2023 SF, second of a loose series. Elif Moora hosts the interview vlog
The Human Eye, introducing the rest of Universal Society to the
human viewpoint. Then her latest subject proves intriguing, not to
mention involved in other things…
This short novel took me nearly two weeks to finish: I'd pick it
up, read a page or two, and set it aside from tedium. (And I have
enjoyed many books that other people find boring.) This is the first
book by Schwartz I've read which doesn't follow her recent pattern
(heroine is a medic, mage or both; hero is military) and it just
didn't seem to have much to say to me.
Kirk is a Pict, a teleporting blue-skinned humanoid (and yes, it's
implied that they did indeed visit historical Earth, though nothing is
ever done with this), who tries to put off Elif because he's terribly
manly and doing dangerous things and so on. We're told she's falling
in love with him, but even from her first-person narrative I saw very
little sign of anything beyond physical attraction, or of his having
any interest in returning the feelings, at least prior to the
obligatory happy ending.
Meanwhile there's a complicated criminal conspiracy to deal with, but
rather than the usual reasoning process, there's wild speculation in
order to build something consistent with the evidence, which turn
turns out to be right. It's like seeing the answer "5" and deciding
that the question must be "3²-2²", but because God likes you that
turns out to be what the question actually was.
Combine that with Schwartz's tendency to leave the end-of-plot
violence off-stage, and I at least felt neither narrative tension nor
involvement with the characters. There's some philosophising about the
nature of Universal Society, but we learned in book one that the good
bit was a thin patina over the capitalists grabbing whatever they
wanted, and it hasn't stopped being that here. Bits of technology pop
out of nowhere when the plot needs them.
I've liked most of the other Schwartz I've read, but I honestly can't
recommend this book to anyone.