Our hero in Platform Decay by Martha Wells, as with all the Murderbot Diary books, used to be a murderbot. He found a way to override his governor switch because he found killing distasteful and lacking as a nuanced approach to solving problems arising between corporations or corporations and humans in space. With each entry into the diary, murderbot becomes more organic and less of a bot. Eventually he was adopted by Dr. Mensa and the Preservation colony. He is on a mission to bring two endangered citizens with close personal ties to Dr. Mensa home.
Our murderbot is now a SecUnit, a security unit, with skills that make him the perfect one to mount a rescue mission to a decaying platform surrounding a dead planet. When he arrives at the designated platform, he learns that there are a few more people who need to be rescued, but he doesn’t totally trust the woman who is seeking his help.
Once again, his old enemy, the powerful BE corporation is involved and the story becomes an action-packed race through well-kept parts of the platform that rings the planet and old, abandoned parts of the platform. Will SecUnit get everyone out safely this time? It’s a tense situation. It helps that SecUnit can turn off surveillance cameras or wipe them after the fact. It helps that he has pockets full of drones to use as scouts.
When SecUnit is stressed, he watches old movie episodes. He especially loves Sanctuary Moon, but he has expanded his internal library. I use the Murderbot Diaries in the same way that SecUnit uses Sanctuary Moon. The books are a brief adrenalin rush that refreshes because they are fictional. Long live our increasingly human Murderbot.
The Road to Tender Hearts by Annie Hartnett started in an old folks’ home with a killer cat named Pancakes, and I almost quit reading. But, although this was a story of heartbreak and grief, it was also a story about how taking risks might mitigate grief or at least give a person the tools to handle life’s next blows.
The story ended up being a kind of a romp. PJ and Ivy lost their oldest daughter, Kate, on prom night. PJ deals with the loss by drinking, a lot. Ivy divorces him and moves in with a mutual friend, Fred. Ivy, in other words, moves on. Fred and Ivy, seeing how PJ is flailing and failing, take care of him as a family member. When Fred and Ivy announce that they are going to Alaska and that they will be unreachable by phone or text for a while, it appears that PJ might not make it. Then he sees an online post about a death in Tucson, Arizona of the husband of a woman he knew in school. She lives in the Tender Hearts community. He falls in love. It’s fate. He decides to travel to Tender Hearts. Should he take his old beaten-up ride?
However, fate has another path in mind for PJ. Luna and Ollie are headed for foster care because of parental stupidity (murder and suicide). Pancakes had a hand in this, maybe. Their father was PJ’s estranged brother. These children are not happy to accept PJ, Luna especially, but their only other option is foster care. Luna believes that her real father is a movie star who used to go to her mother’s high school.
What was a rather iffy situation becomes tolerable for everyone when PJ decides that they will all go on a road trip to find Luna’s movie star and ask him to complete a paternity test. Meanwhile they can also stop by Tucson to meet PJ’s intended at the Tender Hearts Senior Community. PJ’s grown daughter, Sophie, recently fired from her job, reluctantly decides to go with them. Hartnett’s novel tells the story of their journey. They take Pancakes along and leave a small trail of deaths behind them. We learn that Pancakes doesn’t kill indiscriminately.
Once we lose someone we love, the grief never leaves us, but Hartnett’s story gives hope that there is life after loss, even if fate has to beat us over the head and send us off on a wacky road trip to figure it out. There’s a lot more to this journey, but, of course, I won’t tell you.
I’m still enjoying the booty of rewards from Audible. I listened to the Tana French Cal Hooper books, The Searcher, The Hunter, and The Keeper almost without coming up for air. The books are read by Roger Clark who easily switches from an Irish accent to an American accent. Cal Hooper, an ex-cop from Chicago retires to the small village of Ardna Kelty expecting to be surrounded by the beauty of the land and getting in some fishing. He doesn’t have much time to get tired of too much peace and quiet though.
In The Searcher, Cal finds himself being stalked by a wild creature, which eventually reveals itself to be a very paranoid 11-year-old boy with a furtive manner, hand-me-down clothes and a shaved head. What could turn a modern child into the mess that is Trey Reddy? As it turns out, a small Irish village where families have long histories is not as peaceful a place as you might expect. Trey wants to know about her brother Brendan. (Cal discovers that Trey is a girl) She needs to know what became of her brother. She knows that there is someone or perhaps several someone-s who know what happened to Brendan, but the locals can keep secrets, especially the deepest, darkest secrets. It’s not all gothic drama. Cal is settling in, getting to know his neighbors, planting vegetables, and tempting Trey to do some carpentry. He tries to avoid the widow they are trying to fix him up with, but when he meets Laina, he immediately sees her excellent qualities. Does Trey eventually get her answers? You know I can’t tell.
When I learned there were three Cal Hooper books (a trilogy) I downloaded the other two and the “lost weekend” happened, pleasantly lost though. In The Hunter, Trey’s father comes back from London, and he is a man with a plan. John Reddy has always been a dreamer (with no moral boundaries). His wife, Trey’s mom, Sheila seems more anxious than pleased. Johnny tells guys he knows down the pub that a man he met in London is related to the Feeny’s in Ardna Kelty. The man’s great-grandmother told him that there was gold buried along a path through the mountains in Ardna Kelty made by an old stream that ran into the river. This begins a village gold rush. Johnny got all his friends to invest in a fake gold trail that would inspire the investor to look for the real buried gold. Trey is happy to have her dad back, but she doesn’t put her trust in him. Laina, Cal, and Trey have settled into a peaceful life. However, Cal is finding that peace in Ardna Kelty has little permanence. Is there gold in them thar hills? Read and find out.
Some quiet years must have ensued because in the next book, The Keeper, Trey is sixteen, and although she will always be socially different, she has made friends and it’s looking like she may be headed for a more intimate relationship. When Rachel, a young woman from the village who is about to marry the son of a successful, but rather overbearing local developer, comes to talk to Laina about her cat (and her life), Laina doesn’t want to involve herself in Rachel’s decision-making, so she sends her off without any satisfying bits of wisdom. Soon after, Rachel is found dead by what looks like suicide-by-drowning. Plenty of small-town speculation goes into deciding who’s to blame. Laina, as supposedly the last to see Rachel is devastated and it doesn’t help that most of the villagers blame her for Rachel’s death also. (Side question: Can an old woman who sits all day in a gloomy parlor really have such influential behind-the-scenes power?) Cal can’t get through to Laina, and he is grieving the loss of their relationship. Mart, Cal’s neighbor and friend with an irascible personality that may make you laugh out loud, also ends up dead. Is there any way to stop a man determined to get his way at all costs without ruining the lives of innocents in the town? Better call Cal.
So, you might want to explore the dark undercurrents in that small village in Ireland whose beauty and peaceful appearance is tempting you to throw over your old life and begin a new one. Your in-depth research could start with Tana French’s, Cal Hooper trilogy. But be prepared to lose track of time and be unavailable for socializing due to a pleasurable excursion into the dastardly deeds done in gorgeous, isolated places, and to meet a new set of memorable characters..
So Many Books, Choose Wisely 