Synopsis:
Klara and the Sun meets S. A. Barnes’s Dead Silence with a touch of Becky Chambers’ A Psalm for the Wild-Built in Nebula Award-winning author A.D. Sui’s darkly philosophical murder mystery, as a death monk and a team of researchers trapped onboard a spaceship of the dead encounter something beyond human understanding…
Vessel Iris has devoted himself to the Starlit Order, performing funeral rites for the dead across the galaxy, guiding souls back into the Infinite Light. Despite the meaning he finds in his work and the comfort of AI companionship, his relationships with the living leave him longing for deeper connection.
The spaceship Counsel of Nicaea has been lost for more than a thousand years, its passengers reduced to dust and bone. A relic of Earth’s dying past, its sudden appearance has attracted a team of academics eager to investigate its archeological history. And Iris has been assigned to bring peace to the crew’s long departed souls.
Carpeted in moss and intertwined with vines, Nicaea is more forest than ship. Iris’s religious rituals are met with bemusement by the scientists—and outright hostility by engineer Yan Fukui.
But the plant life isn’t the only sentience to have survived in the past millennia. Something onboard is stalking the explorers one by one. And Iris with his AI enhancement may be their only hope for survival. . .
IN OUTER SPACE NO ONE CAN HEAR YOUR PRAYERS
Review:
For fans of Gideon the Ninth, Of Monsters and Mainframes, and Becky Chambers.
A lonely monk is sent to a generation ship with his trusty AI construct implanted in his brain. He isn’t the only one sent and he crosses wits and barbs with a grumpy engineer professor and his team.
Oh, and it turns out it might be a murder ship.
This book packed a lot in and it was written through Iris’s spiralling, self-destructive thoughts. He shares his mind with an AI – his friend, his helper, occasionally his tormentor.
“We convince ourselves that as long as we’re angry with ourselves, as long as we blame ourselves, whatever it is we’re blaming ourselves for, we won’t forget it. We’re making someone pay. Justice is being served. Meanwhile, we don’t have to feel the pain. Isn’t that right? It’s not the thing that happened that we’re afraid of—it’s already done—it’s the pain.”
Not only is Iris dealing with prejudice from others, abstinence and urges (there’s some interesting reflections of starving and binging and conflict which I wish was given more time), questioning his faith/purpose/life; he also has a mystery and an increasing amount of dead bodies.
Don’t get me started on the amazing discussions around AI. Normally, we discuss the ethics of AI as to how it relates to humanity. Here, it’s turned on its head. What rights should AI have?
This is explored through a wider glimpse of the world where sentient AI’s are able to make their own decisions, as well as more closely through Iris’s childhood AI implant.
Whilst not explored as deeply as I might have liked, we touch on the uneasy power dynamic and the dependency of both.
“It’s possible, Tev, to be solitary and not lonely. Loneliness is experienced when we wish to connect with others and are unable to. We can easily feel lonely in a crowd of people. Solitude simply means being away from others. All within reason, of course.”
Then there is the human relationships which are tense and tentative. I don’t want to give too much away, but there may be a grumpy/sunshine dynamic.
This manages to be tense and meditative – a difficult balance to strike.
Unbeknownst to me, this is the first in a series, so I’m excited to see what’s in store next.
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