Book Review : Titan by François Vigneault

Oni Press

Release Date 15 Sep 2020

Blurb:

When MNGR First Class João da Silva arrives on the moon of Titan to take charge of Homestead Station, he finds the massive mining colony plagued by tensions between the giant, genetically-engineered Titan workers and the Terran management. As anger mounts, what began as a routine posting quickly turns into something far more dangerous.

Phoebe Mackintosh thought she left her fighting days behind her when she turned her back on the “mixing” circuit. Now, she finds herself caught between a past she’d rather forget and a future she can’t predict.

Together, they must find a way to pull Homestead back from the brink of disaster… Or Titan might be the spark that sets the entire solar system ablaze.

The Review:

Back when I was a teenager, I read Strikebreaker by Issac Asimov. It is a story that stayed with me partly because it dealt with industrial relations in a way I hadn’t up to that point seen before in a sci-fi story, and, partly because in reinforced my rather un-nuanced view at the time that scabs in the end always made things worse for their fellow workers. Titan like Strikebreaker is a sci-fi story about industrial relations. It explores the corrupting power of unions to further the conditions of their members, the constant drive that corporations have to grow profits at the cost of their workers, and, what happens when these two forces come into conflict. It also has at its heart a rather tender love story.

Worldbuilding in science fiction stories is as critical as the plot and the characters. Vigneault’s art is impressive. Everything is wonderfully rendered in a palette of reds, whites, and, blacks. Everything from the spacesuit designs to the living quarters seems believable. Despite its somewhat cartoony stylings, this is one of the most realistic sci-fi depictions of what life on an extra-planetary body might be like that I have seen since Ad Astra.

As impressive as Vigneault’s art is it matched by his plotting and dialogue. The story is gripping and to its credit took off in a direction that I found unexpected. Everybody loves a plot twist.

The hardest trick for a writer to pull off is to make you care about an unlikeable character. João da Silva brings to mind Ryan Bingham from Up in the Air (as played by George Clooney). He is either going to turn things around or recommend that the station be closed. Yet early on I began to warm to him. Though getting the mine back to profitably was his main concern, he wanted to learn as much about the plant before making any decisions. In Phoebe Mackintosh we have I think we have found yet another great sci-fi heroine. Equal parts brave, kind, and, driven, she is both likeable and spikey. She does the things one wishes they would have the courage to do when the stakes are high.

I thought Titan was brilliant. A shining example of a sci-fi story exploring the way humans treat each other. It is one of those books that make you want to read the creators other works and look forward to their future stories. Highly recommended.

28/30

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