In the year of our Lord 2017 (of unfond memory), I read these two stories about sweet little bots doing their best, and it launched me into a new state of being in which I read short fiction so much that I have had to commission a logo about it. The main one, admittedly, was “Fandom for Robots,” but a very close second was Suzanne Palmer’s very sweet “The Secret Life of Bots.” So it was with great pleasure that I learned she has her debut novel out this year: Finder!
Fergus Ferguson is a finder, and he’s been tasked with finding a sentient ship, the Venetia’s Sword, and stealing it back from the crime boss Arum Gilger. Things go spectacularly awry. First he meets a woman called Mattie Vahn, and then she dies, and then he meets a zillion of her apparent clones, the crossest one of whom insists on following him around suspiciously while he’s trying to accomplish his business. There are also some quite ominous aliens flying about the place in pointy triangle ships. Nobody is sure what they want. Probably nothing good.
Fans of madcap excursions, please congregate. I have got the book for you. Not only is Fergus banging all over the universe in this book, dashing from one planet to the next trying to get things under control; but he is also perpetually trying to triage the many many things he is forced to care about; including but not limited to:
- a very cross maybe-clone who reminds him of someone he lost
- so many different changes of clothes that it boggles the mind (some of which the previous inhabitants have peed in)
- decoding seven passwords to gain access to a sentient starship
- transportation logistics
- pointy triangle alien ships that keep re-orientating to point directly at him
- murder plague insects
- regular, annoying insects
- his better-off-forgotten past as a Martian war hero
- an unnerving number of dead bodies
- disarming a defensive perimeter using tennis balls and sex toys
All on very little food or sleep, and in increasingly parlous physical condition as various of his enemies catch up to him and thwack him with varyingly deadly weapons. So there you go; it’s that kind of book. You would know best if that is the kind of book you would enjoy. I enjoyed it massively. As the above list has perhaps made clear, Finder contains a very high number of elements. In the hands of a less talented creator, the whole shebang could have devolved into chaos — much like any of the ninety-six-thousand plans Fergus makes over the course of Finder (but especially the one with the sex toys). Instead, it bounds exuberantly forward like tennis balls with vibrators inside, and crackles like vibrating tennis balls being electrocuted by defensive measures set by a paranoid warlord.
I give Suzanne Palmer and her publisher permission to use that last sentence as a blurb for the paperback edition. Be blessed.
Note: I received an e-ARC of Finder from the publisher for review consideration. This has not influenced the contents of my review.