ARCHITECTS OF MEMORY
by Karen Osborne
Rating: 5/5 stars
Pages: 336
Series: The Memory War #1
Genre: Science Fiction
Publisher: Macmillan-Tor/Forge
Release Date: September 8, 2020
ISBN: 9781250215475
Price: $17.99 (USD)
Salvage pilot Ash Jackson will do anything to escape her corporate indenture, become a citizen and find a cure for the terminal illness that plagues her. But when her crew salvages a genocidal weapon, she falls into a conspiracy that could turn her into a living weapon.
Wow. There’s so much that I love about this book. Basically, this book looks at a near future where space travel and colonization is ultimately controlled by greedy capitalists, and booy did that hit a little close to home. But yeah, I think it looks the elephant in the room about colonization in space in the face, and says fuck this is bad.
It has an incredible cast of nuanced characters, twists you’ll never see coming and still manages to engage thoughtfully with the first contact trope in science fiction, offering for once, a nuanced and frankly, I think, accurate portrayal of what that might entail if this moment is controlled by capitalists. Over all I really enjoyed both Ash and Kate and their relationship, and I was definitely cheering for them at the end.
I would definitely recommend this one to anyone who loves science fiction, it had me on the edge of my seat and offered a refreshing new voice.
Karen Osborne is an author, visual story-teller and violinist. Her short fiction has appeared in Uncanny, Fireside, Escape Pod, Robot Dinosaurs, and Beneath Ceaseless Skies. Architects of Memory is her debut novel. To learn more about her, check out her website.
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** Thanks to NetGalley and Macmillan-Tor/Forge for providing me with an eARC of this book**
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