I received a copy of Lightless in exchange for an honest review. I wanted to like the book but overall it left me cold.
In theory Lightless should have been good. An advanced ship, interplanetary rebellion, suspense, good guys and bad guys, totalitarian government. I found the story interesting and the main character, Althea, likeable at first. About midway through the book turns plodding, unbelievable and the character loses my interest and sympathy.
The ending was particularly bad. First it was a set up for more books (another trilogy??) which is annoying, but the plot had so many holes in it that I couldn’t take it seriously.
The System is repressive, willing to kill everyone who lives in a terraformed dome on one of the solar system moons or planets if enough of the folks in the habitat rebel or disobey. That seems a bit much, even a ruthless government ought to be able to find a less destructive, less indiscriminate solution.
Of course the System spawns a revolutionary, the Mallt-y-Nos. Her solution to free the outer solar system’s population from the System’s tyrrany? Destroy the Earth. Yes, that’s right, not only destroy government centers, but make the planet uninhabitable. That’ll teach them all right.
Really. Think a minute. You have a bunch of moons, asteroids, planets that have artificial environments set up to house a few million people. Do you really think these fragile habitats are self sufficient and will never, not in 2000 years, need something that only Earth has? Putting aside moral questions, this “solution” makes no sense whatsoever. It’s like the kid with the football who doesn’t take his ball home when he can’t win but instead blows up the field, the other team and his ball.
The other plot hole is even sillier. Ananke is an advanced ship that converts chaos to usable energy (thus upturning the second law of thermodynamics) with an advanced computer. Matthew manages to infect the ship’s computer with a virus that somehow makes it into a sentient artificial intelligence. And he did this in just a few minutes! The result is of course an AI that never heard of Asimov’s three laws, never learned about morality and ethics, and acts like a two year old that just happens to be all-powerful.
The characters, Althea, her ship-turned-sentient Ananke, captain Domitian, scientist Gagnon, nasty System intelligence agent and psychopath Ida Stays, plus criminals Ivan and Matthew, plus Ivan’s mom and Constance Harper (who turns out to be the Mallt-y-Nos herself), are uninteresting. Domitian is driven by duty, Gagnon is a nonentity red shirt type.
The writing wasn’t bad, not great but better than some. The ideas, people, setting and plot were either ridiculous or boring and the last third of the book was a chore to get through. I won’t look for the sequel.
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