Review: Desolation: The Overdue Library by D. Harrigon

I received a free copy of this book from the author in return for an honest review.

‘Hetch didn’t mean to destroy the world. She was just curious.

‘A broken spaceship orbits above, winking from the heavens, taunting those who remain with the proximity of their salvation.

‘Below, the survivors have forgotten the stars. Reverting to steam power, they create a society of strange rituals amongst the planet’s fearsome fauna.

‘Necessary rituals.

‘Slowly, this hostile world has twisted the DNA of the remaining humans. So few men are born those precious few must be kept cosseted in the palace. The women must reinvent space travel from scratch in an attempt to reach the orbiting craft and send a signal out for rescue.

‘Then along comes Hetch.’

Desolation: The Overdue Library, by D. Harrington, is set on a strange planet far from Earth, many years in the future. It wasn’t the first choice of the original settlers, but where they ended up when their survey ship malfunctioned. Their descendants remain stuck there, struggling to assemble a shuttle that will get them back out to their still-orbiting parent craft.

While humans have managed to survive on the planet for 300 years, it’s been a huge challenge to avoid its bigger, deadlier crustaceans, identify and settle habitable places, and harness steam as a source of energy. What’s more, something in the food has skewed the population heavily female over the past few generations.

Now, there are only around thirty men available to reproduce with, and a hierarchy has developed: the men, and women who have been deemed worthy of bearing their children, live in the luxurious palace of Muha-Maho in the city of Desolation. Those who wish to join them literally have to fight one another, in a series of matches held each season.

Hetch is a shrimp diver with a questioning nature, and she doesn’t quite buy what she’s been taught about the colony’s history. Determined to access the library in Muha-Maho, her plan is to get into the palace disguised as one of the latest round of contenders.

Hetch’s mission turns out to be even more fraught with danger than she anticipated. Can she find the evidence she’s looking for and live to tell the tale?

I found a lot to enjoy in Desolation: The Overdue Library! It’s tense and pacey virtually from the get-go, as we first encounter Hetch just as she’s preparing to ambush breeding hopeful Shestia’s steam-pulled carriage. From there, events come thick and fast as Hetch gets into one fix after another, and has to improvise, charm, and rely on pure luck to get out of them.

At the same time, we’re learning about the world she inhabits – information that is imparted as it becomes relevant, so I didn’t feel overwhelmed or diverted from the exciting unfolding events.

The author has clearly put a lot of thought into the colony’s history and the planet’s geography, and really engages with, and gets a lot out of them. The former is developed enough to have both an official and alternative version, while the latter is inspired (steam power! Crustaceans of all shapes and sizes! Entertaining place names!), and also key to the conspiracy Hetch is attempting to uncover.

Refusing to take things at face value, questioning what she’s been taught, and digging deep for answers in the library, Hetch is a character after my own heart. I could identify with her particular interest in, and talent for noticing minor details and discrepancies – and what she eventually turned up in the library made the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. Unlike me, though, she has bravery and presence of mind in abundance, which is a good thing, as she frequently needs them!

I also really liked the friends Hetch made along the way – two steam engineers who are quirky in their own ways, and an initially very hostile librarian – and am hoping they’ll continue to work together in the second book of the series (which I’ll be reviewing next week).

While the cast are chiefly women, for the most part, the male author avoids the pitfalls of “men writing women”. We get a sense of the characters’ personalities first, with their appearance only coming into it when it’s relevant to how a scene plays out, or providing further information about a character’s priorities and preoccupations. There’s fierce rivalry between women in the palace, but a spirit of co-operation and camaraderie elsewhere, not least because it’s necessary for survival. Some of the men clearly find the organised fights titillating, but the one the reader sees isn’t presented as such.

I did wonder why Hetch’s commandeering of Shestia’s clothes had to involve total nudity, though this could be a continuity error, considering Hetch is wearing underwear when she sheds a different disguise later on (even so, there might have been a blanket in the well-appointed carriage to cover poor Shestia!).

The book closes with an interlude following one of the men, who’s revealed to be pulling some strings and hiding many secrets, and is thoroughly unpleasant to boot. While this gives the reader insights Hetch and co. lack, and affirms that they’re the goodies and he’s a baddie, his misogynistic (to say the least) opinions, behaviour, and language does mean the first part of the series concludes on rather a sour note. Nonetheless, I’m looking forward to spending more time with the compelling heroes in the next part of the story.

Desolation: The Overdue Library is an imaginative and fast-paced start to a new sci-fi series.