Meru by S.B. Divya- My Review
Meru by S.B. Divya- My Review
Introduction
I was looking for a new sci-fi read this month, a palette cleanser between all the fantasy I’ve been reading lately. I have Amazon Prime, so when I got my Amazon First Reads email this month I was more than intrigued to find Meru being offered as one of the reads. I was also convinced to download this book because I saw it was a Nebula and Hugo award finalist, and the books I’ve seen previously crowned winners by these contests never fail to disappoint. Intrigued, I started to read.
About The Book
Meru By S.B. Divya
Synopsis
One woman and her pilot are about to change the future of the species in an epic space opera about aspiration, compassion, and redemption by Hugo and Nebula Award finalist S. B. Divya.
For five centuries, human life has been restricted to Earth, while posthuman descendants called alloys freely explore the galaxy. But when the Earthlike planet of Meru is discovered, two unlikely companions venture forth to test the habitability of this unoccupied new world and the future of human-alloy relations.
For Jayanthi, the adopted human child of alloy parents, it’s an opportunity to rectify the ancient reputation of her species as avaricious and destructive, and to give humanity a new place in the universe. For Vaha, Jayanthi’s alloy pilot, it’s a daunting yet irresistible adventure to find success as an individual.
As the journey challenges their resolve in unexpected ways, the two form a bond that only deepens with their time alone on Meru. But how can Jayanthi succeed at freeing humanity from its past when she and Vaha have been set up to fail?
Against all odds, hope is human, too.
My Review
My Rating: ★★★★
This book was a bit out of my comfort zone purely because one of the main characters was an alloy and I found the dynamic between her as a ship, and the main character Jayanthi, a human, to be quite weird. I struggled to get my head around the Jayanthi both falling in love with Vaha when she was riding inside her as a vehicle. None the less, and despite my reaction to this strange pairing, the storytelling was nothing short of enthralling, and I found myself hooked from the very beginning.
This story takes place in the future, when Humans have been confined to Earth to repent for their wreaking both genetic and environmental havoc on the universe. Our descendants, alloys, however, are out exploring the stars, genetically engineering new beings, and adding knowledge to the Nivid, a central database floating in space like a giant jellyfish, holding our collective history and knowledge. Jayanthi, encouraged by Hamsa, an alloy politician and Genetic Engineering specialist, begins to look from the stars. Raised by alloy parents, Jaya suffers from Sickle Cell disease, and I was super glad for some chronic illness representation in Sci Fi- something I think is far too rare.
The world crafted by Divya is lush, fantastical, but also rife with political unrest, and I loved watching Jaya in her journey to Meru trying to prove that humans deserve a second chance at exploring their universe. I also loved her depiction of greed and ambition as a disease, an interesting concept as you could certainly blame ambition and greed for the current state of our environment, economy, and many other issues facing humanity today. I felt it particularly interesting watching Jayanthi conceive a child with Vaha, despite the consequences, and felt that Jaya was a bit silly to be shocked when the law caught up with her. I mean, what did she expect?
I found Vaha’s relationship with Kaliyu to be tumultuous and riveting and felt like the author made some really interesting points about not only identity when it came to alloys, using pronouns such as zie and zer, but also demonstrating the inescapable humanness of these creatures. Considering they descended from humans, neither of the alloys should have been surprised, but were shocked by how easy it was to get on with Jaya and other humans- realising quickly that their opinions had been biased by a lack of exposure to Humanity. I found it really interesting too how they felt just as behest to their creators as Jayanthi did about her alloy parents, yet another comparison point. The author made a great point about our destinies being too tightly informed by our makers, and that as individuals it is our responsibility to discover who we are apart from them, and what truly makes us happy. In this vein, it seems almost inevitable that both the main characters change dramatically in so many ways throughout the story, so much so that we feel as though we’ve known them for years by the time we leave them at the end of the novel.
To conclude, I give this book four stars. If it weren’t for the weird vibes I got from the main character falling in love with what seems essentially to be a sentient space ship, it might have been five. I also wanted to know more about their child in the end, but otherwise I thought this book was awesome. The plot was so complex I could have said a ton more about this, but I encourage you to find out for yourself and check it out, especially if you have access to Prime Reads.
Meru Aesthetic Gallery.
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