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A review by elementarymydear
Goldilocks by L.R. Lam
adventurous
dark
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.5
This book was WILD ride, not just in the plot and the events of the book, but also in my enjoyment and opinion of the book. I could never have predicted the direction this book went in, and I’m undecided on whether or not that was a good thing.
In the not-so-distant future, Earth has been destroyed by climate change and humanity is about to make its first steps in settling on another planet. After an increasing number of conservative laws have caused a gender equality to lose generations of progress, a group of female scientists, all pushed out of their own research projects, steal the ship meant to take the first humans to the planet Cavendish in a far-off solar system.
📚Read this and other reviews on my blog!📚
Our main character is Naomi, a young woman who is recruited as the ship’s botanist by her adopted mother, leading scientist Valerie Black, who is spearheading the plan to steal the ship. I eventually warmed to Naomi, but for a long time it was quite difficult to get to know her as a character. Her personality and her backstory were revealed to us in a series of cliffhangers and ‘shock’ reveals that didn’t really hold any actual shock value, and eventually I realised why. The story was bookended by two first-person chapters from a perspective unknown to us until the end, but otherwise the book is in third person. Without another protagonist between us and Naomi, we don’t have a familiar character to be shocked by these reveals. The “she has an ex-husband, dun-dun-duh” vibe doesn’t really work when you a) know nothing about that character that might contradict that and b) don’t know her well enough yet to really care. Once we knew her better and she was the one uncovering secrets, I began to settle into the book more.
But that’s when things took a turn for the strange.
From the start, it had been clear that Valerie, the lead scientist on the mission and Naomi’s adopted mother, was a morally grey enigma who pursued her own agenda no matter the cost. Personally, I think that makes for an interesting antagonist: someone who truly believes they’re doing the right thing, but takes questionable steps to get there. The problem is for this to work, the steps have to be not so terrible that they don’t become a bad Batman villain, and by the end that was the territory Valerie had strayed into.
Valerie believes they can begin a utopia on the new planet with no inequality, no borders, no nationalities, just people living in harmony. The first problem is, she believes this is best accomplished by appointing herself supreme leader. Not a great start, but understandable if someone is power-crazed enough. Next, she reveals she has stolen the records of thousands of orphans and a few families she has helped with fertility issues via her research. Her plan is to ship out her hand-picked children to Cavendish first, raise them to live this utopian lifestyle, so by the time the rest of the humans get there they already have a robust infrastructure. Again, definitely not a good thing, but you can understand why she did that for what she believes will be a positive gain for humanity.
Then things got even weirder. The other crew discover thousands of frozen embryos on the ship, ready to be grown in the artificial wombs Valerie has invented. Naomi and her best friend on the ship (Hart, who is honestly the unsung hero of this book) wonder if, should the artificial wombs fail, they would be “asked” to carry the embryos. Given the weight this book put on the reproductive rights of women on Earth, I was surprised the moral and philosophical consequences of this weren’t further explored.
To top it all off, Valerie also decided to KILL 95% OF THE WORLD’S ADULTS WITH AN AIRBORNE VIRUS OF HER OWN CREATION. She secretly inoculated the people she thought worthy of saving, and happily let the rest die, so they wouldn’t come and ruin her utopia with pesky ideas of capitalism.
(Also this book was published over a month into lockdown, with some passages having clearly been changed to reflect COVID’s existence, so that’s a whole other nightmarish aspect of all this.)
After the rest of the crew find out Valerie has committed genocide, they decide it might be time to coup and lock up Valerie (after forcing her to hand over her formula for the antidote and vaccine and emailing them back to Earth). Naomi, coming to terms with the plethora of crimes against humanity her adopted mother committed, realises that her biological mother did actually die in some pretty suspicious circumstances and, yes, you guessed it! Valerie killed Naomi’s biological mother because they used to be business partners and Naomi’s mother wanted to leave the business or something like that.
There were so many interesting ideas brought up in this book, I just wish we’d been able to explore them more. The history of how women were pushed out of the work force didn’t feel particularly fleshed out, and lots of the philosophical and ethical ideas raised weren’t followed through. The biggest let-down for me was Valerie’s descent into Thanos-level villainy. By positioning her as the ultimate villain, her milder ideas didn’t get room for consideration. I wanted to get to the end and be able to make my own decision as to whether ultimately she was a good or bad person, but all of that nuance was brushed away in the final chapters.
This book had so much potential, and raised so many interesting questions and ideas, but it just didn’t come together for me in the end.
In the not-so-distant future, Earth has been destroyed by climate change and humanity is about to make its first steps in settling on another planet. After an increasing number of conservative laws have caused a gender equality to lose generations of progress, a group of female scientists, all pushed out of their own research projects, steal the ship meant to take the first humans to the planet Cavendish in a far-off solar system.
📚Read this and other reviews on my blog!📚
Our main character is Naomi, a young woman who is recruited as the ship’s botanist by her adopted mother, leading scientist Valerie Black, who is spearheading the plan to steal the ship. I eventually warmed to Naomi, but for a long time it was quite difficult to get to know her as a character. Her personality and her backstory were revealed to us in a series of cliffhangers and ‘shock’ reveals that didn’t really hold any actual shock value, and eventually I realised why. The story was bookended by two first-person chapters from a perspective unknown to us until the end, but otherwise the book is in third person. Without another protagonist between us and Naomi, we don’t have a familiar character to be shocked by these reveals. The “she has an ex-husband, dun-dun-duh” vibe doesn’t really work when you a) know nothing about that character that might contradict that and b) don’t know her well enough yet to really care. Once we knew her better and she was the one uncovering secrets, I began to settle into the book more.
But that’s when things took a turn for the strange.
Valerie believes they can begin a utopia on the new planet with no inequality, no borders, no nationalities, just people living in harmony. The first problem is, she believes this is best accomplished by appointing herself supreme leader. Not a great start, but understandable if someone is power-crazed enough. Next, she reveals she has stolen the records of thousands of orphans and a few families she has helped with fertility issues via her research. Her plan is to ship out her hand-picked children to Cavendish first, raise them to live this utopian lifestyle, so by the time the rest of the humans get there they already have a robust infrastructure. Again, definitely not a good thing, but you can understand why she did that for what she believes will be a positive gain for humanity.
Then things got even weirder. The other crew discover thousands of frozen embryos on the ship, ready to be grown in the artificial wombs Valerie has invented. Naomi and her best friend on the ship (Hart, who is honestly the unsung hero of this book) wonder if, should the artificial wombs fail, they would be “asked” to carry the embryos. Given the weight this book put on the reproductive rights of women on Earth, I was surprised the moral and philosophical consequences of this weren’t further explored.
To top it all off, Valerie also decided to KILL 95% OF THE WORLD’S ADULTS WITH AN AIRBORNE VIRUS OF HER OWN CREATION. She secretly inoculated the people she thought worthy of saving, and happily let the rest die, so they wouldn’t come and ruin her utopia with pesky ideas of capitalism.
(Also this book was published over a month into lockdown, with some passages having clearly been changed to reflect COVID’s existence, so that’s a whole other nightmarish aspect of all this.)
After the rest of the crew find out Valerie has committed genocide, they decide it might be time to coup and lock up Valerie (after forcing her to hand over her formula for the antidote and vaccine and emailing them back to Earth). Naomi, coming to terms with the plethora of crimes against humanity her adopted mother committed, realises that her biological mother did actually die in some pretty suspicious circumstances and, yes, you guessed it! Valerie killed Naomi’s biological mother because they used to be business partners and Naomi’s mother wanted to leave the business or something like that.
There were so many interesting ideas brought up in this book, I just wish we’d been able to explore them more. The history of how women were pushed out of the work force didn’t feel particularly fleshed out, and lots of the philosophical and ethical ideas raised weren’t followed through. The biggest let-down for me was Valerie’s descent into Thanos-level villainy. By positioning her as the ultimate villain, her milder ideas didn’t get room for consideration. I wanted to get to the end and be able to make my own decision as to whether ultimately she was a good or bad person, but all of that nuance was brushed away in the final chapters.
This book had so much potential, and raised so many interesting questions and ideas, but it just didn’t come together for me in the end.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Genocide