Synopsis
Brooklyn Lamontagne spends his time running most any cargo to and from Venus after saving the world from galactic war. Unfortunately for Brooklyn, he can’t remember it.
Shunned by the Earth’s governments and making ends meet with his alien co-pilot Float, Brooklyn is soon called into action again when his pal Demarco tells him that The First, the all-powerful alien conquerors of the Solar System, pull out on their occupation of Earth.
What made The First turn tail? Whatever it was, it’s a closely-guarded secret that Brooklyn, his mushroom trip-created AI and his too-old-for-this-shit crew are going to find out.
Review
Thank you to Angry Robot for sending me an ARC of Earth Retrograde. I couldn’t wait for my pre-ordered copy to arrive. After book one of The First Planets Duology, Mercury Rising, was one of my top reads of the year [Review: Mercury Rising by R.W.W. Greene | FanFiAddict] I had high hopes for the follow up. Did Earth Retrograde live up to lofty expectations? As Brooklyn Lamontage would probably say, thafuckyou think?
We have jumped forward two decades since Mercury Rising. Brooklyn hasn’t bathed in glory for foiling a Jelly (squid-like aliens) plot to drop a planet-cracking meteor on humanity. Instead, he’s an outcast; like a cosmic weary Mal Reynolds hailing from a 1970s Queens, NY. His human citizenship has been revoked and he spends his time with his Jelly co-pilot, Float, ferrying cargo and people during a mass Earth exodus.
There’s just something captivating about space migration. At a time where populism is rife and we’re subject to politicians frantically telling us to look over there, it’s fitting that there are Sci Fi stories that look at this. Earth Retrograde is no exception and seems to throwback to The Great Migration by Ma Boyong, another cracking Sci Fi mass migration story.
And if you’re not familiar with an R.W.W. Greene novel by now, this sort of a plot is all par for the course. A lot is happening in the background. A lot. Here, Earth has been claimed by The First and they want the earthlings gone and they want them gone yesterday. Yet the story centres around our unassuming protagonist, Brooklyn. It’s a story where the unspectacular NPCs are shoved into the spectacular, which often goes about as well as can be expected. Not very.
This is precisely what I love about Greene’s writing and why he’s one of my favourite writers in the genre. I love that every character is fully fleshed out and has their time under our reader’s lens. Even the sentient ship A.I.’s rock simulator program is still, somehow, a page-turning event. Nothing at all is rushed along. The story just unfolds and is allowed to happen. In one sitting I somehow managed to read a third of the book without even realising it because it’s just so easy to keep on reading.
Light Years
Adding to the charm is the myriad of references to a groovy soundtrack. Even the many parts of the book are named predominantly after Pearl Jam songs. Eddie Vedder is mentioned as having something alien about him but also there’s that cameo from an artist late on in the book. I heavily recommend booting up Pearl Jam’s greatest hits as a soundtrack to an Earth Retrograde binge.
Immortality
Let’s bring this back to the main character. Brooklyn, that Mal Reynolds/Han Solo greaser character who never asks for anything that happens over the entire duology. I can’t tell you the empathy I feel for the guy. The universal weariness that radiates from him right from the very start of the book really tugged the heartstrings. He’s the guy who can’t catch a single break but has no choice but to keep on going. And, due to the nanobots implanted inside him in Mercury Rising, not even death sticks long enough to give him some reprieve.
Brooklyn’s relationships, even the romantic ones, are always fleeting but always poignant. Especially so with what loosely passes as the duology’s antagonist, Caliban. The universe just needs to leave Brooklyn alone but it never seems like it’s going to happen. This takes us to the ending of The First Planets … ack it’s a great ending but it was a suckerpunch. Yeah. Sigh.
Off He Goes
It seems rare for trad pub to let an author tell their story over two books rather than a series. Huge credit to Angry Robot for giving Greene the platform to make these books something special. You will struggle to find a better literary Sci-Fi embodiment of the space girl lofi hiphop videos on YouTube than Mercury Rising and Earth Retrograde. There is no drawback to this duology. No downside. Greene nailed it.
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