The Luminous Dead - bookwyrm.cincodenada.com

paperback, 432 pages

Published April 2, 2019 by Harper Voyager.

ISBN:: 9780062846907

(1 review)

A thrilling, atmospheric debut with the intensive drive of The Martian and Gravity and the creeping dread of Annihilation, in which a caver on a foreign planet finds herself on a terrifying psychological and emotional journey for survival.

When Gyre Price lied her way into this expedition, she thought she’d be mapping mineral deposits, and that her biggest problems would be cave collapses and gear malfunctions. She also thought that the fat paycheck—enough to get her off-planet and on the trail of her mother—meant she’d get a skilled surface team, monitoring her suit and environment, keeping her safe. Keeping her sane.

Instead, she got Em.

Em sees nothing wrong with controlling Gyre’s body with drugs or withholding critical information to “ensure the smooth operation” of her expedition. Em knows all about Gyre’s falsified credentials, and has no qualms using them as a leash—and a lash. And Em has secrets, too …

A thrilling, atmospheric debut with the intensive drive of The Martian and Gravity and the creeping dread of Annihilation, in which a caver on a foreign planet finds herself on a terrifying psychological and emotional journey for survival.

When Gyre Price lied her way into this expedition, she thought she’d be mapping mineral deposits, and that her biggest problems would be cave collapses and gear malfunctions. She also thought that the fat paycheck—enough to get her off-planet and on the trail of her mother—meant she’d get a skilled surface team, monitoring her suit and environment, keeping her safe. Keeping her sane.

Instead, she got Em.

Em sees nothing wrong with controlling Gyre’s body with drugs or withholding critical information to “ensure the smooth operation” of her expedition. Em knows all about Gyre’s falsified credentials, and has no qualms using them as a leash—and a lash. And Em has secrets, too . . .

As Gyre descends, little inconsistencies—missing supplies, unexpected changes in the route, and, worst of all, shifts in Em’s motivations—drive her out of her depths. Lost and disoriented, Gyre finds her sense of control giving way to paranoia and anger. On her own in this mysterious, deadly place, surrounded by darkness and the unknown, Gyre must overcome more than just the dangerous terrain and the Tunneler which calls underground its home if she wants to make it out alive—she must confront the ghosts in her own head.

But how come she can't shake the feeling she’s being followed?

3 editions

G. Deyke reviewed The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling

[Adapted from initial review on Goodreads.]

4 stars

I went into this book vaguely remembering that it was meant to be super gripping and immersive and tense and whatnot - which turned out to be true, in the end! - but was absolutely not true in the beginning. I had a hard time getting into it at first, and after turning it around in my head for a while I think I know the reason: failure to establish a clear baseline.

We're told from the start that Gyre loves caving and is very excited to get underground. We're also told that caving on Cassandra V is super dangerous - significantly more so than on Earth - and that a significant percentage of cavers die during the two or three trips they need to make to earn enough money to get offworld. Immediately afterwards, we're told that's why Gyre jumped at the chance to do it in only one. …

I went into this book vaguely remembering that it was meant to be super gripping and immersive and tense and whatnot - which turned out to be true, in the end! - but was absolutely not true in the beginning. I had a hard time getting into it at first, and after turning it around in my head for a while I think I know the reason: failure to establish a clear baseline.

We're told from the start that Gyre loves caving and is very excited to get underground. We're also told that caving on Cassandra V is super dangerous - significantly more so than on Earth - and that a significant percentage of cavers die during the two or three trips they need to make to earn enough money to get offworld. Immediately afterwards, we're told that's why Gyre jumped at the chance to do it in only one. Triple the pay, presumably triple the danger, but only once. This feels like a discrepancy, and her motivations aren't totally clear - her primary reason for wanting to get offworld (which is thematically important, even!) doesn't come out until several days in, in dialogue.

So Gyre is on her first serious excursion and has no more experience than the reader, and we know already that caving has a high fatality rate even on normal excursions, and that presumably there's a reason why this one pays so much more. We also know that she (allegedly?) likes being underground, and should at least at the beginning feel pretty comfortable in her environment. Given all of that, her reactions to practically everything at the beginning feel completely overblown. She sees red flags everywhere (and yeah, there definitely are a few), she's utterly shocked when she finds out how many people have died down here before, and so on. Maybe it really is shocking! But with no hard numbers before, just a general "many people die before they earn enough to get offworld" - plus the extra financial bonus here - it absolutely didn't feel shocking to me as a reader. Gyre's overreactions are so all over the place that I couldn't get a solid grip on her character, her environment, anything. Her moral disgust at certain things also felt foreign to me - I guess she thinks it's worse when individuals do things than when corporations do those same things??? I guess a profit motivation is more palatable to her than a personal one???? Because capitalism?????

Gyre is the viewpoint character, and Em - who exists mainly as a voice in her helmet, and is the only other major character - is presented from the start as manipulative, untrustworthy, and dangerous. Which makes it awkward that I found her significantly more relatable than Gyre, at the start. "Relatable" isn't even the right word - "predictable" comes closer, but really it's something between those. "Reasonable", maybe. I didn't know her deeper motivations, but I could understand why she did the things she did, follow her logic, &c., in a way I couldn't with Gyre. Even when she lied, I felt she could be relied on to have Gyre's safety at heart: completely counter to the way Gyre thought of her.

This all sounds very much as though I didn't care for the book at all, which to be honest was kind of true for the beginning - which makes this book one of the biggest differences between how I felt about it at the beginning and the end that I've read yet.

I can pinpoint the exact moment it turned around, though I won't because spoilers. The point is, once things started changing, the beginning up to that point became the baseline - which meant that all at once Gyre's emotions and reactions felt much more grounded. Somewhat ironically, seeing as Gyre herself began to be considerably less grounded, but there it is.

As of that point: it was gripping, it was immersive, it was tense, and I enjoyed it. There are basically two components to it: survival and trauma bonding. There are high emotions all over the place, often - but not always - because of immediate physical danger. There's a lot of immediate physical danger! There are lot of very thin margins! There are a lot of things going wrong when the margins are already very slim! Which is all to say that it may be a cathartic read for some people, but it is certainly not a relaxing one.

Selling points: it's a survival story with trauma bonding and a [somewhat spooky?] cave in a sci-fi wrapper, plus also lesbian rep. Either you like that sort of thing or you don't!

Warnings: unreality, loss of autonomy, few calm moments between the tension; takes a bit to get going.