The Wrong Stars
The Axiom series, Book 1
Tim Pratt
Angry Robot
Fiction, Adventure/Sci-Fi
**+ (Bad/Okay)
DESCRIPTION: Five hundred years ago, a dying Earth sent out fleets of "goldilocks" ships: vessels with cryogenically-preserved crews, embryos, and other building blocks of colonization, flung into the stars and aimed at planets that might possibly be hospitable to human life. But then people got themselves together (more or less), the planet slowly recovering as humanity spread through the solar system... and then the Liars showed up. Vaguely cephalopodlike aliens who come in multiple body types, no two groups tell the same stories of their origins, their purpose, or even what the rest of the galaxy is like, hence humanity's popular name for them. But they are keen traders of technology, and now humans have access to "bridges" that allow passage to various systems in nearly the blink of an eye. As for the goldilocks ships, a handful succeeded, more reached their destination after centuries to find that bridge-assisted people had beat them to colonization, and many were presumed lost to the void... until now.
Callie and the crew of the White Raven thought they'd stumbled across another easy salvage when they found the derelict ship drifting near Neptune, though one whose profile they don't recognize. Beneath all the strange fins and appendages welded to the surface, they're astonished to find an ancient relic: a goldilocks ship. It must've malfunctioned and never gotten clear of the solar system, but something doesn't add up. Who - or what - made the bizarre modifications, which are both inside and outside the hull? And, with only one crewmember in cryogenic suspension, what happened to everyone else?
Elaine Oh was a xenobiologist who never expected to see her home star system again. Then she's woken by a stranger who informs her that five centuries have passed, and not only did her ship not reach the distant planet it was aiming for, it apparently never left home, relatively speaking. But... no, that's not right. Her memory is a bit scrambled from the sleep pod, but she remembers going somewhere - and something terrible happened, something she has to warn people about, if only she could remember.
When the White Raven's half-cyborg engineer Ashok discovers a strange box in the engine bay, none of them suspect the magnitude of what they've discovered... or how the fallout could destroy humanity.
REVIEW: I knew, going into this one, that it was composed of many familiar space opera/adventure parts. The ragtag salvage crew, the aliens with unknown motivations, the "magic box"/MacGuffin technology that endangers anyone who possesses it... nothing particularly innovative here. But familiar doesn't necessarily mean bad. Even the stalest genre chestnuts can be made tasty with the right seasoning and presentation. Unfortunately, The Wrong Stars never became more than the sum of its generic parts... and sometimes, sadly, felt less than that sum.
Things start with plenty of promise, as Callie and her peculiar crew discover the goldilocks ship, Elaine, and the mystery, all pretty much out of the gate... tweaked when, briefly revived from slumber, Elaine's first words are a warning about alien contact. But aliens are old news in modern-day deep space; the Liars are common faces around the solar system, though of course they arrived after the goldilocks ships left Earth. Of course, the reader can infer that there's more than that... and the crew really should, too, when Ashok discovers the strange black box that defies every scan he throws at it, and when the mere sight of it sends every Liar in the vicinity fleeing as fast as their multiple tentacle legs can carry them. The crew's persistent refusal to ignore the evidence of their eyes is an early warning sign, unfortunately. There are soon numerous others. For a starfaring future that has reached other systems generations ago, the future Pratt presents just doesn't feel... futuristic, or big, or exciting, or anything I generally feel when reading a solid space adventure. Elaine barely has any trouble adapting to a society that's advanced five centuries in her absence, excepting brief moments of disorientation meeting a few more exotic members of the crew (whose exotic nature, with the exception of Ashok's cybernetic enhancements, as often as not end up just being cosmetic, and not really impacting the plot) and people on the Neptunian space station she visits. One would think that encountering aliens and having whole new colony worlds opened up would have some sort of notable impact, something to really throw a relic from the past off her game, but no. She's almost immediately more concerned with whether or not her physical attraction to Callie is reciprocated; they're both women, but I couldn't help sensing a bit of "male gaze" behind their interactions (no prize for guessing whether the feelings are, in fact, mutual).
Beyond those issues, the story itself started feeling stale pretty early, as characters increasingly skewed toward less intelligent actions and conversations, repeating things and drawing out revelations. By the end, everyone had pretty much entered "too stupid to live" territory. I can't get into details for spoiler reasons, but I can rarely pinpoint a particular scene and interaction that dropped a book's rating below three stars like I could in this story, and it did involve characters being impossibly, ridiculously obtuse, even when the baddie was laying out their evil plans, using all the standard Evil Plan (TM) jargon, literally kicking another character like kicking a puppy... and still, still, they had to be outright told (again and again) before they believed that this person was, in fact, not particularly good maybe. (There were other elements involved, too, relating to alien tech and artifacts and what seemed to be glaring plot and logic holes, but, again, spoiler potential.) And then the wrap up just empties a box of leftover space adventure clichés on the table as if to get them over with before setting up a sequel.
It's frustrating more than anything. This could've been an enjoyable adventure, even with the familiarity. But by the end I just felt like I'd wasted my time with a crew I didn't care for in a galaxy that felt too small.
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