Dust

When I think about the individual elements of Dust, it seems like a book that couldn't miss. There is: a forest whose fruit contains the digital remnants of people; a splintered AI whose individuals have grown too far apart to reintegrate and who call themselves angels; a ship that is derelict and creepy but also beautiful in the places where people still live; symbiotic nanoswarms that "exalt" their hosts into superhumans. This is the "flavor" of science fiction that I most enjoy.

I even liked the way Bear used sexuality in the book. I find it interesting to see how other people imagine the evolutions of our current social and religious values. Where others have criticized this for feeling weird, I applaud it for feeling weird. Lesbian protagonists and quasi-incestuous relationships, combined with a mutated and decayed Christianity, are just transgressive enough upon modern Christian morality to shake the reader loose and shepherd them into the mindset of the book. I don't want to give the sense that this takes over the book making it into any sort of "book with a lesson", but, given my general disinterest in the plot and characters (see below), it was something I marked as interesting.

Despite all of the things going for it, I never quite cared about the characters in Dust and the interplay between various members of the ruling family of the ship were confusing. It might have helped if I had had a family tree to look at, but in audiobook it was difficult to remember who was on which side of the battle. Additionally, Bear set up a war between "angels" (splinters of the ship's AI) that had equally sypathetic protagonists and angels on two of the three sides (with the third side being all villain). The only reason to keep reading was out of curiosity to find out who won. When that curiosity flagged I felt myself slogging through what should have been the most compelling parts. I didn't care which side won, I didn't cheer for either side, I looked forward to the results like I look forward to finding out who won the Superbowl while browsing a daily newsfeed.

I think there are people who would love this book and if I had nothing else on my reading list I would track down a physical copy and try again. As it is, I'll mark this as one I "like" and try another by Elizabeth Bear down the road.