Kadomi reviewed The Outside by Ada Hoffmann (The Outside)
Cosmic horror in space
4 stars
I picked this up because Ada Hoffmann was a guest on Breaking the Glass Slipper and her novel sounded very cool. It's definitely a modern, and very diverse take on sci-fi, with queer characters and unique world-building.
In this universe, humans are worshipping machine gods and angels. Gods are super-computers with incredible technology that humans cannot dream of matching. They require worship of humans and need their souls. They also recruit from humans, augmenting them.
Our protagonist is Yasira Shien, a queer autistic scientist who has created a reactor that can match some of the gods' technology, so this is exciting. But something goes wrong at launch, and The Outside destroys the reactor and the space station. The Outside is a kind of cosmic horror, incomprehensible beings, and dealing with them makes you a heretic in the gods' eyes. The angels of Nemesis sweep in to arrest Yasira as heretic, …
I picked this up because Ada Hoffmann was a guest on Breaking the Glass Slipper and her novel sounded very cool. It's definitely a modern, and very diverse take on sci-fi, with queer characters and unique world-building.
In this universe, humans are worshipping machine gods and angels. Gods are super-computers with incredible technology that humans cannot dream of matching. They require worship of humans and need their souls. They also recruit from humans, augmenting them.
Our protagonist is Yasira Shien, a queer autistic scientist who has created a reactor that can match some of the gods' technology, so this is exciting. But something goes wrong at launch, and The Outside destroys the reactor and the space station. The Outside is a kind of cosmic horror, incomprehensible beings, and dealing with them makes you a heretic in the gods' eyes. The angels of Nemesis sweep in to arrest Yasira as heretic, but the head of the angels, a smug bastard called Akavi, offers her a deal: she is to hunt down Dr. Talirr, Yasira's missing mentor, and apparently very huge in dealing with The Outside, the biggest heretic of them all.
I never fully clicked with Yasira, but thought she was portrayed very well when it comes to her autism. A fully-functioning human being with ways to handle her autism. I was not surprised to read that the author is an autistic scientist herself.
It was a fascinating story, which could have gone a bit more horror for me. I am not sure what little thing bothered me about the writing, I just know I fell asleep over it at night quite early. I don't know, I just couldn't get as deeply into the characters as I had hoped I would. However, the grand finale of the book set up some fascinating developments so that I am definitely going to read the sequel, for sure.