Review: Hole in the Sky

Hole in the Sky by Daniel H. Wilson
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I had high hopes for this book, since I own the author's Robopocalypse and Robogenesis. However, while it had a fairly solid setup, the ending fell flat for me.

This may be because the book is primarily a thriller, and written in a very cinematic way, as if it's a not very subtle pitch to be a blockbuster movie. There are four main characters: 1) the Man Downstairs, who observes and babysits a quantum computer deep underground who has tapped into the forward-background flow of time in the universe and makes predictions that always come true. Lately, the Pattern, as it's called, has been spouting gibberish that gradually becomes not-gibberish, evolving into the readable thoughts of....something. Something the Pattern has tapped into that terrifies the Man Downstairs; 2) Gavin Clark, an agent for the Department of Defense who investigates what used to be called Unidentified Flying Objects, and who is dispatched by the Man Downstairs with a Pattern-derived warning of "first contact imminent"; 3) Mikayla Johnson, a project manager with the Voyager team at Nasa Johnson Space Center who stumbles across anomalous data in the Voyager readouts, data that points to one thng: a large object headed our way; and 4) Jim Hardgray, a Cherokee man trying to reconcile with his estranged daughter Tawny, who gets caught up in the whirlwind of planet-altering events when the unidentified object detected by Mikayla Johnson reaches Earth and touches down at the Spiro Mound, an ancient buried Native city in Oklahoma.

All well and good, so far. This is a story of first contact, and all the worldwide upheaval that would entail. The descriptions of how it is discovered, and how the nations of the world prepare for it (the United States, per usual, immediately starts gearing up for war) is what makes this book more of a thriller than a SF story, at least at first. However, it's when the object reaches Earth and lands literally atop the Spiro Mounds is when the disappointment begins setting in, at least for me. Because it's at that point that the story takes a turn into mysticism and extradimenionsional Lovecraftian entities, and that simply didn't set well with me.

Look, I understand why the story took the turn it did. The author is an enrolled member of the Cherokee nation, and the swerve the story takes is drawn directly from the history, myths and legends of the Cherokee people. I don't want to sound like I'm putting any of that down. But as the characters descend into the hidden underground city of the Spiro Mounds, we discover that all the tunnels and chambers here, once mapped and revealed, show an ancient extradimensional reality-bending...god-brain asleep under the Earth's surface? A god-brain linked to a ship apparently made out of nanotechnology, that the Voyager probes reaching beyond our solar system woke up and compelled to return home? And said god-brain can be manipulated by the thoughts and desires of Jim Hardgray, in much the same way his ancestors evidently sang it to sleep fifteen thousand years ago, to the point where he can not only use the god-brain's power to recreate the bomb meant to destroy it, but also to resurrect his deceased son, dead for two years?

I mean, especially that last, that's not going to come back to bite humanity in the ass. No sirree.

Well, due to Jim Hardgray's knowledge of the ancient Cherokee language and stories, the god-brain is defeated...kinda? At least until Jim's son realizes what he really is, which I guess could be the storyline for a sequel if the author ever wished to write it. And the chapters of all those extradimensional reality-twisting alien horrors coming to life are well-written and dripping with atmosphere. But as far as I am concerned, the climax of the book does not live up to all that came before, which is a shame. (For a really excellent Native-authored fantasy combining horror with searing commentary on this country's Native American genocide, try Stephen Graham Jones' The Buffalo Hunter Hunter. You won't regret it.)

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