Title: The Rising Tide
Series: Liminal Sky: Book Two
Author: J. Scott Coatsworth
Publisher: DSP Publications
Length: 380 Pages
Category: Sci-Fi
At a Glance: Between the imaginative and expansive world-building and the hopefulness imbued and exemplified by the protagonists, The Rising Tide a good read.
Reviewed By: Jovan
Blurb: Earth is dead.
Five years later, the remnants of humanity travel through the stars inside Forever, a living, ever-evolving, self-contained generation ship. When Eddy Tremaine and Andy Hammond find a hidden world-within-a-world under the mountains, the discovery triggers a chain of events that could fundamentally alter or extinguish life as they know it, culminate in the takeover of the world mind, and end free will for humankind.
Control the AI, control the people.
Eddy, Andy, and a handful of other unlikely heroes—people of every race and identity, and some who aren’t even human—must find the courage and ingenuity to stand against the rising tide.
Otherwise they might be living through the end days of human history.
Warning: The Rising Tide is the second book in a series and should not be read as a standalone. This review contains spoilers for book one, The Stark Divide.
Review: As with The Stark Divide, The Rising Tide follows an ensemble cast of characters, most introduced in the first book, to tell the story of the world mind, now comprised of the “Immortals” Ana, Jackson and Lex, and the inhabitants of Forever. The events in the book occur over the course of seventeen years, with Part I taking place in 2171 AD; after the Collapse, the rapid escalation of violence and nuclear war that destroyed Earth, Forever was faced with an unexpected influx of inhabitants and cut off prematurely from much needed resources. In the intervening six years, Forever and its inhabitants have tried to make do with what they have and find solutions for the things they need; Ana figures out a way to get to the remaining asteroid that Forever needs to finish building itself for the journey to the new galaxy and provide more resources to its people, and there is relative harmony in the community. All in all, things seem be going well until an unseen menace living in the heart of the mountains begins to make its presence known. Part II takes place ten years later and explores how dependent and vulnerable Forever is to the mind that controls it, with the world mind being unexpectedly compromised and the havoc this causes, which is escalated in Part III, during 2188 AD, with not only the world mind but the inhabitants being overtaken and endangered.
After Davian reaches Forever, he quickly makes his way to the refugee camps for “where there [are] refugees, there [is] discontent”, and not only leverages that discontent to convince some of them to come with him and make their own world, but he also finds the man responsible for the destruction of the Transport Station, a man with the ability to manipulate the world like Aaron and Andy. When Davian’s “paradise” is discovered, he escapes and formulates a plan to unleash an even greater threat to Forever.
In the interim, there have been children born on Forever who can also connect to and manipulate the world mind that are kept isolated from the population, and raised and trained to use their abilities by Andy. And as always seems to be the case, the children’s differences make them a subject of concern among the general populace. Even though the people of Forever have never met any of them, and the oldest among them are only fourteen-years-old, there is already talk about neutering them—both reproductively and mentally. The children’s situation and Davian’s mad quest for power all speak to one of the themes of the book—fear; how it can motivate the persecution of others, how it can drive people to do terrible things in order to never feel that way again, and how overcoming it and coming together is what makes humanity stronger and able to create a better world. Repeating the cycles of fear, persecution and violence they left on Earth is no way to ensures the future of humanity, especially since Forever may have been the only Seed Ship to survive, and
“it was [already] a time of great danger for the species, a moment when the story of mankind had squeezed down from the vastness of the Earth to a relative handful of souls in this generation ship.”
Not surprisingly, it is the generation of inhabitants from Earth, who still cling to lost ways and technology that are the most prone to this way of thinking. However, this leads to the book’s second major theme—hope. Eventually, the children with abilities, called Luminals, incorporate into society, stop being “other”, and are eventually recognized for what they are—the future and hope of mankind, raised to appreciate and respect the world in which they live and to understand the importance of and foster connections between each other. As Andy and her family, Eddy, Marissa, and others, try to defeat Davian and the destruction one man’s fear caused, they look to the children of Forever as humanity’s last hope.
Another theme of the book, whether intentional or not, was shortsightedness, which is what made the book kind of drag for me in the third part. On a world which, in and of itself, is a modern miracle run by two beings who were once human and had their consciousness/souls incorporated into a living, breathing spaceship, I was surprised and unimpressed by how often a character would say “that’s not possible/that’s impossible.” Everything about what the Luminals and Andy’s family can do was considered impossible, and yet it’s a common occurrence and trainable skill set. The lack of planning, realistic oversight or prevention, especially after the events in the second part, was just maddening for me. While it makes room for the ending, given that Part III is basically Part II on a bigger scale, it just seemed to be done more to get to that resolution than to add anything to the narrative. Frankly, it seemed repetitious and unnecessary, and in a couple of action scenes, the characters’ actions seemed shortsighted and done more for action than logic. However, between the imaginative and expansive world-building and the hopefulness imbued and exemplified by the protagonists, it’s a good read. I enjoyed revisiting Forever and liked the fresh start and the passing of the torch to the next generation of leaders the ending provided.
You can buy The Rising Tide here:
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