A History of What Comes Next (Silvain Neuvel)

A History of What Comes Next
The Take Them to the Stars series, Book 1
Silvain Neuvel
Tordotcom
Fiction, Historical Fiction/Sci-Fi/Thriller
****+ (Good/Great)

DESCRIPTION: Always run, never fight. Preserve the knowledge. Survive at all costs. Take them to the stars.
For three thousand years, an unbroken line of mothers and daughters, each identical to the previous generation, have worked in the shadows to expand and guide human civilization, prodding them onto the path that will - they hope - take the species to the moon and beyond before an unnamed evil comes to the planet. They drift like ghosts through history, changing names and roles any time they risk exposure, amassing hidden reserves of wealth and contacts and secret records for their descendants. But the Kibsu, as they call themselves, have lost much along the way, including just who or what they are, where they came from, and what "evil" they are meant to be defending against, not to mention the origin and purpose of the peculiar necklace that is all that remains of the original generation known as One. They do know, however, that there is an "evil" already on this world: the Trackers, ruthless beings as inhumanly powerful and gifted as themselves, who have been chasing the Kibsu since the beginning.
In 1945, the 99 - mother Sarah, teenaged daughter Mia - are closer than they've ever been to achieving their goal: World War II saw a massive acceleration in propulsion technology, and the same rockets designed to launch warheads could send people to other worlds. But to keep things moving forward beyond the end of the war will take new pressures and new politics. For the first time, Mia is being entrusted to push forward the Kibsu cause; Sarah managed to pull some of her many hidden strings to get the young woman sent into Germany as an OSS agent as the war winds down, to recruit rocket scientist Wernher von Braun to the American side before Russian troops reach his research facility (and before the Nazis decide that the best way to keep the man's expertise from enemy hands is a bullet to the head). Sarah hopes to spark a rivalry between Russia and America as they carve up and claim Germany's expertise, a rivalry that will lead to bigger and better rockets and, eventually, space travel. It's a dangerous mission, but one that will prove pivotal to the rest of Mia's life, not to mention the future of the Kibsu generations and their sworn mission... even as it may finally draw the stalking Trackers to their doorstep.

REVIEW: A History of What Comes Next is rooted firmly in real-world history, particularly the 1940s and 1950s that formed the foundation of modern space exploration... foundations inextricably linked to atrocities of warfare. This highlights one of the themes of the book, how humans (and Kibsu) have such great capacities for miracles and atrocities, good and evil, within them, the two often mashed up until it's difficult to definitively strip out one from the other; more than once, witnessing firsthand the horrific things people do to each other, what can be waved away or excused or rationalized by those who may not actively participate in terrible things but don't (or can't) stand up against them, Mia questions whether humans are worth saving at all. When she gets her first tastes of her inhuman Kibsu abilities, and how easily she can eliminate threats (physically, if not psychologically), she starts to wonder just how different she and her mother are from the Trackers, who are mostly known to them through the unspeakably mutilated corpses they leave in their wake whenever they get close to the Kibsu. Mia starts pushing back against her mother's rules, and though friction between mother and daughter isn't unknown in the generations, Mia's challenge to the status quo takes it to new levels, and has lasting ramifications for mother, daughter, and those humans around them (who remain ignorant of their inhuman nature, but are very much a part of their lives nonetheless, for all that Sarah keeps advising her daughter to keep emotionally distant). It makes Sarah rethink her own life and how she's pursued her goals, and whether the example set by her mother and grandmother and back through the line is the only possible way for the Kibsu to be. But some lessons of past generations are worth preserving... such as fear of the Trackers, who sometimes seem as nebulous as any bogeyman but are all too real. The reader gets a few chapters from their point of view, shining new light on the Kibsu's origins; unlike the Kibsu, the all-male generations of Trackers remember their origins and purpose, though that memory doesn't make them any less dangerous or psychotic. Meanwhile, Sarah and Mia see more than their share of human danger and madness as they navigate postwar Germany, Russia, and America. Some chapters flash back to previous generations of Kibsu through the ages, showing how they moved through the world and its myriad cultures (and prejudices and blind spots) while pursuing their mission and preserving their lineage, which add new weight to how Mia and Sarah are both echoing and changing those ageless dynamics.
Toward the end, I felt the story started stumbling, and even for the first book of an apparent trilogy there are a few too many loose or forgotten threads for the ending to feel truly satisfying, enough to affect the rating. Those issues aside, this was an unexpectedly interesting melding of history, thriller, and imaginative science fiction, centered around the complicated relationship of a mother and daughter at the heart of world-changing events. (The audiobook afterword by the author, on the real-world inspirations, was also interesting.)

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