Goldilocks by Laura Lam

I received a free ARC from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. This in no way impacts my opinion.

I seem to be on an apocalyptic – post or otherwise – bent recently with, The Book of Koli my last read and now Laura Lam’s Goldilocks. Both featured climate change as the major world-dooming feature, but while “Koli” is set far in the future (at least we are led to believe), Goldilocks is far closer, and is more of an alternate reality. 

In a world where travelling vast distances across space is becoming a reality, Naomi finds her dreams of taking such a trip becoming less of a reality. The Earth is dying, and women are being relegated to the role of homemakers, even highly-regarded astronauts like our main character. Tired of being passed over for space missions, Naomi and a team of female astronauts band together to “borrow” the first interstellar spacecraft and fly to Cavendish, a planet in the Goldilocks region of a star which already has rudimentary lifeforms. The plan is to go there, set up the first colony, and have the framework of an equal society in place before further settlers arrive. Of course, in fiction, when do things ever go according to plan? Here are my thoughts on the book:

• The story is basically a retelling of the time period thirty years in the future by Naomi, who is basically spilling the beans on what happened when they took the spaceship. Rather than a linear approach, the story jumps back and forth through Naomi’s life, While this could annoy some readers, there is no chaff and all asides and backtracking are relevant to the overall story. The story does move at slow pace (it is five people in a spaceship), but the book isn’t particularly long, and I found it hard to put down
• Naomi is an interesting character, an orphan taken in by her mother’s best friend, Valerie, and the crux of the story is more about their relationship than the political wrangling and apocalyptic climate change. The narrative of her story ties in nicely with what is happening on the ship, and one can imagine an older relative telling you a story and jumping back and forth. Unlike that scenario, this story is worth hearing. Valerie may be an even more interesting character, especially when seen through Naomi’s eyes. She’s a self-made billionaire who is the brains and wallet behind the whole spaceship theft and trip to Cavendish. What makes her most enticing is her mental acuity, as she always seems to be five steps ahead of everyone else
• There is some interesting scientific theory, mostly from Naomi’s chosen field of botany. There is an impressive (at least to me) amount of detail about the growing of plants in space, and adapting them to growth on a new world. We hear some detail about the ship and how it works, but Naomi’s no expert on such things, so we get more of a layperson’s view. They run into some issues along the way which they have to deal with, and they add a little excitement to the story, but they tend to be swiftly dealt with
• If I had one issue with the book, I’d have to say it was the background, particularly the political story. While it’s alluded to, I wish there was a little more information about it. I understand that it could bog down the story, and that it wasn’t necessary to Naomi telling the story to someone else, as it would have been common knowledge. Still though, it’s a topic that’s still relevant, and I’d like to see the buildup. Maybe there’ll be a prequel.

Verdict  

An interesting character driven space travel story. Well, that was a mouthful.