Dark Orbit by Carol Ives Gilman

Dark Orbit by Carolyn Ives Gilman

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Jacket Blurb:  Reports of a strange, new habitable planet have reached the Twenty Planets of human civilization. When a team of scientists is assembled to investigate this world, exoethnologist Sara Callicot is recruited to keep an eye on an unstable crewmate. Thora was once a member of the interplanetary elite, but since her prophetic delusions helped mobilize a revolt on Orem, she’s been banished to the farthest reaches of space, because of the risk that her very presence could revive unrest.

Upon arrival, the team finds an extraordinary crystalline planet, laden with dark matter. Then a crew member is murdered and Thora mysteriously disappears. Thought to be uninhabited, the planet is in fact home to a blind, sentient species whose members navigate their world with a bizarre vocabulary and extrasensory perceptions.

Lost in the deep crevasses of the planet among these people, Thora must battle her demons and learn to comprehend the native inhabitants in order to find her crewmates and warn them of an impending danger. But her most difficult task may lie in persuading the crew that some powers lie beyond the boundaries of science

Read for January book group.

Even after discussing for book group, I'm still waffling on what I think of this selection. Even as I sit here writing my review, I'm having difficulties in trying to sum up the premise of the book: was it about the different ways to travel through space? Was it about our ability to see or not see and how we perceive what "sight" is? Was it about trust? Was it ultimately, just a story?

Instead of summarizing the book, I'll look at a handful of predominant characters:

Sara. Exoethnologist. Travels through space using what I came to think of as a souped up transporter. Her last job was a bust, she's a disgrace to the university she was working for and her mentor asked her to participate in a mission to a distant planet as an observer.

Thora. Emissary in exile after she incites a revolt on Orem. Now a sensory scientist. Thora is cool, reserved and distant, and perplexed when Sara tries to befriend her. Then Thora finds herself lost and blind among the indigenous peoples of the strange planet and everything changes again.

Atbatlow. Security officer. A very uninspiring character who stands around looking imposing, threatening, and serves the function of telling the scientists "no". It was his characters job to make things as difficult as possible.

The Doctor, who's name I've already forgotten. He's in charge of a ship full of people and seems to only have rudimentary supplies. We found the weird in book group.

Moth and Hanna - our two natives who interact with Thora and Sara. Each are serve the same function but in different places. On the ship, Sara and Moth explore what it is to see. On the planet, Hanna and Thora explore what it means to be able to see. "Sight" means completely different things to each.

And this is where I started having some issues with the book. For a far future space faring, space traveling society, to automatically assume giving someone "sight" is a good and righteous thing was as far off base as Thora's situation on Orem. I found the ship of people to be arrogant in their assumptions "sight" was a good thing for Moth. This bit bugged me a lot.

Conversely, Thora - as someone who studies the senses - spent quite a bit of time whining about her lack of visual sight, even as Hanna was pointing out everything around her. Yes, I understand it's one thing to study the senses when you have all of yours in tact, and thus, finding oneself sightless in a cave is going to be very traumatic. But the incongruity struck me as a bit odd.

However, I did find Sara's attempts to teach Moth how to see, and trying to describe to Moth what she was seeing, fascinating. (Aside - again, for a space faring society, wouldn't there be protocol in place for this situation? Seems like a bit of a lag in the science research...). Things that sighted people take for granted: depth perception, perception of color, dimensions, and more. Looking at it from Moth's viewpoint was probably one of the better parts of the book.

Ultimately, I found the book to be rather disjointed, hopping from one concept to the next, with thin threads loosely connecting everything together and even after writing this review, I'm still not exactly sure what the book was driving at. Still, I was entertained and I can't complain about that.

Recommended with some reservations.






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