Ancestral Night

Queer science fiction space opera

This was the next set book for my first fantasy book club gathering of the year. Although the author is known for her fantasy writing, this book is in fact science fiction. Now, unlike some other members of the bookclub, I quite like science fiction, so I was more than willing to give this book a chance.

“Ancestral Night” by Elizabeth Bear is a science fiction novel about Haimey, an engineer on a small spaceship with a pilot called Connla, an AI called Singer and two cats. The purpose of the mission is to salvage parts and technology from wrecked and abandoned ships, work that is sanctioned by the Synarche government. However, when the crew discover an abandoned ship full of ancient technology and the scene of an unthinkable crime, their trajectory takes an abrupt turn. When Haimey discovers that some of the technology has melded to her, loses the ability to moderate her own emotions and finds herself trapped on an ancient ship with a sexy but ruthless pirate, she must confront the truth of her own past in order to save the galaxy’s future.

This is an epic science fiction novel in the classic space opera style. Bear introduces plenty of interesting technologies and builds on the genre’s canon of human augmentation, superior aliens, innovative means of space travel and a pan-galactic government. There were a handful of interesting aliens, and I particularly liked Cheeirilaq who was a space station police officer that resembled a giant praying mantis. I thought Bear explored some interesting moral questions about regulating emotions chemically and how much of a person is retained when their memories are modified.

However, there were a lot of things that frustrated me about this book. It is a long book. Now, I know I complain about long books fairly frequently, but this book was hundreds of pages shorter than some of the ones I’ve reviewed previously and it still felt long. Part of the problem is that Bear is quite a repetitive writer. Haimey seemed like she was constantly shivering, constantly using the word “atavistic”, constantly referring to the pirate as a “bad girl” and constantly lamenting how she has terrible taste in women. I’m not going to give too much away here, but Haimey really hadn’t been with that many women to justify how many times she said that about herself.

The part of the book where she and the pirate are stuck on the ancient ship hurtling towards god knows where felt like it went forever. I totally get that Bear had spent a lot of time trying to figure out how someone could survive on an alien ship for weeks and weeks without obvious sources of food and water, but the book really dragged and the tiny bit of interaction between Haimey and the pirate did not outweigh the amount of time where nothing was happening. I felt like a lot of this book took place in Haimey’s mind, and that there was far too much thinking (about the same things over and over again), and far too little action. Then the huge action scene at the end felt as ridiculous as this.

For people who have never read much in the way of science fiction, I think this would be as good a place as any to start. However, those who are a little more seasoned and who are looking for something fresh may find this a bit frustrating.