Review: The Folded Sky

The Folded Sky by Elizabeth Bear
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is the third book in the White Space series. The author does an interesting thing with this series: each book is a complete story for those particular characters, with the "series" part coming only in the common setting (although a prominent character in Book 1, Ancestral Night, does make an appearance in the second volume, Machine ). This far-future, hard-SF setting showcases the Synarche, a multispecies federation humans are a part of.

In this particular book, the protagonist is Dr. Sunya Song, an "archinformist" whose speciality is hunting down, sorting and making sense of alien historical information. She is participating in a research study of the Baomind, an ancient artificial intelligence orbiting a dying star. The Synarche is trying to rescue as many pieces of the Baomind as it can, but the situation is complicated by pirates who hate any kind of artificial intelligence and want to destroy it. Sunya's ship is attacked by the Freeporters, pirates, on its way in, and they succeed in setting up a blockade around the system. The Baomind will protect the researchers and their station, but the pirates are attempting to starve them out.

This story of big stakes is balanced by the personal stakes of Sunya's family--her alien wife Salvie and their two children--as well as Sunya's personal insecurities and her having to deal with a rival scientist, Vickee DeVine, who years ago stole Sunya's research. These two conflicts could have ended up dragging the story down, but the author handled the opposing plotlines very well. Sunya has to shake off the lingering trauma of her previous relationship with Vickee DeVine, readjust her family relationships, and oh by the way save the Baomind and the people aboard the research station. It's quite a stew, with some terrific, well-written action sequences. This is also some pretty hard, physics-oriented SF (once you get past the necessary handwaving of "white space" with allows for faster-than-light travel).

This series seems to be getting better as it goes along. I've heard there's a fourth book coming. I certainly hope so; the series is on my must-buy list.

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