Book Review Catch-up! "Crystal Rain" by Tobias Buckell

[megwrites]

Title: Crystal Rain
Author Tobias Buckell (TobiasBuckell.com; tobias_buckell)
Genre: Science Fiction
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Tor




Basic Plotline: On the planet Nanagada, the tenuous peace between the Azteca and the Nanagadans crumbles when the Azteca cross the Wicked High Mountains, bent on conquest and destruction. John de Brun, the amnesiac hero of a disaster at sea, must take up arms and assist the Nanagadans in fighting off their deadly enemy, even though he only has pieces of his memory. To save the people he has lived among, he leads an expedition to find technology left behind by the old-fathers that may turn the tide of the coming war, but if he is to find it he must remember who and what he was before.


The Positives: Though this is, according to the cover, Buckell's first novel, it doesn't seem to suffer from First Timer Syndrome at all. It felt expertly, deftly, competently, and smoothly written.

As always, I appreciate books that keep the plot moving without stopping, and Buckell keeps a very tight, well plotted pace going in this book. While there are occasional pauses to show the emotional states of characters, the plot moves along at a good click.

I heard some review describe this book as "steampunk" - maybe because of the use of electric-rail cars and the balloon airship that's featured on the cover, but if it is, it's one of the few steampunk books I've enjoyed. Though the setting was fascinating - let's face it, there's just not a glut of Carribean-themed SF out there - Buckell does not obsess over the surroundings so totally that he forgets to concentrate on character and plot, which are the two most important elements for me as a reader.

Another of the book's virtues is its handling of an age-old science-fiction trope. The idea of a society descended and devolving from technologically superior ancestors to the point where their technology has become almost like magic is something that's been done time and time again, but Buckell very skillfully shows a society in the intermediate stages. While the "old-father" technology isn't completely inexplicable, they are losing it generation by generation, along with the scientific knowledge to keep it running and save themselves.

This, I felt, was an intelligent, thoughtful twist on an old trick that lots of writers have tried to pull with far less success.

I was impressed with the way Buckell makes all the main characters, whether they're good, bad, or just ambiguous, come to life. While I don't think I'd want to be friends with or would even like a lot of the people he portrays, particularly Oaxctl, who was the ill-fated Azteca traitor caught between his alien gods and his own morality. Even ambiguous, soldier-of-fortune Pepper becomes vivid and interesting, if not always likeable.



The Negatives: Though the pacing of the book was good, it gets off to something of slow start and does speed up a bit toward the end, during the reveal, when it ought to have slowed down and savored the unwrapping of the mysteries that had been laid down in the book.

The fixing of both John's hook hand and Haidan's cancer by the ship came across as deus-ex-machina in the end and I was somewhat disappointed that things which had been so central to struggles those characters went through was so easily disposed with.

I've seen criticism of the Nanagadan dialect portrayed in the book, and I list it as a negative not because I believe the author was wrong, but because I believe that it will throw some readers. The Carribean-derived dialect constructs its sentences much different than textbook American English. I think Buckell gives fair warning or at least fair explanation for it through the character of John de Brun's observations about the Nanagadan's accent.

For visual readers, this will be something difficult to overcome. However, I read with strong verbal, auditory leanings, so I hear a text more than I see it when I'm digesting it. Thus, after a while, the dialect very effectively created a Carribean "sound" in my mind because I imagined hearing it with the tones and accent of a Carribean speaker. But other readers may have difficulties with this, so I do list it under the negatives.


CoC Score: 10. A book with a CoC protagonist and majority CoC characters, with only minor or incidental white characters in the background or as supporting cast. It aces the racial Bechdel Test with flying colors and features not just the diversity of Carribean society, but also the Azteca society as well.

Gender Score: 7. There is a leading female who is a fairly strong character, doing her best in a hard situation, but there weren't as many women as men in this novel and a lot of the action reads as Boy's Own Adventures with the majority of the plot taking place in scenes with male-only Mongoose Men and male-only Azteca soldiers and male-only sailors aboard the ship bound for the frigid north. I wondered why a society that would accept female leadership and did not seem overly invested in rigid gender roles would not have had Mongoose Women, or why the Azteca did not employ female soldiers in their quest to conquer the Nanagadans.

GLBT Score 0. No significant GLBT characters or issues contained in this book.