Book: As You Wake, Break the Shell - A Novel by Becky Chambers
Reviewed by Rallie X
Rating: 4.5/5
Thanks to Harper Voyager and to NetGalley for giving me access to the eARC, this review and opinions are my own.
Sapphic cozy sci-fi foray into queer existentialism on a horrible hell planet starring an awkward biohacker botanist and a golden retriever rorqual pilot? I'm in.
As an auto-buy reader of Becky Chambers' work, one thing I love about her writing is that each setting is totally distinct and wholly its Own, and each manages to explore some aspect of Being in a completely different way. We're always on a beautifully queer existentialist journey, but a different flavor of consideration.
As You Wake, Break the Shell continues this trend and, although it's a duology, it's clear that this will be another instance (like the Monk & Robot duology) where the purpose is to broaden a philosophical conversation and not to finish a story in two parts - this book could stand on its own, with a beautifully open ending (think the kind we get in To Be Taught, if Fortunate and A Prayer for the Crown-Shy ), but there is so much more that is only just being opened up.
At least, that's how I read it.
The exploration of Being here connects so well to Donna Haraway's anthropological work (e.g. Cyborg Manifesto ) that examines the boundaries between human and animal, human and machine, and in this case human and plant. Does a botanist or gardener communicate with their plants? Colibri seems to think they must do, because if Signy is able to determine how best to care for them based on behavior, isn't that communication of a sort?
I love how Chambers writes the boundaries between the human and inhuman, about the laws and policies designed for the human to control the inhuman (laws about plant cultivation, policies or expectations for rorqual piloting) and about the protagonists' refusal to work within those constraints (Cora will not use pain to control Colibri, Signy is a biohacker using illegally modified plants to create medicine for those triaged out of access to care and OH MY GOD the utilitarian hellscape of this planet). I also just...I love the language Chambers used for Colibri and her interfacing/speech with Cora? The dialogue between the two of them was so beautifully Other it captured from the first Interstitial the kind of alien-togetherness that is the relationship between the rorqual and her rider. That this openness is almost certainly what caused Cora's mindbleed gives such deep insight into the togetherness of rorqual & pilot, that only 1 in 25 pilots develop mindbleed over the course of their career I think speaks to the alienation of Human from Nature (fuck off Descartes) and the queering of that boundary.
Ultimately though at the heart of this book is a refusal of utilitarianism at just a fundamental level - biological and ethical - we get to see this theme play out through Signy's refusal to accept limitations and disgust at societal triage to Cora's refusal to treat rorqual as objects to Colibri's refusal and disgust at society as she finally understands it to the blossoming of plants freed from a very Monsanto-esque bondage and Signy's acceptance of the agency of her honeybees . The way Chambers presents a slice-of-life story that holds such fertile queer existentialist discourse is nothing short of masterful. And she adds SUCH cool little details that will never not grab me, like localized idioms ("they'd fight like rain and baking soda" only makes sense on a planet where the rain is always acid) and curiosities (how much does a species' place of origin matter for its success and can that be accounted for, at a level as basic as circadian rhythm; is there such a thing as the past or future; freakin, "Darkness wasn’t real, and space wasn’t empty. It was merely full of things humans couldn’t perceive." WHAT.).
I could gush about this book for hours, for days, because there's just so much to be considered here - this book deserves to be in your queer book club, in your scifi and speculative fiction reading lists, in your late-night musings while you try to fall asleep. I can't wait to see what the second book brings, as the "past"-present and "future"-present of Signy and Cora creep closer and closer!
The Berth kept her and everybody she knew alive (for the most part). But as Twig had put it once: Just because something takes care of you doesn’t mean you have to love it. Love was a symbiosis, and the Berth didn’t leave people with much to give back.