TL;DR Review: Big on the adventure and action, even bigger on the feelings. A visceral and emotional exploration of identity and vulnerability.
Synopsis:
This is How You Lose the Time War meets Ex Machina: Seth Haddon’s science fiction debut, Volatile Memory, is a sapphic sci-fi action adventure novella.
With nothing but a limping ship and an outdated mask to her name, Wylla needs a big pay day. When the alert goes out that a lucrative piece of tech lies hidden on a nearby planet, she calls on all the swiftness of her prey-animal instincts to beat other hunters to it.
What you found wasn’t your ticket out—it was my corpse wearing an AI mask. When you touched the mask, you heard my voice. A consciousness spinning through metal and circuits, a bodiless mind, spun to life in the HAWK’s temporary storage. I crystallized and realized: I was alive.
Masks aren’t supposed to retain memory, much less identity, but the woman inside the MARK I HAWK is real, and she sees Wylla in a way no one ever has. Sees her, and doesn’t find her wanting or unwhole.
Armed with military-grade tech and a lifetime of staying one step ahead of the hunters, Wylla and HAWK set off to get answers from the man who discarded HAWK once before: her ex-husband.
Full Review:
What a wild romp across the stars Volatile Memory turned out to be!
From the beginning, the second-person perspective sets it apart as being something very different from what I’ve read in most classic sci-fi stories. This point of view of someone looking at the main character almost as if talking with her, reliving her story, connecting with her—it sets a tone that is curious at first, but ultimately leads to far greater closeness with the true narrator of the story…
But I’m getting ahead of myself!
Volatile Memory begins by following Wylla, a scavenger who receives a curious message about an impossible artifact on a seemingly abandoned planet. Desperate for a score that will keep her alive, she races to the planet and fights other scavengers to get her hands on the treasure: a HAWK helmet.
In this world, everyone wears these helmets modeled after different animals, each with specific purposes and capable of granting different abilities. OX helmets make the wearer inhumanly strong, RATTLESNAKE helmets can generate poison, and RABBIT helmets (which Wylla owns) are hyper-sensitive to threats and can warn of danger. But HAWK? HAWK is something else entirely, a fact Wylla learns as soon as she claims her prize.
Racing away from the battle, she realizes HAWK is more than just a helmet. Within its wires and nanochips lies a living, conscious being—our narrator.
We’re whisked along on a journey from planet to planet, Wylla always trying to outrun her pursuers, trying to figure out the secret of HAWK, and with every step, coming closer to learning the dark truth behind her grand prize.
The adventure of it all is endlessly engaging. There was no point in the book when I would have been happy putting it down to do other things—I binge-read it in one sitting, a fact made easy by how short it was.
But it’s the character work beneath the adventure that really makes this story shine. Volatile Memory is a story of identity, of finding one’s truest self and voice, of fully embracing who we are at the core of our being.
The mask aspect was also beautifully done, exploring how we all hide ourselves behind a variety of masks to find some measure of safety, but it’s only when we remove it, embrace vulnerability, and reveal our true natures to those who matter that we find genuine connection.
Though it’s a short book, it delivers big adventure, big feelings, and a massive-feeling sci-fi universe I could have spent an entire series exploring. It’s a hell of a reading experience, and a truly engaging story from start to finish.
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