Reactor: Holy shit, what a book.
I’ve been waiting with unalloyed anticipation for Elizabeth Bear’s next White Space novel since 2020’s Machine. That novel is The Folded Sky. Part thriller, part murder mystery, and part Big Ideas Space Opera Adventure, it’s entirely worth the wait.
If there’s a single through-line that unites the White Space books, it’s that they’re about competent people who are good at their jobs, who encounter serious problems in the course of their professional lives. Those problems have significant consequences and ramifications, personal and otherwise, and compassion, co-operation, and thoughtfulness are usually as key to solving them as quick reflexes, daring, and resolve. They’re fundamentally adult books, inhabiting and inhabited by all the complexities of adult life, that display—and, indeed, argue for—a moral view of the world that I can best describe as a kind of pragmatic hopefulness.
(Also the protagonists to date have all been queer women who can kick professional ass and take names.)
The Folded Sky is part mystery novel and part action thriller. (Some of its mysteries are worldbuilding mysteries. The Baomind is a fantastic piece of worldbuilding/character.) The mysteries are peeled back in layers as the action mounts with ever-increasing tension. Explosive peril gives rise to some truly excellent action sequences, as matters mount from crisis to… worse. Sunya doesn’t believe that she’s brave. But when push comes to shove, she’ll leap into the terrifying void to save her loved ones—and even people she doesn’t love, for that matter.
The Folded Sky is a novel I love and admire in about equal proportion. Once I started reading it, I found it the next best thing to impossible to put down. I’m so happy that it exists. I really hope that Bear writes more.