Review Catch-Up: "Ragamuffin" by Tobias Buckell

[megwrites]

Title: Ragamuffin (sequel to Crystal Rain)
Author: Tobias S. Buckell (TobiasBuckell.com)
Genre: Science Fiction
Page Count: 316
Publisher: Tor





Basic Plotline: Nashara is a walking weapon, a clone designed to hold within her the undoing of the Benevolent Satrapy. What she wants is just to get home to Chimson, but she has to get through the wormholes of the 48 worlds that the Benevolent Satrapy have allowed a technologically-restricted humanity to inhabit and that means getting past the Hongguo, the human forces that work for the Satrapy. Along the way she runs into Kara, who's habitat is being destroyed completely by a Satrap claiming that the Satrapy is looking to destroy humanity for good, not just the Raga. And on Nanagada, Pepper and John de Brun are preparing for the worst when the wormhole above their world opens up after being closed for hundreds of years, bringing with it the fight for humanity's very survival.

The Positives: I was eager to pick up this book as the sequel to the very enjoyable Crystal Rain, which was almost more steampunk than science fiction, and very intrigued when I realized that Ragamuffin was going to be almost pure science fiction. In this novel Buckell portrays worlds that are part of the "Benevolent Satrapy" and while their technological development is restricted by humanity mysterious overlords, they do rely heavily on it.

The worldbuilding is excellent and probably the best feature of this book. It's clear that Buckell has thought out the details of ships, space travel, wormholes, and alien-human relations very well and has mapped out a system that I find very credible.

I was very glad to revisit Pepper, John, and Nanagada and their struggle with the Azteca and the Teotl that inhabit their world and have been manipulating them for so many years.


The Negatives: I did not nearly enjoy this book as much as I did Crystal Rain. The writing felt uneven, mechanical, and lacking in feeling or description. I like lean prose, but many times the scene or setting changed within a sentence and without much of note to the reader. There were times when hours or days would lapse in a few words and I was hard pressed to follow along with events. There was a lot of telling but precious little showing at times, especially toward the last third of the novel and the final battle.

When Nashara engages the technology within her, I get no sense of it. In this novel, technology that is used or things that are done are stated, but I feel like they could be doing magical spells for all that any of it feels real to me.

While Buckell plans his worlds well, I did not get an visceral or real sense of them. I did not really feel or experience this universe in the way I would one that was better described. While I'm not a visual reader, I am someone who can get a lot out of descriptions of sounds, smells, tastes, etc.

The characters did not stand out as vividly to me, even though the situations they were put into had the potential to be very interesting. I felt like I got no real glimpse in what made Nashara who she was. Though she was an excellent action-heroine and tough-as-nails, I did not really feel like I got to see into her or really cozy up to her and get to like her as protagonist or even get to know her well. As the most prominent character, it would have benefitted this novel to get a more full glimpse into her.

Don't get me wrong, I like a nice rock 'em sock 'em fight and shoot 'em out space fight as much as the next SF-reader, but I like it a lot more when I actually care who wins and who gets hurt, when I can feel the fight.

Overall, this book felt very distant as though I watched it all through a window, couldn't understand what was being said sometimes, and didn't get particularly attached. If not for the fact that I had met Pepper, John, and Jerome in the previous book, I don't think I would have cared at all if they lived or died or that Jerome does die.

The book starts out strong, but unfortunately things seem to get worse as it goes along and the ending feels like it goes far too fast and is stripped down to almost being an outline with dialogue as far as the prose goes.

On a nitpicky note, there were some copyediting errors that actually shook me out of the reading. I'm not really a stickler for grammar or spelling correctness. Commas out of place aren't really going to distract me and heavens knows I'm lousy at grammar but there were several mistakes that literally stopped me in my tracks and toward the end? There were at least a couple in every chapter.

Thus, I am somewhat disappointed that it did not measure up, for me, to the expectations that Crystal Rain set, but I still think I'll try to find the next book because one thing I do know is that writers generally improve with each story and I do want to know how this Benevolent Satrapy thing turns out, but more because of Crystal Rain than this book.

CoC Score: 10. Buckell is himself a Carribbean writer and he has penned a novel that includes a lot of different cultures, but particularly the culture he himself comes from, and I'm always happy to see writers talking about where they come from and exploring that in speculative fiction. I think Kara and Jared (secondary characters) may be the only "white" characters there. Maybe Danielle (another minor characters). The big players are all CoC's and Pepper and Nashara are the kind of action heroes that I would absolutely love to see translated to screen. Especially as a grandfather-granddaughter team. No problems with white-centricity or gaze.

Gender Score: 8.5. I'm honestly impressed. While I didn't get as much of a view into Nashara (or Kara or any of the other female characters), that was due to writing and I didn't get a view into the male ones, either. There is a slight gender imbalance by the numbers, with most of the warriors, Raga, and Hongguo being identified as male. Given that the main lead and badass in this novel was a woman, and it was done well, I can deal with that as a female reader. Nashara mentions that she sacrificed her womb to become the weapon that she is, and I would have liked to see that explored or explained more and what that means to her. But the female characters that are in this novel are tough ladies who fight as hard and blow as much shit up as the men.

GLBT Score: 0. No one openly identifies as GLBT in this novel, and I was kind of bothered by that because I think there could have been space to at least mention somewhere that at least some minor character is queer in someway or genderqueer. There isn't anything to keep a reader from reading any character as GLBT, and indeed, one could read into the John and Pepper relationship, but nothing overt. I also was curious that all the copies of Nashara automatically identified themselves as the same gender as Nashara, which is ostensibly cisgendered female, it might have been interesting to see if any identified as a different gender or agendered.

Ablism Score: 0/4. There are no outwardly, overtly disabled characters in this novel. It should be noted that John de Brun had lost his hand and had dealt with that loss for years in the previous novel but has it healed by a medical pod on a space ship and that is somewhat noted when we catch up with the character. As with a lot of SF books, this book has has the classic "in the future we erase all disabilities and instantly fix everything wrong!" trope. Even Kara's agoraphobia resulting from going from a habitat/spaceship to living on a planet is treated when they "[gave] her for mild bouts". So I give a split score. Zero for nothing overt (I don't know that the agoraphobia counts as a disability or not, and that's part of the split score), but a two for some erasure. There is another mention at the beginning of the book that lamina (a data stream information relay sort of thing that you can see with a kind of implant in your brain) can be viewed by everyone unless they're very young or something is wrong with their brains, so that could point to another kind of disability but it is no way explored or explained.

There's really not a reason that PWD couldn't have been included or at least mentioned and not "healed" into "normality" in this book, either, and it might have made it more interesting to explore what disability means and constitute in the future, especially under the Benevolent Satrapy. In a world of ships that are in zero-gravity, making mobility easier, are certain conditions even disabilities anymore or just like being left handed as opposed to right handed? Alas, not explored here in this book.

Comments

[lyras.livejournal.com]

My feelings are very much like yours on this one. I thought Buckell did brilliantly with the female characters (and they were a huge improvement on the female characters in Crystal Rain, for me), but I was disappointed in the writing this time around.