Humans are restricted to life on Earth due to some botched events in space (like a terrible job of terraforming on Mars). Post-human descendants called alloys are allowed to search the galaxies. A new earth-like planet is discovered and there are hopes that it might be suitable for a human colony. Jayanthi is a human child, adopted by alloys who has sickle cell disease which make her a candidate for an exploratory mission to Meru. The planet has a super high oxygen content that due to her illness she would be able to breathe. She and a young alloy pilot set out to prove that the planet is habitable. They face coming of age emotions, self-doubt, as well as the rigors of space travel and adapting to new environments. There are also lots of beings who want them to fail.
The book is a slow read with lots of new terminology and new ideas but the story is worth the effort.

I wanted to like this book. Oh I wanted to love this book. An Indian origin author? Sci-fi book? With all Sanskrit esque names and meanings for people places and things? I had huuuuge expectations bro. I did really like the fact that the sci fi logic in this book looked like it was doable and was actually easy to understand - because istg in some sci fi books i don't think the authors themselves understand what the hell they've written when it comes to the logic and the 'science' of stuff . But. But. I didn't really love it. I wanted to dnf it at so many points. It has great potential but really really falls flat.

Meru by S. B. Divya

Pros: interesting characters, compelling drama

Cons: takes several chapters to learn necessary vocabulary

Centuries ago humanity nearly destroyed earth and made a hash of terraforming Mars. Since then, they’ve been confined to earth while their distant offspring, alloys, exploring the universe. When a human habitable planet is discovered, a vote to decide whether humans should be allowed to expand into the universe again is proposed. Jayanthi wants to be more than a human raised by alloys, confined to earth. When she discovers that her sickle cell disease makes her suitable to live in the higher oxygenated air of Meru, she petitions to be allowed to live there for a year as an experiment. Only a newly graduated alloy pilot agrees to bring her there. But some alloys remember what humans did the last time they were allowed to expand past Earth. And they’ve got plans to make sure this experiment fails and the vote goes their way.

There’s quite a learning curve as the book throws a lot of new vocabulary and concepts at you with no info dumps. It takes a few chapters to get a real grip on this future world and how humans and alloys co-exist. It can feel overwhelming, but once you understand the background and have been introduced to the characters, the plot kicks in and the story moves on to the titular planet. The world-building is astonishing.

The plot centres around the personalities of Jayanthi and Vaha and their developing relationship. It’s a forbidden romance that faces a lot of complications. Though young and full of self-doubt, they’re both delightful and I thoroughly enjoyed seeing them try to solve various problems.

According to the acknowledgements, the story is based on the Indian epic, the Mahabharata. I’ve never read it and so cannot comment on how the author handled the source material, but I did appreciate all of the Indian inspired names, scents and foods used throughout the book. Each chapter is named after a Sanskrit word.

There are variously gendered entities, which can take some getting used to and adds to the alienness of the alloys.

After the first few chapters, I found this a quick, compelling read.

Meru by S.B. Divya is an intriguing space opera that presents a future Earth, ruined by humans, and now dominated by evolved sentient beings, known as alloys. A distant planet, named Meru, is evolving primitive life forms and has oxygen in its atmosphere, but humans, in their baseline form, are forbidden to settle there or anywhere else other than Earth. Yet there is a twenty-two year old human, named Jayanthi, who is determined to prove that people like her can and should live there.

She lives in a universe where humans, having laid waste the Earth out of driving ambition and greed, have become subservient to their more advanced genetic offsping. The alloys have created a set of laws that limit humans to life on Earth but under alloy guidance. Alloys and sentient constructs freely roam other star systems but abide by strict laws to respect all life forms and avoid contamination of new worlds.

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In Meru, Jayanthi, who lives with a sickle cell condition that makes life hard on Earth, wants to see if her genes can be an asset on a planet with a higher concentration of oxygen. She persuades a mentor alloy, Hamsa, to argue on her behalf before the alloy convocation that decides these things to permit a limited experiment on Meru to test her ideas. Hamsa has a larger agenda to change the law to allow humans to travel anywhere in the galaxy under alloy guidance, but he has been opposed for a long time by more conservative alloys who are still embittered about the reckless destruction caused by humans in earlier centuries.

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I was a bit puzzled by the indirect way Jaya went about proving that humans could live in the atmosphere of Meru, relying on a strange blending of genes. The climax to the story turns on a series of legal arguments in an alloy virtual court in not one but a series of trials. Another element of the ending depends on a vote among alloys on what will happen to humans. Everything is worked out to tie up loose ends in accordance with the legal system the novel presents, but it’s not the most suspenseful or exciting way to close out the story.

There are many elements of Meru to admire, especially the little we see of a regenerating Earth and the “new” Meru, the relationship between Jayanthi and Vaha and the laws governing this universe. It just didn’t come together smoothly enough for me to stop asking questions and simply enjoy the ride.

Meru takes a fresh look at one of SF’s classic paradigms, Spacer vs Earther. Humans have been consigned to live on Earth, which they messed up, and Alloys, the biological/synthetic hybrids designed to live in space, get free range to the stars. Jayanthi, a human child created and raised by alloy parents (using remote bodies, while their massive true bodies stay in orbit) is determined to break free from the restrictions of the alloys to become a genetic designer. When an almost habitable planet is discovered, Jayanthi realizes that she has a unique opportunity to show that humans can adapt to its overrich atmosphere, thanks to a trait that has always been a burden, her sickle cell anemia. What follows is a grand space opera with some unexpected twists as different factions of alloys work for and against Jayanthi’s project and she finds love, friendship and support in unlikely places.

This is S. B. Divya’s second novel, following her Nebula-nominated novella Runtime (2016) and her novel debut with Machinehood (2021), and Divya’s new offering is a rich work with great characters that I liked a lot. If you enjoyed last month’s Terraformers by Annalee Newitz, you’ll find this interesting for how the two books approach the themes of planetary change and the relationships that the characters develop. Highly Recommended.

(from my column: Science Fiction To Look For – February 2023)

Graceful and generously written, MERU is an ideal book for sparking meditations on the nature of friendship, and of the place of humanity in a post-human future. It thoughtfully explores the emotional cartography of its sympathetic and complex protagonists, Jayanthi and Vaha. This book is a relief and a revelation, written closer to the heart of its characters (and its author) than most genre works. Highest recommendations for a book to make readers more optimistic of the direction of science fiction, and of our human future.