Recent Reads: Species Imperative, Julie E. Czerneda

[mizkit]

Along that whole topic of 'books don't have shelf lives...'

I've been aware of Julie Czerneda's books since they first came out, and somehow just sort of hadn't ever gotten around to reading any. I specifically remember the title A Thousand Words for Stranger, which I still think is a great title, and I specifically remember the cover art for the Species Imperative trilogy.

Well, the other day, book one, SURVIVAL, was on sale at Kobo, so I thought "yes I should buy this" and I did, and read it, and immediately bought and read the second two, all in about a week.

For one thing, they're like custom-fit to my little Alaska-raised heart: the lead, Mac, studies salmon (how could I, a girl from the Kenai, not love a salmon-researching heroine?). She deals with magnificently-realized bureaucracy and characters who are just so human they kind of kill me. One of my favorites is just awful.

Furthermore, the aliens are AMAZING. Absolutely TERRIFIC. Occasionally very, very funny (they're not, overall, funny books, but the moments of humor land perfectly), very alien, sometimes heartbreaking, and always compelling.

I was unreasonably pleased with myself for anticipating a couple of the plot points, and the only thing that annoys me about them is that I have, in fact, been aware of them since their publication, and I haven't read them before now. :)

SURVIVAL, Book One of Species Imperative
Available everywhere now (should be a magic link that lets you choose your store)

Dr. Mackenzie “Mac” Connor is a workaholic and trained biologist at the Norcoast Salmon Research Facility. When she and fellow scientist Dr. Emily Mamani settle in to monitor this year’s salmon runs, an unprecedented arrival interrupts their research: Brymn, an archaeologist and the first Ohryn alien to ever set foot on Earth. He has come to get Mac’s help in uncovering what created the Chasm—a part of the universe whose once-populated worlds are now mysteriously empty of any life-forms.

When a devastating attack on the Base results in Emily’s abduction, Mac is forced to flee with Brymn—and to wonder if Earth may be under attack by the Ro, the aliens Brymn suspects are behind the Chasm. Cut off from everything and everyone she knows, Mac finds herself in grave danger and charged with protecting the human race from extinction...

Comments

[pameladean]

Oh, I loved this book -- I read it in preparation for when Julie Czerneda was the guest of honor at Minicon. She did a great interview, too, though mostly what I remember is her talking about writing the character of Mac's fashionable colleague, because she really had to work at it, being kind of the opposite herself. She also talked a little about my favorite aspect of the book, which is the widening out and out and out of the setting. I'd have been happy if the entire thing had taken place where Mac was doing her research, it was so well described and inhabited; but the book just went out and out. And also became more and more interior at the same time.

P.

[mizkit]

Yeah, I could have been happy if it had always been set at her job! But it, and the series, is just so beautifully structured all around. A couple of friends were astonished I hadn't read them before because the trilogy is in their perennial rereads and favorites and they were sure they'd be on mine too :D

[pameladean]

I don't know how I missed them for so long, either. P.