locklands

locklands by robert jackson bennett

Book three of the Founder’s Trilogy. I almost bounced off this one. I think I must have picked away at the first few chapters a half dozen times. Part of that is probably the current shape of my life - I think I did most of my focused reading on planes during work trips, but most of my travel this year was with my family instead, so I didn’t have those big chunks of focused reading time. But there’s something offputting to me about the opening - I wasn’t sure that I really wanted to read a post apocalypse story. I really enjoyed the big swing that this trilogy takes (as I said in the shorefall note, it’s not at all afraid to snap the world order over its knee and poke at what makes it tick) but I felt myself shrugging internally at the war torn dystopia. I read after the fact that this third book was a pandemic work, which makes absolute sense (both for its tonal changes and the way it grapples with what you do after the world ends), but it does feel like its not a continuous thought like books one and two seem to be. I did ultimately find the conclusions satisfying, I continue to love how Robert Jackson Bennett writes a heist (particularly strong in book one, but some elements here in their raid on the jail), and I think the philosophy of the books are largely consistent, but part of me couldn’t shake the feeling that this trilogy can be demarcated into two books written prepandemic, and one written during. Thinking about it, I don’t know that this is necessarily a criticism as much as it is a statement of fact, but it’s worth noting.

I appreciate that this book stakes a claim for what world we should build, rather than just railing against the current failures of our civilization and its large exploitative systems. I’d reread V for Vendetta earlier this year (following along with the Shelved by Genre podcast’s Alan Moore unit), and that’s a book with almost nothing to say about what should come (which is fine, it’s not what that story is about, but it also struck me as a little limited). This book has an answer (glibly I’d call it a flavor of fully automated luxury gay space communism); that answer is also that we cannot be human as we are now and achieve this level of enlightenment (which is compelling to think about, although I’m not entirely convinced that the book fully fleshes out that idea).

(written a few months after I finished reading it, so impressions are of the whole trilogy and a little stale)