Thank you to Netgalley and the author for the review copy!

I think this was a second book in a series, but i was not aware of that going into this book, but even with that being said, I still highly enjoyed this and it was still very easy to follow!

I really enjoyed the world in the book. However, it is very Sci-Fi strong, so if you are not into Sci-Fi, this book is not for you. I, however, loved it. I have always loved a little Sci-Fi mixed in with my fantasy but this was more than i thought when I got into the book. The author did great on the world building. I LOVED the characters. They were very well flushed out. I will make sure to watch for other works from this author.


I highly recommend this read!

Another story set in the White Space universe!! I was so excited to be chosen to do a NetGalley review for one of my favorite authors and boy is this an awesome novella. Another reviewer called this a First Responders in Space story and I think that's a perfect description

Dr. Brookllyn Jens is a doctor working from an ambulance ship going to the rescue of those in distress in space. She and her crew located a ship sending the distress call, Big Rock Candy Mountain, a ship that left Terra about six hundred years previously, They must find out what the situation is aboard the vessel in distress and get any survivors back to Core General, the largest hospital in the galaxy.

This was such a good read, you should read it too!!!!!

Thank you to NetGalley and Gallery / Saga Press for providing an early ARC in exchange for an honest review. Also, I have included quotes, which are subject to change as the book has not been released yet..

I’m giving Machine Four Star’s. Below is my review. Hope you enjoy!

Great fun all along the way in the second White Space novel from Elizabeth Bear. Machine was a big Want the moment I saw that it was coming out. I loved the style of space opera I enjoyed in the previous work, Ancestral Night. The consistency is there, but because it’s not a sequel, we get to see the same type of technology and terminology, but from different characters perspectives.

There was an assortment of fun concepts all wrapped up with smart dialogue, for instance, a detective that’s also an intelligent Praying Mantis, a slightly-losing-her-mind-and-made-of-a-golden-jello-shipmind-caretaker, shrieking Jim-jams, space puns, etc… Here’s a great quote that highlights this:

"Escape, relax, start thinking about cocktails. Then, oh shit, nanotech tentacles."

I love reading sci-fi that deals with vast distances and unique technologies to help humans escape those restraints but not easily. It keeps it grounded in the physics, you can travel to the center of the galaxy, but it still might take you away from home for long periods of time.

In this novel, the main character serves as a doctor who specializes in retrieving people from hardcore scary complicated situations. Aa the story starts, they find a ship full of humans from a bygone era, all frozen in cryopods, mysterious circumstances abound, and a mission to bring them back to Core General, the hospital station in an amazing location that is monstrous in size and serves the needs of all forms of intelligent life, organic,shipmind AI, and synthetic. The drama is thick, the humor on point and the story very well thought out.


The majority of the story takes place on Core General. The hospital of hospitals, it resides in a not so subtle location, rotating around a black whole at the center of the galaxy. It’s location makes it a mix of every intelligent creature known to exist in this far future time. Dr. Jens is bounced around like a pinball to figure out what sort of mysteries have been hiding under her nose, all these years it’s been her home base. But also how to stop this alien-AI-computer virus-tinkertoy-machine from destroying not just the hospital, but all life in the galaxy. There might be a little pressure there….

"People— human-type people, my own people— are constantly on a quest for an identity. Some lucky ones find the thing they want to be already inside themselves, or in a healthy family or community. Far too many of us, however, latch onto a simplified externality that seems to offer all the answers and invest our sense of meaning in it. We make some half-baked philosophy our driving force. Something we picked up reading the sort of novels and graphic stuff where first-person narrators opine bombastically about how the galaxy really works and what makes people really tick and How You Ought To Be."

My only critique, and it's a small one, is a slight repetitiveness in going through airlocks, and the back and forth travel around the station. Because so much takes place at this station, I guess it would be hard to avoid writing it in, and it’s not a big gripe at all. In fact, Bear does a great job of adding numerous insights about life in such a place, as well as highlighting the dangers that they take as commonplace. Dr. Jens inner dialogue was truly funny at times, and ended up being part of it’s charm. I really felt like an observer at times, as the writing is very high quality.

Another interesting aspect of this life in the future is the ability to load the “memory” or “perception” of specific lives of other species. Called Ayatanas, they come in very handy for Dr. Jens as she tries to save everyone and has to communicate with an extreme variety of life.

I recommend it highly for the sci-fi and space opera folk and hope we get another white space novel down the road.

Big Thanks to you, for giving my review a glance, and let me know what sci-fi you’re looking forward to reading before 2021!

Genuinely surprised after reading this to learn that Elizabeth Bear has no military/police background. Or, perhaps, like myself, she spent formative years around military, which would definitely explain the wholly authentic feel she brings to the ex-military protagonist and judiciary command structure of the universe she creates here in Machine which, while the second in a series, can be easily read as a standalone. I'm actually rather also surprised that this is the first thing of hers I've ever read, but there are so many books and so little time (and thanks to Saga Press for making sure I had a chance to get to this!)

Anyhoo, Machine is about Dr Brookllyn Jens, a trauma surgeon specializing in search and rescues after a stint in the military that helped her escape her backwater planet, leaving behind an angry wife and a now-distant daughter. Her closest friends are the crew of her ambulance ship, I Race To Seek The Living, or Sally, as the shipmind prefers to be known. When they receive a distress beacon for an ancient vessel that's traveled way farther than it reasonably should have, coupled with a much more modern courier ship which also seems to be in distress, Dr Jens is the one who leads the rescue mission aboard the Big Rock Candy Mountain. To her dismay, everyone on both the BRCM and the attached I Bring Tidings From Afar is either dead or unconscious, save for Helen, an eager to please but intellectually stunted shipmind who's been cut off from her own knowledge banks. When a fracture in the BRCM's hull causes several of the inhabited cryogenic pods within to float loose into space, Dr Jens has little choice but to bring them aboard and ship her new patients -- along with Helen, the decoupled Afar and its crew -- back to Core General, one of the most important hospital stations in that sector.

On the trip back, Dr Jens discovers that someone sabotaged Sally's programming, probably while they were still docked earlier at Core General. When weird incidents start taking place at the hospital itself, primarily affecting AIs, Dr Jens becomes involved in investigating not only what happened to the crew of the BRCM and Afar, but also in uncovering a conspiracy that will shake her faith in perhaps the only thing she truly believes in.

First, I have to say that I loved the fact that Dr Jens suffers from chronic, debilitating pain but that medical and social advancements have made it so that this doesn't hamper her from living the full, productive life she wants to lead. I strained the index finger of my left hand yesterday, probably because it's cold and I was working tricky passages on my cello, and let me tell you, the thought of a future where I am automatically supported through my (minor, temporary) pain brings joy and warmth to me as I type through the twinges (and don't even get me started on my arthritic knee.) This management of pain is only one aspect of a gloriously progressive future showcased in the White Space books as being very possible for not only humanity but also its syster species, as members of the Synarche that oversees intergalactic civilization is known. Most of the military sf and even progressive hard sf I've encountered to date tends not to be quite so baseline upbeat -- I'd argue that Machine is more in line with those subgenres than with the more technologically hand-wavey space operas --  and it was genuinely refreshing to immerse myself in a future that was as optimistic as it was scientifically detailed.

I did think that the book started to falter in the last 20%, as the mystery was unraveled. Oddly, the reveals were done in such a way as to provoke minimum tension, which is great in a real-life situation where the point is to work through the problem to find an equitable solution, but just makes for dull reading for us people at home. I liked that the narrative stayed true to the characters but a little more suspense would have lent the events more gravity -- I wanted to feel surprised when conspirators were revealed, and I wanted to feel sad when characters died. Instead, it was all very "then this happened, and then this", which was quite a letdown after the terrific first 80%.

That said, this was a truly wonderful vision of a future I would definitely want to live in, and am happy to work towards. Machine brings up all sorts of ethical, medical and technological dilemmas, for both humans and other sentient species, and considers, if not outright resolves them, with discernment, empathy and heart.

Machine by Elizabeth Bear comes out today from Saga Press and is available from all good booksellers.

I was excited about this book when I received the email about it from NetGalley. One of the issues that can be explored in science fiction is when advanced species encounter ancient ones. What kind of viruses and bacteria can affect both groups of people? This novel wants to examine this issue however, the technological discussions went over my head to the point where I felt intimidated to continue the story.

If you are not deep into the world of high-tech or futuristic tech then I would say avoid this novel. I think what I read was written well, but the in-depth specs on the technology felt confusing and overwhelming for me.

For example, I understood that the main character has a disorder that causes her to be in a constant state of pain. With her working in a futuristic and advanced society, her spacesuit helps her do everyday functions and can help her with her chronic pain. How any of that works I don't understand. I just went with what the author was telling me about the subject.

I know this novel wasn't meant for a casual sci-fi fan. This is for someone like a die-hard Trekkie or someone who can follow deep and futuristic tech discussions. Overall, I think The Machine is a well-written sci-fi mystery thriller for those who can follow the tech talk. This novel just wasn't for me.

It was a treat for me to read a science fiction book that reminded me of the scifi I had read in the past. Shelves and web pages contain a plethora of fantasy books and while I enjoy reading those also, nothing beats a scifi tale with substance.

“Machine” fits the bill, adding plenty of meat to the pages by digging deep into the culture of a galaxy centuries down the road. Author Elizabeth Bear focuses on the world-building, and we receive plenty of descriptions of life in the future without it sounding like a college lecture. Dr. Brookllyn Jens is our tour guide, allowing us to discover one revelation after another. The aliens (an everyday occurrence in Dr. Jens’ world) are creative and interesting.

Great imagination usually indicates a strong plot, and I wasn’t disappointed. There is a hint of espionage and a huge shroud of mystery. In fact, Ms. Bear has several questions for the reader to ponder all at once, and her deft expertise kept me turning pages long into the night.

Don’t be put off that this is listed as Book 2 of 2. It may be in the same book universe the author is crafting, but it is not necessary to go back and read the other book first. The story in “Machine” stands alone, and this book had me right from page one all the way to the end. Five stars.

My thanks to NetGalley and Gallery Books for a complimentary electronic copy of this book.

4.5

In this second space opera/mystery in her White Space series, Elizabeth Bear gives us first-person narrator Dr. Brookllyn Jens, who is part of an EMT team aboard the Synarche Medical Vessel I Race To Seek the Living. She’s a tough, lonely person(in spite of a failed marriage and a daughter (who are barely there; when I read the daughter’s name, Rache, which means revenge in German, I thought there was going to be a thread here and was completely wrong), who lives with constant pain, but in spite of that is a trauma doctor who specializes in rescue missions.

Answering a distress call from the centuries-old Terran generation ship Big Rock Candy Mountain, the rescuers discover the body of the long-dead captain, a cargo bay filled with cryogenic chambers, a memory-damaged golden, femme bot named Helen, and a modern ship filled with methane-breathers docked with the ancient ship.

Nobody is awake on either of these ships that have to be towed back to the space hospital where Jens works, to which she is dedicated, at the cost of all other aspects of her life . . . including, too often, her own physical wellbeing.

So imagine her reaction when the ships, and the AIs she works with, are sabotaged, and a big battle-bot is discovered . . . and things begin to rapidly go downhill from there.

The human cast is diverse, as well as the aliens. It’s clear that Bear had a ton of fun inventing alien species, called systers, emphasizing the cooperation in this future polity; one of my my favorites is the vast tree growing out of the station itself and referred to fondly as the Administree. But my absolute favorite, who I was glad to see back after introduction in volume one, Ancestral Nights, was the Goodlaw, like a praying mantis, only with more legs and eyes. The female is easily six feet long. The much smaller male is afraid of her, as females of their species used to eat the male after mating. So he offers food to everyone, a cultural holover, but that is only part of what makes him such a great character.

Organics (however you want to define that) are not the only people in this polity. There are also the AIs, including shipminds, who are very much considered persons, and who are not only doctors but also patients in this hospital.

The mystery is a chain of mysteries, beginning with the fact that these future humans have a ‘fox’ inserted into their brain, and they are brought up to monitor their own emotional fluctuations and bring them into harmony.

This fact, and many others, bring up interesting questions of ethics with regard to cloning to prolong existence, and personality modification as medical treatment. I zoomed through the second half—and look forward to more in this universe.

While this is the second in the series, it could easily be read as a standalone. There are some cameos, small and large, from previous characters, but no prior knowledge of them or the plot of the previous book is necessary.

“What was there to get scared of? There’s just a job to do.” I wrapped my hands around the mug. The heat helped the ache.
“Oh,” he said, “fembots. A ship that’s taking itself apart to become macro-programmable matter. Mysterious, sourceless sabotage damage to our own vessel. The incapacitated, silent Synarche ship you’re about to go enter?”
I held a hand out, flat, and wobbled it from side to side. So-so. “What else you got?”


Dr. Brookllyn Jens, rescue coordination specialist – which basically means she jumps out of her space ambulance to save people in danger. You’d think there wouldn’t be much that would be able to phase her, but their current mission – answering a distress call from an ancient human colony ship and a more modern ship that’s inexplicably docked with – is, well, weird. Add in a bunch of cryogenically frozen colonists, a golden sexbot AI, and a ship full of what looks like giant tinker toys and Llyn’s frankly happy to dump it all in the lap of someone else at Core General, the premier Synarche hospital, while she gets a well-deserved cup of coffee. But it turns out there’s more going on, and somehow the ghost ships are all tied up with possible sabotage at the hospital and Llyn is right in the middle of it.

I liked the first third of the book, which was spent exploring the “ghost ships,” and the initial time back at Core General. The last quarter of the book, however, didn’t work as well for me. I never quite bought into the suspense, as for whatever reason none of the action scenes were gripping to me. Though it happened less than it did in the previous book, Llyn also has a tendency to go off on repetitive tangents which slow down the plot and cause the tension to dissipate. The mystery was twisty and complicated and I thought Llyn’s attempts to solve it were interesting (though, as the character herself notes, it takes her forever to get serious about it) but I keyed on to the main players almost immediately.

“I was not, I told myself firmly, about to break into an extremely exotic and dangerous environment, surrounded by a starship that was trying to kill me.”


What made me pick up this book even though I was ambivalent about the first was the exceptional world-building. I loved the politics of the Synarche, the various syster races, the hilarious ship names (I Really Don’t Have Time For Your Nonsense being a personal favorite), the minutiae of tuning and rightminding. Sometimes it got a bit repetitive (yes, yes, I get that we’re all barbarians without rightminding) but for the most part it was absolutely fascinating and believable. There were quite a few side characters and for the most part I was ambivalent about them. My favorite characters were the Rashaqin, systers (the book’s terminology for sapient aliens) that strongly resemble praying mantises. I loved Dr. Rilriltok, a trauma recovery cryo specialist and one of Llyn’s mentors and friends. I was also pleased to see Goodlaw Cheeirilaq, who was a side character in the previous book, and how the two interacted with each other. The abundance of side characters – many of them Llyn’s friends or colleagues – leads into another point. There’s a theme running through the book about faith – whether that’s religious faith or faith in institutions like the Synarche or Core General or the simple faith that your team has your back – and how we determine whether those institutions or people are worthy of our trust. It was a good concept and well laid out except for, again, the last quarter of the book.

I have a chronic pain illness, so much of Llyn’s struggles with her own illness rang true for me, especially the struggle between being medicated enough to control the pain but not so much that it’s also adversely affecting your daily abilities. Llyn’s constantly checking in on her pain levels and doing the math on whether she’s capable of doing something without causing more pain issues, and that was so relatable. I also loved the description of Llyn’s exo and frankly I desperately want one of my own! Where the rep didn’t sit right for me is how she seemed defined by her illness. Her family’s inability to take her pain seriously led to her being unable to trust anyone, to her general disassociation with people. All of her character development (besides the fact that she really wanted a cup of coffee) basically comes back to her illness and how she coped (or didn’t cope) with it and that frustrated me. People are more than their diagnoses!

Overall, while I found the world-building absolutely amazing, I think there’s something about the author’s writing style that doesn’t quite work for me.

I received an advance review copy of this book from NetGalley. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

This is a very enjoyable space opera in a well-developed world. The setting is a huge multi-species hospital in a future more-or-less utopia where the various sentient life forms, including humans, have "grown up" and moved beyond their destructive inclinations.

But, of course, even utopia has its ... imperfections. And moral quandaries and rogue artificial intelligences and maladjusted individuals, and therein lies the plot and much of the characterization.

I could have done with a little less introspection from the narrator - it gets a little repetitious and makes the book longer than it needs to be - but Bear is a fine writer and most of that introspection involves the hero coming to terms with the complexities of her world and her friends.

But the story is engrossing and Bear is a compelling and imaginative and thoughtful writer. The last half of the book ,especially, has a great deal of momentum and is hard to put down.

Disclaimer: I received this e-arc from the publisher. Thanks! All opinions are my own.

Book: Machine

Author: Elizabeth Bear

Book Series: White Space Book 2

Rating: 1/5

Recommended For...: sci-fi lovers

Publication Date: October 20, 2020

Genre: Sci-Fi

Recommended Age: can’t recommend, dnf-ed

Publisher: Gollancz

Pages: 512

Synopsis: Meet Doctor Jens.

She hasn't had a decent cup of coffee in fifteen years.

The first part of her job involves jumping out of perfectly good space-ships. The second part requires developing emergency treatments for sick aliens of species she's never seen before.

She loves it.

But her latest emergency is also proving a mystery:

Two ships, one ancient and one new, locked in a dangerous embrace.
A mysterious crew suffering from an even more mysterious ailment.
A shipmind trapped in an inadequate body, much of her memory pared away.
A murderous virus from out of time.

Unfortunately, Dr. Jens can't resist a mystery. Which is why she's about to discover that everything she's dedicated her life to . . . is a lie.

Review: DNFed at 15%. I didn't realize this was the second of a series and I want to read this from the beginning.

Verdict: Not for me but maybe for you.

Machine is a really good space opera. The main character, Dr, Jens, is a medical rescue specialist. She has a chronic pain condition which is controlled with self administered (or AI administered) meds and an exosuit. Her ship is sent to rescue a ship that put out a distress call but is otherwise not responding. When she gets there she finds some very strange things, including a damaged ship mind that has been put into an inadequate body and thousands of cryo-pods filled with the ship's crew. Attached to this ship is another ship of methane breathers who are all incapacitated.

Dr. Jens soon realizes there is much more than meets the eye going on aboard these ships. Her team takes the broken shipmind and a few of the cryo-pods back to Central. Things get out of control there very quickly and Dr. Jens realizes she may be on her own, finding answers to what is going on.

I didn't realize while reading this book that it's part of a series. Machine is definitely readable as a stand alone. The world building is quite good and the characters believable and developed. I enjoyed the book and I think that other space opera lovers will too.

First off, it's a really good romp for space opera (which is one of my favorite genres). I loved the array of characters and got so excited to learn that the MC had chronic pain, much like myself. Having not read the previous book, I was also worried that I would be completely lost in what I was going to read, and was thankful to learn that it didn't happen.

Overall, I didn't have any too big complaints about the story, though I'm not sure if i'll pick up the other book currently.

Dr. Brookllyn Jens is a search and rescue specialist on an ambulance ship sent to rescue an unresponsive spaceship that sent a distress signal and the likewise unresponsive ancient human generation ship that it had evidently discovered and docked with. What Dr. Jens and her team find when they get there is weird. Aboard the human ship is a mentally unstable AI and 10,000 humans in primitive cryo pods. The beings aboard the other ship all appear to be in some sort of stable coma. As Dr. Jens and the medical staff at the Core General hospital begin caring for the patients and trying to unravel the mystery of what happened to them, what they find is much more complicated and explosive than they could have imagined.

I love the world building in this series. Even though we don't explore wide swaths of this intergalactic empire comprised of thousands of alien species working together, it offers a tantalizing look at a different system of governance explicitly designed around concepts of fairness and dignity for all, reparations rather than punishment, and collaboration and civic duty. This is not to say that this is a flawless system of government. The series leaves a lot of room for philosophical discussion on a lot of issues related to power, privilege, and who gets to write the rules. The end result is that even when the plot is wrapped up neatly, you'll still be left thinking about the societal implications of how that world works.

As an introvert who isn't one to share a lot of personal details with folks, Dr. Jens resonated a lot with me. A large part of her emotional journey involves coming to terms with her own self-imposed social isolation. She has had a chronic pain disability since childhood, and her experiences taught her to minimize that pain for others so that others' perceptions of her disability don't hold her back. She's at the top of her field and can collaborate perfectly well with her colleagues, but she holds everyone at arm's length when it comes to the personal.

Machine is something of a slow-build political SF thriller that combines Golden Age interests in introspection and the philosophical aspects of government with contemporary issues such as access to healthcare. Some of the points felt a little belabored as the protagonist has a series of related epiphanies, but I really enjoyed what Bear did with the world and concepts she explored here.

This is the second book in Bear's White Space series, though it can be read as a standalone. If you're looking for SF that poses interesting intellectual and moral questions but isn't a dense tome or depressing, this is the book (and series) for you.

My introduction to Elizabeth Bear’s gorgeously inventive “White Space” novels was Ancestral Night. While I highly recommend be read first, Machine stands on its own. Both are huge books in the sense of sweeping plots and vast universe-building.

As before, Bear uses an unreliable but highly competent first-person narrator, in this case Brookllyn Jens, a rescue operations physician ex-cop with a chronic pain condition, who relies on self-administered drugs and an exosuit for support. Despite being estranged from her wife and daughter, she’s formed deep ties with her crew and shipmind, the AI of their rescue vessel. Chance places them first on the scene of a generation ship, drifting far from where it ought to be, with a much smaller ship of methane-breathing aliens attached to it. One mystery unfolds into the next: why are both crews in cryo sleep? What’s going on with the generation ship’s android/ship-computer peripheral unit? Matters take a turn for the much, much worse when one AI after another becomes infected with a meme virus, and all too quickly Llyn realizes there is no one she can trust but herself.

My reactions to this book were very much in line with how I felt about Ancestral Night, so I’ll paraphrase them here: The book is filled with action and reflection that say as much about the different ways of looking at self vs society as they do about Llyn’s journey of self-discovery. It’s all fascinating, if a bit sedate in places, until the pieces start coming together. Then the parts I had previously found slow made brilliant sense and I couldn’t put the book down until the exciting and immensely satisfying conclusion. I say this as an advisory to other readers to hang in there: every piece is there for a reason, and it is richly worth the ride. Machine is in turns dramatic, thoughtful, humorous, hopeful, and tragic. From the government ship name, I Really Don’t Have Time For Your Nonsense to the weird and wonderful aliens to everything I’ve mentioned above, the book is as much about how we balance individual choices with the greater good. Worth savoring, and re-reading, as is the previous book.

Being the second in the series of "White Space," this title further develops the universe and the inhabitants. The story is complex and completely engaging. The characters examine innumerable social and moral issues as they seek to solve a galaxy-threatening emergency. While the first book in this series (Ancestral Night) doesn't necessarily need to be read to pursue this story, it helps to provide the background for this story.

An already accomplished author goes for more and centers in on a theme appropriate to todays society in the "first world" advanced countries - as the machine seems to only be getting stronger each day....

Much thanks to NetGalley for a sneak peek at Elizabeth Bear's space opera, <i>Machine</i>. In exchange, here's my honest review.

All in all, this was a fun space opera adventure. Fans of Star Trek's Deep Space Nine will appreciate that most of the action takes place a stable space station -- or, in the case of this novel, a leviathan interspecies hospital. Also, while we're talking about similarities to Star Trek, in Bear's story humanity has evolved beyond their atavistic (a word you'll read a lot in this story) impulses and lives in harmony with multiple species from across the Universe. It's a very progressive view of humanity's future, and I'm here for it. But at the heart of Bear's utopian society there's something festering, and therein lies the plot.

I enjoyed the characters, especially Dr. Jens and her insectoid friend, Dr. Rilriltok. I would have appreciated more cultural backstory on some of the non-human characters, a la Ursula Le Guin or Becky Chambers -- but I can appreciate that wasn't exactly the sort of story that Bear was trying to tell. I also found the mystery a little hard to follow? The clues seemed too widely spaced for me to pick them all up. But Dr. Jens was such an enjoyable character, I was happy just to follow along and see what happened next.

I understand why the novel has the title it has, but I didn't leave the story feeling like <i>the machine</i> was that important to the story. My money was on Dr. Jens and her relationships with her friends -- insectoid, AI, or otherwise -- and how those relationships were challenged and grew throughout the story.

This was my first novel by Elizabeth Bear, and I'll certainly be looking for more from her in the future! (Pun sort of intended!)

I've commented elsewhere about a lack of F/SF books with a focus on emergency medicine. (Smoke Eaters covers fire and rescue, Marshall Ryan Maresca's Maradaine series has the Yellowshields, but they aren't main characters."

Machine is pretty much exactly what I was looking for.. I also like that the characters are bright, and competent. No plot-induced stupidity for the purposes of moving things along.

The various aliens feel... alien. Not just humans with prosthetic foreheads.

Thanks to #Netgalley and Saga Press for the review copy!

I have not read any books by this prolific author before this and I am sorry I haven’t. I really enjoy the occasional
space opera but what makes this different is that Beard writes humane, nonviolent science fiction which is hard to find. The lessons on ethics and morality throughout the book really touched me as I am a cynical idealist who tries to find the good within the bad but usually comes up short. There was plenty to feel good about in this story. it was refreshing to read a novel containing creatures of all races, species, genders and belief systems interacting and working together for the common good. Star Trek any one?
I clearly was born a few centuries too early.

Great alien creatures, a gigantic revolving interspecies hospital, nanotechnology, microbots , space ambulances, sentient AIs and alien doctors were just what this doctor needed to keep reading. The book is also a mystery with several twists. This was an enjoyable and compelling read and I would like to read the first in the series even though they are apparently stand alone novels. This universe is a lot of fun and really bends the imagination and the boundaries of known science. Beard is an excellent writer. My only complaint was that the main character went off on a few too many tangents but it ultimately shaped the character in many ways.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC in exchange for an honest review

Thanks to NetGalley for providing this copy to review.

Representation: disabled and lesbian MC, casual queer rep in other characters with use of varying pronouns

Dr. Brookllyn Jens works on a medical rescue spaceship that's been sent to answer a distress call coming from a generation ship that left Terra a long time ago. Her crew arrives to find that the entire ship is in cryopods, the on-board AI seems to be unstable, there's a strange tinkertoy-like machine filling much of the ship, and there's a modern ship docked that isn't answering any hails. A rescue operation is begun, and they return to the central hospital in space. Jens can't resist a mystery and starts digging. She quickly learns that there might be some life-changing hard truths she's not prepared for.

Rating: 3.75/5 I will always enjoy science fiction, unless it's *really* bad. Happily, this is not one of those! I immensely enjoyed reading this, and was pleasantly surprised to learn in the beginning that Jens is a lesbian and that she has chronic pain, using an exoskeleton that enables her to move around far more than she would without it and be a functional member of this society. There's honestly so much that happens in this book, I don't even know where is best to begin. Worldbuilding - it's so complex and rich, and I really appreciated that it was spread out throughout this and not dumped all at once. This society includes a wide variety of species, and the collective term for all of them, including humans, is systers. (Side note: I suspect the origin of this term could be from Anita Borg, and is short for system sisters, which makes sense in this context. It also simply means sister in others.) I really loved the descriptions of Core General, the hospital, and how it was designed for a wide range of environmental and gravitational needs, along with the varying sizes of the systers. I also liked the descriptions of the specific systers that had a role in the story, even if it was brief. This is written in first person, so we're in the head of Jens, and she will occasionally go on a small tangent to explain some things, maybe philosophize about the situation, things like that. For most of the book, it's fine and I think it actually helps us understand the world better and be more engaged with the story. Towards the end, it gets a little overly complicated and I didn't think it was completely necessary. There’s also casual queer rep, some characters use they pronouns, and it’s standard for the hospital staff to have tags that have names, species, and pronouns. Some species prefer to be referred to as “it” and it seems that it's typically the bug species. There's a LOT that happened in this story that I'm not even mentioning, but I did really enjoy this and would definitely recommend if you want to read something sci-fi that's also a mystery.