Review: Grave of the Waiting by Joshua Scott Edwards
Blurb:
FROM DARKNESS THEY CALLED. FROM RUIN WE ANSWERED.
Humanity's extinction is just around the corner, Ada Bryce is sure of it. But when virtual reality is indistinguishable from reality and anything is possible in the Chain, why not choose to remain shackled? It's easy to put Earth's slow decay out of mind when hedonic simulations are available with no more than a thought. As contemptible as her situation is, Ada is powerless to correct human folly. All she can do is make sure her own family's energy needs are taken care of until death inevitably claims everyone she loves.
Only, she's failing as a mathematician, she's already failed as a mother, and she's given up trying to escape the tragic memories that haunt her. So when she's offered the chance to leave Earth while ensuring her family has the resources they need to survive, Ada seizes it and embarks on a dangerous mission. She travels to a rogue planet with four other volunteers: an Energy War veteran, a zealous psychonaut, a pragmatic scientist, and the world-renowned founder of the Unity, the organization sponsoring the mission.
However, the Unity's founder is far from trustworthy, the rest of Ada's crew are unaware of the true purpose of their mission, and on this journey, they will learn that Earth is far from the worst place in the solar system. As firmly as Ada believes her home planet is beyond saving, it may be worth fighting for after all, for when she and her fellow crewmates step foot on a new planet, their presence awakens old life.
Life that calls out and seeks to reconfigure the Earth for itself.
Review:
Wow, wow, wow. My second review for SFF Insiders, and a second 5 star read. I’m crushing this! Oh, yeah, the authors have been doing pretty (prettyyyyy, prettyyyy) good as well.
This book is an excellent sci-fi adventure, with elements of horror that really kept me on the edge of my seat/couch/wherever I happened to be reading at the moment. For the purpose of the review, I’m just going to mainly focus on the first half, since the second half is so full of twists, turns, excellent storytelling and eye-popping moments I really don’t want to spoil or give anything away before you get the chance to read it. Trust me, it’ll be worth it and you’ll thank me for my discretion.
As we first venture into the book, it starts off with the main character, Ada, and her experiences as a child during the Energy War which is taking place in the year 2086. It’s a worldwide conflict, but we focus on the troops of the Unified Korean Peninsula, the Allianz Mitteleuropa and the United States. Essentially, the world is running out of ways to power civilization, and this is the great war of the time when things really hit the fan. We don’t see much of the war itself, but the backdrop it provides helps to relay how desperate humanity is for survival.
Ada and her parents, along with her aunt and uncle (close family friends really, but they get the honor of being close enough for family), are in a hospital when the troops attack it. As the building begins to get destroyed, a medibot on a different level begins killing people in the room, and Ada’s parents volunteer to hack it and help stop the slaughter. Unfortunately for everyone, we find out soon after that her parents are killed by the bot.
Fast forward to the year 2106, and Ada is living with her uncle Ezran, whose wife also died the same day as her parents. Ada receives a message on her Chain account; the Chain is an incredibly advanced and more immersive internet, where you can do almost anything with the help of augments, or implants. The message is from a woman named Constance St James, who is the creator of the Chain, and she briefs Ada about the arrival of a rogue planet which has parked itself right into Jupiter’s orbit. She asks Ada if she’s interested in learning more, and Ada replies yes. After a few weeks go by, Constance reaches out again to inform Ada she has been chosen for a mission; to visit the rogue planet and learn what they can from the beings that inhabit it. Ada accepts officially, and after telling her ex-wife Lakaya, and her uncle, gets picked up by Constance who is immediately different from the portrayal she shows the public.
“The woman across from her was more metal than flesh. She had no need for a seatbelt; an exoskeleton wrapping around her torso was locked into a bracket at the front of the auto. Dark braces ran down the insides and outsides of both the woman’s legs, with powered joints at the knees and hips. The device terminated at her neck, leaving her face unencumbered. And her eyes. They changed to a pale red as Ada examined the person across from her.”
Ada meets the rest of the crew; Anders Larsson (inorganics expert), Dr Marlo Briggs (biologist and organics expert), and Davus Fenton (soldier and medic), and they set off on a journey to the planet. I don’t want to rush through and spoil everything, but I do want to mention how well thought out and full of personality all of the characters are. Especially Dr Briggs, who is actually hilarious, and a professional on the psychoactive substances that can really influence the way in which people think. He gets on the nerves of the other crew members, but none more so that Larsson.
“Larsson snorted. “Your problem, Dr. Briggs, is that you always believe you are the smartest one in the room.”
“Believe is a funny choice of word,” Marlo said, the corners of his mouth tugging upward.”
It’s about halfway through the book by the time we reach the rogue planet. Once we get to the rogue planet however, oh man. Shit hits the proverbial fan in more ways than one, and the crew engages in a fight for their lives. The stakes get higher and higher, as the book reaches its climax and I really didn’t want it to end at all.
Final Thoughts: One of the strongest aspects of the book is the way in which the author makes the seemingly hard to understand, easy. It’s full of scientific formulas, theories, technical slang but he does an incredible job of making it easy to understand. Think of the way things of that nature are explained in other books like The Martian, or the Expanse series. I absolutely loved it.
“The only thing you got trying to be a hero was a quicker death.”
That quote says it all for me. The story is about doing what it takes, not just to survive on your own but to help humanity as a whole. But as the book goes on, it becomes a question of right or wrong, good or bad, save the many or sacrifice the few? Questions that get brought up about things like that, along with the mindset of humanity as a whole, and the things a person would do to help their loved ones bring Ada choices that I’m thankful I’ll hopefully never have to make.
I mentioned the Martian before, and I can’t stress enough how much fans of that book and Andy Weir in general will love this one as well. Problems pop up and the crew is forced to use their skills, both individually and together, to resolve them and sometimes the consequences that result from those resolutions can be more devastating than they imagined. But the way in which they use their own expertise to come to conclusions and put their theories into action was so much fun to read about and experience.
For a scientifically-hindered person like myself (I’m a history major, leave me alone) stuff like that is really so mind blowing to me to follow, and this book has PLENTY of moments where I’d find myself shaking my head; not just because of the result, but because Josh put so much of his own thoughts into solving the problems, whereas I’d be dead, probably orbiting Jupiter myself if the simplest thing went wrong.
Overall, I really can’t say enough positive things about the book. It was full of great characters, intriguing stories, fantastic dialogue, and had an incredibly thought-provoking conclusion. I would have been thrilled to read another 500 pages of it. Believe me when I say this, in my mind, it goes down as one of the best sci-fi books I’ve ever read.
