It covered so much ground and featured such a richly developed universe that I am thoroughly impressed the author managed to pack so much into a single 576 page book that still offered an intricate story and vision. I was absolutely blown away by this book! Though it often dove into some pretty dense subject matter, the story remained thoroughly enjoyable and rewarding throughout. Prompted by their inquiries regarding any messages Alex may have left behind regarding a particularly sensitive project, Swan uncovers a store of hidden communications left for her to deliver, a mission that quickly finds her swept up in a plot that spans the Solar System. Shortly after the funeral, Swan is approached by a pair of Alex’s colleagues, Inspector Jean Genette of the Interplanetary Police and a diplomat from the Saturnian moon Titan named Wahram. The story unfolds mainly from the perspective of an eccentric artist named Swan Er Hong and opens with the death of her grandmother Alex, the widely respected and extremely influential Lion (ruler) of Mercury. In this future, while humanity has spread out across the Solar System, it is still spiritually beholden to an Earth wracked by the effects of climate change, overpopulation, and massive social inequality.
The majority of this book takes place in and around the year 2312. I can’t believe how quickly the time has passed since reading my first novel from him back in 2016, but here I am finally getting into a second one! He’s had a very successful and prolific career, having won multiple awards over the years, along the way earning praise like “ the gold-standard of realistic, and highly literary, science-fiction writing” from The Atlantic and a “Hero of the Environment” from Time Magazine. As an avid reader of science fiction, I feel like Kim Stanley Robinson is an author that I need to be way more familiar with than I am currently.
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