Archangel Down starts a new series by C. Gockel that uses some of the same world and characters as her short story “Carl Sagan’s Hunt for Intelligent Life in the Universe”. I liked the short story and was glad to see Noa Sato taking the lead in this novel.
The premise and world building are excellent. The colonists on Luddeccea distrust technology in general and believe their time gate, which allows interstellar travel, has been invaded by non-corporeal aliens who can control people through their augments. No one outside of the Luddecceans believes this story.
The story opens with Noa in a re-education camp with her ethernet port blocked, half starved and frozen, surrounded by others who have had artificial limbs torn away. Noa escapes and meets James Sinclair, a professor who comes to Luddeccea for a vacation. Sinclair is highly augmented and Noa knows the authorities will kill him if they can.
Noa hatches a plan to escape the planet and bring warning to the rest of the human worlds, to bring the navy to Luddeccea to stop the murders and rescue the people in the camps.
Weaker Points: Pace and Character
The plot is choppy. Noa and James must run and stay ahead of the authorities and the novel spends quite a bit of time on this, making for inconsistent pacing. It also is a little unbelievable. Noa has escaped from a concentration camp, is woefully malnourished, and gets a serious fungal lung infection. Yet she is able to stay several steps ahead of the manhunt even while contacting others she believes can help.
The other point that hurts pacing is the author brings in some 20th century jokes, mostly allusions to Star Trek and Star Wars, plus some racial observations. The jokes aren’t funny and the race stuff doesn’t add anything to the story. (In Noa’s world most people are medium tan while she is dark and James is white and blond.) These slow down the story and feel a little forced.
Noa is a strong character, albeit secondary, in the short story and provides the main point of view and lead. We see she is loyal to a fault, strong-willed, serious, willing to trust people she knows, ready to love and support her friends. She is also ruthless, smart, bold. By the end of Archangel Down we feel like Noa is a real person, not necessarily a realistic one, but someone we want to read about.
James Sinclair provides point of view part of the novel but is more sketchy. Sinclair realizes he cannot remember anything prior to a serious accident that resulted in him getting so many augments, but he worries that he may not be himself. This helps explain the paucity of character development, but it left me feeling like he needs more work.
My favorite character is Carl Sagan, currently inhabiting a wherfle on the Ark with Noa. The short story hints that The One, the individual minds that can inhabit wherfles or other semi-intelligent creatures, know about the dangerous aliens that are in the Time Gate. I do hope that Noa and James figure out that Carl Sagan is a lot more than a cute pet who keeps the rats down.
Overall
Archangel Down opens a lot of plot strings and leaves us with lots of questions. It is fairly well-written and interesting, with a good plot and interesting characters. I intend to read the next book in the Archangel Project series, Noa’s Ark: Archangel Project. Book Two. I debate between 3 and 4 stars because yes, I liked the book, yes I intend to read more, but it just isn’t quite as compelling as most 4 star novels.
3+ Stars
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