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sophia_sol) wrote2023-07-19 11:58 am
sophia_sol) wrote2023-07-19 11:58 am
Under Fortunate Stars, by Ren Hutchings
A timey wimey book about spaceships! Aww yeah. Thank you skygiants for reviewing it last year, so that I heard about it!
In this book: a bunch of people get stuck all together on one spaceship in a rift in space separated from the two time periods the people are from. Each has different histories, perspectives, motivations, and goals. Most of them don't like or trust each other or even want to work together, multiple of them have fraught histories with each other, and I was rooting for ALL of them.
One group of people is the ragtag crew of 5 aboard a ramshackle smuggling ship called the Jonah from the middle of a massive war between humans and an alien species. Of those five, three are the actual crew, one is a paying passenger trying to escape authorities, and one tried to hijack the ship.
The other group of people are paid employees on a major corporate-owned research vessel from a time 150 years into the future, the war a distant memory except for the legends of the Fortunate Five, the crew of a small spaceship called the Jonah who singlehandedly brought about peace and ended the war. But the people in this Jonah that the corporate vessel found with them in the rift don't match what they know about the Fortunate Five.
What's going on with the rift? Who are the crew of the Jonah? Is there any way for them all to make it back to their own times safely? Will this whole encounter change history and result in humans losing the war after all?
All of this was extremely fun, and I loved all the different characters, and seeing their backstories as they got slowly doled out to the reader over the course of the book. And the ending was so satisfying, and I definitely got emotional.
And I particularly enjoyed that one of the most important relationships the book is investigating is the complicated friendship between two men. Yes! Friendship IS so important! And learning how to be a better friend!!
I did have a couple complaints though, which I'll put behind a spoiler cut.
See, it felt obvious to me from the very beginning that what was happening wasn't all of them changing history, it was them making history happen exactly as it had happened the first time. But no, almost the entire time, everyone's like "all these things that are so different from how we always understood the Jonah's history, how concerning, really hoping we aren't breaking history as we know it!!"
I just wish that SOMEBODY had brought up the possibility of this being how history actually had happened, even just to be immediately shut down as ridiculous. But no, it isn't even raised as a thinkable interpretation until very nearly the end, in a way that makes it feel to me like the reader isn't supposed to be thinking of it as a possibility either. So then instead of feeling like I was in on a secret with the narrative, I felt like I was being condescended to by the narrative, almost.
Second....I spent an enormous portion of the book genuinely wondering if this was going to turn out to be the kind of sff book where Everyone Is Het. One character being queer is made clear in the back half of the book, thank goodness, but honestly the vibe throughout continued to be pretty het-flavoured in terms of the narrative focus tbh. Which like, sure whatever fine, but I do like a little more exuberantly expansive queerness in my specfic these days.
Also the backstory for one of the main male characters involves a fridged female love interest. His backstory would still have been personally tragic for him if she'd stayed alive and simply left him for good! The fridging felt unnecessary, and tbh felt honestly to me like it lessened the, like, personal responsibility sense of having lost her because of his bad decisions.
Three characters actually had a Dead Important Person in their backstory. Dafnë the fridged love interest, a dead brother, and a dead female student. So at least not all of them are female; that's something. But still! It kinda bugged me.
Third, Shaan felt to me like she came across as way too young for the age that she had to be in the story. She's someone who went through some intensive schooling, became a teacher, taught a number of students, had her Traumatic Loss experience, and is 6 years out now from that experience. Like she must be 30 at least, I would think! But I spent most of the book convinced she was much younger than any of the other characters, until enough of her backstory was revealed that I realized what her age must be. It just felt jarring to me. And maybe that's just about the way she personally responded to her trauma, but that's not really how it came across to me in the writing. Unless I missed something here, maybe?
Finally, of the Fortunate Five, I felt like we spent almost no time really with either Jaxong or Kva-Sova, and I thought they were both super interesting and wanted to know more! Tell me more about illegal peace activists! Tell me more about smart science women! Tell me more about the fashion for body mods!
Anyway, despite the complaints, I did still thoroughly enjoy the book for what it was doing, and I'm glad I read it. I am always here for explorations of what history means via the trope of time travel, especially when it's about history that isn't actually real life earth history!
skygiants for reviewing it last year, so that I heard about it!In this book: a bunch of people get stuck all together on one spaceship in a rift in space separated from the two time periods the people are from. Each has different histories, perspectives, motivations, and goals. Most of them don't like or trust each other or even want to work together, multiple of them have fraught histories with each other, and I was rooting for ALL of them.
One group of people is the ragtag crew of 5 aboard a ramshackle smuggling ship called the Jonah from the middle of a massive war between humans and an alien species. Of those five, three are the actual crew, one is a paying passenger trying to escape authorities, and one tried to hijack the ship.
The other group of people are paid employees on a major corporate-owned research vessel from a time 150 years into the future, the war a distant memory except for the legends of the Fortunate Five, the crew of a small spaceship called the Jonah who singlehandedly brought about peace and ended the war. But the people in this Jonah that the corporate vessel found with them in the rift don't match what they know about the Fortunate Five.
What's going on with the rift? Who are the crew of the Jonah? Is there any way for them all to make it back to their own times safely? Will this whole encounter change history and result in humans losing the war after all?
All of this was extremely fun, and I loved all the different characters, and seeing their backstories as they got slowly doled out to the reader over the course of the book. And the ending was so satisfying, and I definitely got emotional.
And I particularly enjoyed that one of the most important relationships the book is investigating is the complicated friendship between two men. Yes! Friendship IS so important! And learning how to be a better friend!!
I did have a couple complaints though, which I'll put behind a spoiler cut.
Click here for spoilers
Ok first of all, multiple quotes on the back of the book refer to it as a "mystery" and it just doesn't seem that mysterious to me? But the book did seem like it was set up to be mysterious!See, it felt obvious to me from the very beginning that what was happening wasn't all of them changing history, it was them making history happen exactly as it had happened the first time. But no, almost the entire time, everyone's like "all these things that are so different from how we always understood the Jonah's history, how concerning, really hoping we aren't breaking history as we know it!!"
I just wish that SOMEBODY had brought up the possibility of this being how history actually had happened, even just to be immediately shut down as ridiculous. But no, it isn't even raised as a thinkable interpretation until very nearly the end, in a way that makes it feel to me like the reader isn't supposed to be thinking of it as a possibility either. So then instead of feeling like I was in on a secret with the narrative, I felt like I was being condescended to by the narrative, almost.
Second....I spent an enormous portion of the book genuinely wondering if this was going to turn out to be the kind of sff book where Everyone Is Het. One character being queer is made clear in the back half of the book, thank goodness, but honestly the vibe throughout continued to be pretty het-flavoured in terms of the narrative focus tbh. Which like, sure whatever fine, but I do like a little more exuberantly expansive queerness in my specfic these days.
Also the backstory for one of the main male characters involves a fridged female love interest. His backstory would still have been personally tragic for him if she'd stayed alive and simply left him for good! The fridging felt unnecessary, and tbh felt honestly to me like it lessened the, like, personal responsibility sense of having lost her because of his bad decisions.
Three characters actually had a Dead Important Person in their backstory. Dafnë the fridged love interest, a dead brother, and a dead female student. So at least not all of them are female; that's something. But still! It kinda bugged me.
Third, Shaan felt to me like she came across as way too young for the age that she had to be in the story. She's someone who went through some intensive schooling, became a teacher, taught a number of students, had her Traumatic Loss experience, and is 6 years out now from that experience. Like she must be 30 at least, I would think! But I spent most of the book convinced she was much younger than any of the other characters, until enough of her backstory was revealed that I realized what her age must be. It just felt jarring to me. And maybe that's just about the way she personally responded to her trauma, but that's not really how it came across to me in the writing. Unless I missed something here, maybe?
Finally, of the Fortunate Five, I felt like we spent almost no time really with either Jaxong or Kva-Sova, and I thought they were both super interesting and wanted to know more! Tell me more about illegal peace activists! Tell me more about smart science women! Tell me more about the fashion for body mods!
Anyway, despite the complaints, I did still thoroughly enjoy the book for what it was doing, and I'm glad I read it. I am always here for explorations of what history means via the trope of time travel, especially when it's about history that isn't actually real life earth history!