A World Too Near

A World Too Near, by Kay Kenyon, is the second novel in her series The Entire and the Rose.

It features, among many other things, militarized nanotechnology, exotic matter, quantum computation, artificial sapience, quasidystopia, black holes as (part of) a method for interstellar travel, a separate method of interuniversal travel, and an oblique and innominate reference to the Kardashev scale. Intuitively I nonetheless classify it as fantasy, rather than science fiction.

(The first one I would actually slightly classify as SFnal almost entirely due to the opening bit, where a machine sapient goes off track not because of some unknowable fundamental quality of AI but because an intern did something very stupid while logged in with administrator privileges.)

One of the things that strikes me is the curious submissiveness and tendency towards obedience of the native species of the Entire. (Their likely-true creation myth, that they were once automata of the Tarig, goes a fair way towards explaining this tendency, if not the tendency of those that spend time around our trifecta of protagonists to ... well, go off track, developing willfulness, as Ji Anzi does. Perhaps the Quinns have somehow obtained administrator privileges? I may have to reconsider my classification.)

My favorite bit of the series so far is the vicious subversion of the "psychic animal companion" trope: there are, essentially, psychic horses which form bonds with their riders, and Sydney Quinn is among those riders — but this is really a form of slavery. And no, the horses aren't the ones enslaved. (Although this actually showed up, and was made quite clear, in the last book: the notable bit in this one is that Inyx-to-Inyx telepathic transmission does not, unlike most of the rest of the Entire, respect speed-of-light limitations.)

The Tarig, lords and masters of the Entire — gods, in all but name, though one of their few surprising and redeeming qualities is that they don't claim that name — anyway, the Tarig are all creepy gits. They are described as inhuman in thought and emotion, but they certainly seem as human in motive, if not more so, than many of the Chalin (human? human-analogue?) residents of the Entire. Perhaps this is why the Chalin (and Gond, and Hirrin, and other races of the Entire) don't understand the Tarig, seeing them as incomprehensible? (Although it's usually easier to empathize with the latter than the former, as the former are, largely, Quite Mad.)

All in all I can't honestly rate it. This is a bridge between the opening and the conclusion, and its rating is dependent on how well it serves that function — and that is dependent on what the conclusion is. (A journey may be enjoyable for itself, but it is a quality of at least this journey that it leads to a particular place. We'll see where that is, shall we?)