an untouchable outcast and just wanting to go home... oh, wait, except for when he sees Ocean and feels an instant connection. (And, of course, she'll be surly and push him away - oh, wait, until she doesn't... but then she does... and then she doesn't.) I was getting characterization whiplash, how everyone seemed like completely different people every other paragraph. Everyone acts like teenagers, prone to brooding and excess drama, but they're all supposed to be in their thirties. I had trouble really caring about the greater issues of corporate exploitation and corrupted power (political and Alliance), because as the reader I never really see the people suffering most except at a distance, which makes the real antagonist seem like a cartoon villain when they finally show their face. The story itself felt twice as long as it needed to be, dithering and wallowing and sidetracking itself (even when the characters should've had more pressing concerns than sharing face masks and watching TV shows... oh, yeah, the guy whose culture and heritage brands him "untouchable" is casually invited to this touchy-feely beauty party too, even though he's only on the ship because the captain kicked out one of their oldest and most beloved friends/shipmates to get her hands on that hiring incentive money). Ocean becomes one of those main characters who can do almost no wrong, whom everyone is instantly and insanely loyal to because she's her. The ending sets things up for the next installment, but ends on such an awkward note I almost wondered if the audio file was incomplete. Instead of wondering "What's next?" at the end, I was left asking myself, almost out loud, "Who cares?".
I should have enjoyed this one. I should have been more entertained. I should have found a way to connect to even one character and care about their fate. Instead, by the end, I was just pushing food around my plate, hoping I wouldn't have to sit through a dessert before I'd be allowed to leave.
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