Ancestral Night

Ancestral Night by Elizabeth Bear (2019 Gollancz softcover 504pp)

 

First published in 2018, Ancestral Night starts out like most other recent wide-screen space operas. We meet a small plucky rag-tag crew of space salvagers as they follow a lead to a potentially lucrative job. Unlike many other similar tales this book has only one viewpoint character, Haimey Dz, an engineer on the salvage tug spacecraft. Connla, a hotshot pilot rounds out the human crew which also includes Singer an AI computer and 2 space-adapted pet cats. Haimey herself has been adapted to life in space, with her feet replaced by “aft hands” and her brain sporting assorted electronic implants. After uncovering evidence of recent violence, the crew explores an unfamiliar alien ship and discover some of its secrets. In the process Haimey triggers a booby-trap which pierces her spacesuit and an injects some sort of pathogen into her body. Slowly she develops new abilities and heightened senses. Space pirates in the form of “Freeporters” soon arrive and the crew make a hasty escape to a deep-space space station to report their find. Haimey realises the commander of the station is corrupt and in league with the pirates. She makes friends with the local law-enforcement official (a giant alien praying-mantis) before they all head back to the core systems of the Synarche, the multi-species galactic federation that humanity has recently become part of. The Synarche takes peace and justice seriously and is not past altering the minds and memories of its citizens to keep them in order. Once in the core the crew retrieve another alien ship, then certain spoilery events occur around half-way through and change the entire tone and set-up of the novel. Suddenly we’re in a survival story as Haimey must learn to stay alive on the alien ship which has suddenly headed off on an unknown course with only her and her pirate nemesis Zanya Farweather on board. The pair eventually join forces but continue to distrust each other. Farweather causes Haimey to re-evaluate her past and the very reality of her memories. It becomes clear that Haimey has been a pawn in a much larger scheme. Then about 150 pages later we change gears back to the space opera format. Old friends return and there’s an action-packed climax involving your typical ancient giant alien artifact.

I enjoyed this book and there was a great sense of world-building by the author – she drops plenty of hints of other alien cultures, technology and social systems. Haimey’s internal monologues and self-reflection perhaps do become a little too wordy and frequent in the second half of the book. There are a lot of good points to be made about the nature of freedom under different political and ideological systems and how that impacts the individual but I’m not sure we needed to dip into that thinking quite so often.

A good, mainly undemanding read for any sci-fi fan. Bear has recently produced another novel (“Machine”) set in the same universe and I look forward continuing to explore the Synarche and its enemies.