mixed habitat & densely vegetated hiding places

For a hundred generations, a lineage of women called the Kibsu have lived on Earth, passing down advanced scientific knowledge from mother to daughter while secretly influencing the course of human civilization. Their mission is to turn humanity into a spacefaring species—by any means necessary.

In this book (the first in a planned trilogy), the Kibsu are closer to their goal than ever, manipulating events after the Second World War to encourage the incipient space race between the USA and the USSR. But the Tracker, a mysterious man bent on their destruction, is hot on their heels and getting ever closer to his goal too.


Things I liked about this book:

+ Exciting plot! High energy! Things were always moving forward and I was always eager to see what the characters would do next and to learn more about their secrets. The chapters are very short and everything is written in the present tense, which does create that "breathless" feeling which I know some people hate, but I think it's appropriate here.

+ Good use of historical settings and figures! The characters' choices are cleverly interwoven with what we know really happened in history, and it feels plausible. There's a good balance of extraordinary things happening because sf, and extraordinary things happening because that's what actually happened and history is a wild fucking ride.

+ Good worldbuilding! Neuvel presents the existence of the Kibsu and the rules they live by without immediately explaining them, so they're set up as mysteries: Why can there only be two Kibsu at a time, one mother and one daughter? Where did they come from? How do they reproduce? Who is the Tracker, really? He can't answer all the questions since there are more books to come, but when he does give answers, they're satisfying. I like that he often shows us why things are the way they are instead of just telling us, so that we learn alongside the characters. (The extended flashback to an earlier generation which explains why there can only be two Kibsu at a time was my favorite chapter.)


Things I did not like:

- The book is AMAZINGLY violent. The first murder is on page 5 and it just keeps going. The protagonists, the antagonists, and random side characters kill people all the time, and it's described in detail that felt excessive to me. And yeah, a lot of the people the protagonists kill are Nazis or Stalin's flunkies, but they also kill a lot of innocent people just because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time and now they know too much. Which, okay, that's the way their belief system is set up, they think it's all worth it for the sake of their mission. But the author also chooses to have scenes of gory accidents, war atrocities, and torture, including a nauseatingly graphic depiction of a queer character being incarcerated and tortured via conversion therapy, which, while it may have been historically accurate, seemed totally gratuitous in the context of this book. So, uh, content warning for that. (There is also rape, but it's offscreen, thank god.)

- I found the daughter Kibsu, Mia, very grating and hard to care about, which is kind of a problem since she gets the most page time. She resents being Kibsu and wants a normal life—which of course is a very standard trope, the Chosen One who never asked to be chosen—but it doesn't hit right when the character reads as so emotionally detached (possibly sociopathic?) that you can't imagine her even being able to tolerate a normal life. She manipulates and deceives everyone around her and she can't go five minutes without killing somebody!! And I realize a lot of that is also true of Sarah, the mom Kibsu, but Sarah seems to really care about their mission and think about the implications of what they're doing and the impact on other people in a way that Mia doesn't, and that goes a long way towards making her sympathetic.

- Mia's character voice also reads as weirdly anachronistic for the time period? She sounds like a teenager in the 1980s instead of the 1940s. This was so noticeable that at first I thought it must be related to a time travel plot point, but nope, Mia grew up in this time. Why does she talk this way? Nobody else does! It's so distracting!


So yeah, this was quite a heady mix of aspects that I found exciting and fascinating, and aspects that I found offputting or way more disturbing than they needed to be. I am motivated enough to see the story play out that I do plan to read the second book. (The third isn't out yet.) Maybe I'll have a better time with it since at least I'll be prepared!