Goldilocks The boldest high-concept thriller of the year

With Planet Earth on the brink...

Bewertung am 16.01.2023
Bewertungsnummer: 1860876
Bewertet: Buch (Gebundene Ausgabe)

With Planet Earth on the brink of collapse, five women risk everything to ensure humanity's survival in the distant Goldilocks solar system - despite the severe restrictions imposed by a fundamentalist, patriarchic government.

Shoot for the stars. Steal a space ship. And then ... and then?

Bewertung am 26.07.2020
Bewertungsnummer: 1355969
Bewertet: Buch (Gebundene Ausgabe)

Well, that’s what „we“ got to figure out. In Goldilocks, Naomi Lovelace is part of a five-woman crew who did exactly that. After being pushed out of the work place further and further by a patriarchal society and losing all hope she‘ll ever get the chance to fly into space the conventional way, they steal a space ship in an effort to leave a dying planet and be the first ones on a new one, Cavendish. The men in power left behind are obviously not amused. Goldilocks made for a very interesting read. For the most part, that has to do with Laura Lam’s fantastic storytelling and writing. (Which doesn’t really come as a surprise after reading Lam‘s previous SciFi thrillers „False Hearts“ and „Shattered Mind“. Those are very different stories, but I recommend them as well!) For the other part: Hoooo boy, talk about life imitating art. Goldilocks is one of those books I occasionally had to put down because it felt eerily close to reality. Eerily, because the world in this one is not fun: climate and the planet have been thoroughly fucked up, life is fashioned around cis men‘s needs (sound familiar?), people can’t go outside without wearing a mask (uh oh ...) and to top it off, we get a little taste of a pandemic in a book that was then published ... during a pandemic. Add to that a few personal elements that lined up perfectly with my life ... well. It sure made for a memorable reading experience. I liked how Goldilocks operates on such a large and yet small scale - on the one hand the potential future of humankind, on the other these five women confined to a space ship. How it asks hard moral questions - how far can you go for the greater good? What does that really mean? I liked how I didn’t necessarily like the answers I‘d have given. How the twists and turns creep up on you. This isn’t your typical grand space adventure, and it doesn’t need to be to leave you at times a little breathless. So, in summary: yeah, go read this one.