Escape Velocity by Victor Manibo

Pros: compelling, fast paced, interesting characters

Cons: abusive dom/sub scene

The Rochford Institute is hosting their class of 2064 reunion on Space Habitat Altaire. As an added bonus, attending will net each participant at least 5 MERIT points, necessary to gain coveted spaces in the new Mars colony. Unlike her classmates, Ava Khan isn’t there to schmooze. She wants to know who really killed her abusive twin brother their last year of school, and she thinks her three oldest friends have the answer. Meanwhile, the station crew have a plan for how to make the world a better place.

The story is told from the alternating perspectives of the four friends and Cielo, chief housekeeper on the Altaire. You learn more about each one, how things went in school, what they’ve been up, and why they’re really on the station. They’ve all got compelling stories, even if - despite what they think - they’re not particularly good people.

The book delves into the kinds of backroom deals that allow the super rich to influence the world and come out on top.

There’s an orgy scene (mildly graphic) and one character acts as Dom to another, in which a lot of minimizing language and swear words are used. The second scene with that pair went past words, and though it wasn’t graphic, it still left me feeling uncomfortable.

The ending hits hard and wasn’t what I was expecting. It’s a fast paced, compelling read.

La primera novela que leí de Victor Manibo, The Sleepless, me pareció una especulación muy sólida sobre una sociedad en la que cambiaba un parámetro determinado, en este caso la necesidad de dormir, para ver qué consecuencias traería consigo. Así que cuando se puso a tiro Escape Velocity tampoco lo pensé mucho y lo leí enseguida, aunque por desgracia no me he encontrado lo mismo en esta novela, que también tiene puntos fuertes pero muchos más débiles.


La acción tiene lugar en una hotel espacial de súper lujo, donde se celebrará una reunión por el aniversario de la graduación de uno de los institutos más selectos y elitistas del mundo. Los que pasaron por las aulas de Rochford son ahora los dueños de inmensas fortunas y gestionan las empresas más importantes del mundo. Todos ellos se reúnen, entre orgía y orgía (no es muy sutil el autor en esto), para conseguir su máxima aspiración en este momento, un billete para colonizar Marte. Pero un asesinato del pasado que no quedó suficientemente esclarecido y las maniobras políticas entre los candidatos no dejarán disfrutar de los lujos del cosmos a los asistentes.

Manibo ha escrito un libro que utiliza el misterio en habitación cerrada (o en estación espacial cerrada que para el caso es lo mismo) mezclado con la reivindicación social, pero no consigue equilibrar el interés entre ambas tramas. El misterio del pasado, cuyas consecuencias penden aún hoy sobre los protagonistas es bastante banal y con un conclusión para nada sorprendente. Y los tejemanejes del presente son previsibles y manidos.

No sé si ahora es temporada alta de meterse con los ultramillonarios o es que da la casualidad de que de eso van varios de los libros que he leído últimamente, pero es muy fácil hacer personajes abominables por sus acciones cuando son de una extracción tan diferente al “humano medio” que consideran al 99% de la población infrahumanos. No se salva ni uno. Me gusta que reciban su merecido, pero como me importaba tan poco sus problemas y rencillas, no se puede decir que la lectura me haya entusiasmado.

Curioso, cuando menos, que la escala para medir la idoneidad para colonizar Marte se llame MERIT, como el sistemas de familias de The Blighted Stars. Que ya sabemos que la meritocracia es un cuento chino cuando en una carrera de fondo hay quien empieza con kilómetros de ventaja, pero tampoco pasa nada si se es un poquito más sutil en la crítica.

Escape Velocity es una novela entretenida y reivindicativa, pero poco más.

A murder mystery in space was an intriguing concept! I jumped into this book with that in mind.

The story jumps right into it, not taking its time. The pacing was good overall and the characters were pretty compelling.

Negative: the ending. It felt like a word count was hit and it just needed to finish. I’ve heard the ending is a little polarizing for people so I’m not surprised!

Overall, this book was an interesting idea and pretty well executed besides a few parts!

Genre: SciFi

Review: I did not finish this novel for a few reasons.

Amateurish writing: when characters meet, they explain their whole back story in conversation. Who talks like that? "Oh, when we were in Bogota, three years ago, I remember this girl.." blah, blah.

The science that supports this station is contrived and rendered in simplistic terms.

Wading through someone else's ideas about sexuality and our given acceptance of those ideals rankles a bit..

Rating: DNF

Overall I enjoyed this book, it had a compelling cast of characters and interesting themes.

It felt vaguely reminiscent of Altered Carbon - space hotel, an untouchable elite, murder mystery - but slightly less dark.

Escape Velocity wastes no time, jumping right in to the plot, which left me backtracking to figure out the characters but did set up a lot of depth and context quickly. The characters were complex and flawed, leaving everyone interesting and no one to root for.

My only disappointment was the abrupt ending. It felt like the author hit a word limit and had to cram in a conclusion. I would have gladly read another 100.pages to bring it to a more satisfying finale.

Disclosure: I received an ARC of this book from the publisher through netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Thanks to NetGalley and Kensington Books for the ARC. I've gotta say this book is pretty expensive for what is essentially a bottle plot - it all took place on one spaceship and jumped perspectives & went through different motives. I think most of this book really goes through guilt, and how it eats away at the characters throughout their lives and impacts every interaction they have with each other. Like Knives Out, everyone's in it for themselves, but I liked every character regardless. It has a really good sense of scene, and excellent pacing. Major gay + trans rep too in a way that didn't say "hey it's the future and equality is here!" but rather acknowledged the perpetuation of inequality despite technological advances. Would recommend to anyone who loves the #drama of it all.

I was utterly gripped by Escape Velocity, but it was lacking in some areas - and what began as an immensely strong read deteriorated somewhat towards the end. The two parallel plot lines in this book weren't always cohesive, with the pasts of the rich passengers being given a lot more focus - this led to them being more well-developed as characters than their crew counterparts (although they all could have been more fully formed).
Although I understand what the ending was aiming for, it felt very unsatisfactory to me - possibly this was purposeful, with both sides coming off as awful, but it makes the comparisons to Knives Out or Parasite feel inaccurate.
That said, for the majority of the book, Escape Velocity is an absolute page-turner and really engaging - I was thoroughly immersed., especially for the first three-quarters. Had this been a book that focussed on just one of the two plot lines, I feel like I would have rated it a lot higher.
Escape Velocity aims high, but doesn't quite hit the mark - nonetheless, it's a fast-paced, entertaining read.
3.5 rounded up to 4.

Mixed feelings about this read, but glad to have read it.

In this story, alumni from a prestigious astronautical high school convene for the weekend at a resort in space. A few of them have a messy past related to the murder of one of their fellow students and lies are getting uncovered. There's also a plot amongst the working class of the resort to ... do something about the uber rich, let's say.

I like a story of friends with secrets from the past, so I enjoyed that part of the book. I found each of the characters that make up the friend group both compelling and reprehensible which I think is the point. I thought the murder mystery part of the book was going to be on the resort in the present day, so that did throw me off, but I worked with it.

I bet the ending will be polarizing when this comes out, but I liked it a lot about it. I thought it was bold in the best way.

Now for my disappointments. There are a couple big things I struggled with. One is that the two plotlines didn't mesh well for me (the worker rebellion and the murder mystery). They were so unrelated. Second is that I think the worker piece of the story wasn't given enough page time. Going into this book, I thought I'd get mostly a worker POV, but it's actually mostly the rich people. And I found the rich people to be much more fleshed out as characters, whereas the workers were quite flat and their identities reduced to the fact that they are poor and struggling. That feels really odd given the message of the book.

Whenever I'm dissatisfied with a book, I like to mull over what I think would have worked better for me. In this case I think I would have wanted either 1) the worker rebellion piece removed, and the rich people (at least those involved in the murder plot) to self-destruct on their own or 2) a much longer book that gave equal page time to the workers, including flashbacks like the rich people. Perhaps find a way to better mesh the two plots together in the process, creating connections between characters.

The messaging of the book is a bit of a muddle for me, but not necessarily in a bad way in the end. There are times when it's quite heavy handed (contributing to the flatness of the worker characters), but the way the story ends feel more ambiguous in terms of the whether this rebellion was "good" or "bad." I don't want to say too much more for spoiler-y reasons. :)

I don't think pitching this book as Knives Out meets Parasite makes a lot of sense. I'd go with The Menu or Triangle of Sadness to better fit the situation, but neither of those are perfect either. I had been *hoping* for something that felt more like The Menu in its over-the-top, poetic retribution to be honest. There's still a good story here, but these kind of mashup pitches are often inaccurate, so that was frustrating.

I really enjoyed Manibo's debut The Sleepless, and while I liked this release less, I'll still read more from him because I enjoy the tone he takes in his SF (thoughtful, dark, plotty).

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

Thank you to Kensington Books, Erewhon Books, and NetGalley for allowing me to read this book in exchange for a review!

It's another "it's not you, it's me". The book is very deftly written, with wide-ranging characters, and clear writing. I had expected there to be more twists, but it all was relatively straightforward, as benefits a book making a clear message. I appreciated being able to read it, and I liked many of the POVs.