Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!
I feel like I don’t even need a preamble for this post. You get the picture: Becky Chambers fundamentally altered the way I think about science fiction, and she’s become one of my favorite authors of all time in the years since, etc. etc. Naturally, I preordered As You Wake, Break the Shell over the summer as soon as I learned of its existence, and here we are now, with a copy in my hands. Predictably, I loved it. Not so predictably, it might be the most daring and weird novel that Chambers has ever written.
Enjoy this week’s review!
As You Wake, Break the Shell – Becky Chambers
Signy ekes out a living on Fortune, a poverty-stricken planet plagued by acid rain. In the comfort of her shop, she genetically engineers plants to provide people with medicine when the system governing their planet leaves them without the resources to get it themselves. Out in the atmosphere, Cora is a rorqual pilot, telepathically bonded to an intelligent, alien creature who helps her harvest water. When this telepathic bond gives Cora a rare illness, Signy and her engineered medicines are the only thing standing between her and premature death. But as they become more intertwined, they realize that there’s more to their relationship—and the hostile world that’s closing in on them.
TW/CW: loss of loved ones, animal cruelty, sexual content, grief, substance abuse, chronic illness (fictional), panic attacks
Pros: my name gets mentioned in passing as a very minor character in this book! Cons: canonically, I’m dying of cancer and I have a year to live. Lovely. But at least Signy is giving book-me (who is implied to be trans) HRT so that I can at least die without being dysphoric. Silver linings!
It was kind of guaranteed that I’d love As You Wake, Break the Shell—Becky Chambers is one of my favorite authors of all time. This novel is indisputably a triumph. At this point in her career, Chambers could’ve easily coasted on her previous successes and put out Wayfarers 2 (well, 5, I guess). But to my delight, As You Wake, Break the Shell is the boldest novel she’s ever written. It’s downright weird and unashamed of it. It’s told in dual timelines in the past and the future, leaving the reader to decide how they intertwine. One of the protagonists is telepathically linked to a space-dwelling, domesticated cave salamander/whale creature. The characters get really heated about genetically engineered plants. There are sections that are basically prose poetry. Pretty much every character with significant page time is queer. I just kept grinning from ear to ear from how daring it all was. I kept thinking about this interview that Chambers did with Wired years ago where she said that she said that “In science fiction…I’m very interested in ripping out the drywall and seeing what’s behind it and messing with the fundamental pieces.” More than ever, As You Wake, Break the Shell proves that she’s only gotten more steadfast in that mission.
Becky Chambers has made her name in, to borrow a term from Ursula K. LeGuin, ambiguous utopias. The world of the Wayfarers was peaceful, but flawed and worth fighting to better. The utopian planet of Monk & Robot is idyllic, but its inhabitants have their fair share of issues. As You Wake, Break the Shell, on the other hand, instantly throws that precedent out the window. Fortune, without a doubt, just sucks. It’s hostile, there’s acid rain, corporate greed rules everything, and everybody seems to die young from the strain of living. It’s a world of corporate space colonization and inequality, but also of dingy cafes and shitty open mic nights and radios. First off, Chambers’s worldbuilding and the integration of it was top-notch as always; embedded in schoolwork, recipes, and the characters themselves, it was introduced so seamlessly and felt instantly real. My favorite part was, of course, the rorquals—back to the undeniable weirdness, these deep sea-like whale creatures who feed on raw elements in space were an absolute delight. Chambers’s exploration of their treatment and domestication was similarly meticulous and served as a potent commentary on animal cruelty and how we treat other intelligences. For me, some of the militant hopepunk that Chambers is known for is even more effective in this setting. In an actively hostile, disgusting, and hopeless place, it’s even more difficult to find hope. But As You Wake, Break the Shell proves once again that hope hides even in the cruelest places, and that common humanity will always be worth fighting for, no matter the circumstances.
Predictably, Chambers’s characters truly shine in As You Wake, Break the Shell! At the heart of the story is the love story between Cora and Signy; Chambers built their relationship so, so lovingly, and they were so easy to love and root for, from Signy’s dedication to her plants and clients to Cora’s unending desire to care for the unloved creatures of the world. The side characters were what truly made the story for me. Chambers has never been afraid of getting into the weeds of messy dynamics between people, but I think that this novel has some of her best. Otto was such a lovable mentor figure for Signy. Most of all, I think the relationship between Cora and her sister Twig was so painful and authentic. Chambers put so much care into the complexity of their rocky relationship, showing how easily somebody with a sensitive heart and untapped anger towards the ills of the world could fall into harmful ideologies—and the aftermath of that for Cora. In a lesser author’s hands, Twig’s story would’ve been very black and white, but Chambers made us realize exactly where she’d come from and showed a remarkable amount of empathy for her without justifying her beliefs or actions. Chambers has such a radical kind of empathy towards even the most flawed of characters. It’s a rough novel to read in some places. But most of all, it’s startlingly human.
Above all, As You Wake, Break the Shell is a determined clarion call to recognize our common humanity. There’s so much richness in the metaphors that she employs to reinforce this: the encoded instructions in our DNA, our human propensity towards teaching and helping our peers learn, our apparent cross-cultural instinct to make food by putting nice fillings inside of whatever dough we have at our disposal. Even without being a botany nerd, I ate up all of the plant metaphors and motifs. Chambers also deftly toes the line of encouraging us to recognize our common humanity without homogenizing us completely—we are radically different as individuals, but that makes us no less worthy of saving. It’s so thick with thematic significance. I found myself crying at the most random instances while reading this at 11 pm. But I think what made my cry, more so than the themes and Chambers’s articulation of them, was the fact that it brimmed with so much love: love for our fellow humans, and love for the craft of storytelling itself.
I read a post the other day about how every creative has their themes that always recur in their work and that have special meaning to their life. One of the examples that the post gave was Christopher Nolan, whose films are often about time, one way or another. For Becky Chambers, I think it’s togetherness and cooperation. Her books are so often about the value of human connection, the value of getting to know strangers, and how society can be bettered by realizing our common humanity and being in each other’s company. It’s also about the barriers to cooperation; for the Wayfarers series, it’s colonialism and xenophobia. For Monk & Robot, it’s capitalism and productivity culture. As You Wake, Break the Shell is still about capitalism (and critiques it better than Monk & Robot, in my opinion), but I think years of writing about this subject matter has sharpened Chambers’s ability to articulate it effectively and emotionally. As You Wake, Break the Shell is a tale of survival, but survival based in mutual cooperation, resistance against corporate tyranny, and a fundamental belief in the value of human life. Our instinct is to help each other and be together!! It’s one of Chambers’s most emotionally impactful books to date—and that’s really saying something.
All in all, another instant winner in Becky Chambers’s unparalleled catalogue of science fiction. You already knew how I was gonna rate this. 5 stars!
As You Wake, Break the Shell is the first book in the As You Wake, Break the Shell duology, followed by the forthcoming As You Grow, Seek the Light, which does not yet have a release date. Becky Chambers is also the author of the Wayfarers series (The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, A Close and Common Orbit, Record of a Spaceborn Few, and The Galaxy, and the Ground Within), the Monk & Robot duology (A Psalm for the Wild-Built and A Prayer for the Crown-Shy) and the standalone novella To Be Taught, If Fortunate.
Today’s song:
That’s it for this week’s Book Review Tuesday! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!
