Chill

I'm very behind with book blogging so here, in an attempt to catch up, are a few thoughts on Elizabeth Bear's Chill.

The Jacob's Ladder has escaped the destruction of the Waystars, but at a great cost. The fabric of the ship has been damaged, resources are limited and most of the crew remain in hibernation. So when the Chief Engineer has to opportunity to rid the world of an erstwhile enemy, she does not scruple to disable Arianrhod's life-support pod. But Caitlin's rival, having foreseen the likely attempt on her life, activates her contingencies and flees into the chaotic interior of the ship.

With the ship's angel unable to following the fleeing fugative, the pursuit falls on two of the remaining Conns: Tristan and Benedick. Following different routes, Tristan travelling south from Rule and Benedict descending a vast vertical shaft, the brothers find themselves forced to confront both traps left specifically for them by Arianrhod and dangers evolved from the ship's bizarre ecology.

I really loved Chill, principally because it elaborated on many of my favourite elements of Dust, drawing them out and enlarging them in just the right way. In particular I felt that the physical shape of the Jacob's Ladder, its strange topology of holdes and anchors and heavens, seemed much clearer. Not so much a classic, streamlined starship as a vast skeleton, a rib cage, with its habitable sections tucked within. Suddenly the scale of the thing made sense. How a person could travel from the bridge to Rule or Engine in a day, but how the whole ship might take many days to traverse; and why even a simple chase for a single individual might be extremely difficult.

I also enjoyed the opportunity to spend more time getting to know the three senior most Conns, Tristan, Benedick and Caitlin, all of whom featured in Dust in largely supporting roles. Tristan, as the oldest son, is haunted by his domineering father and his own past errors, which he perceives as having led to the death of his wife and daughter. Having gained a new perspective on his own life after his protracted period of imprisonment — from the epigraphs it seems likely that he has developed into an existentialist — Tristan is gradually trying to come to terms with the person he used to be and the horrors he committed in his father's name.

Benedick, stoic and distant, has a wry streak which can't quite seem to break through the emotional armour he assumed to deal with the madness of his family. But from the inside, he is likable and funny and unflappable, even when confronted by sentient plants who, in the best traditions of science fiction, have learned to speak by watching television. Caitlin, meanwhile, doesn't perhaps get as much time in the light as the two brothers, she comes across as clever and insightful — so much so that, at one point, she complains about being forced to assume her waiting role in Engine while the boys get to go on their grand quest — she is the one who does the real work of keeping the ship together, preventing the Captain from falling apart and, no small thing this, sorting out the ship's final destination.

This focus on the three siblings allows Bear to merge the history of the Conn family, and particularly the appalling behaviour of its last great patriarch, with the history of the Jacob's Ladder itself and the goals of its builders. This throws the behaviour of the senior Conns into relief, showing that no matter how crazy their decisions may seen from the outside they are actually driven by a twisted form of logic — far more convincing than random violence because, after all, no-one is a villain in their own head.