Harare Review of Books

814 pages 😩

Expected publication date: 17 Apr 2022.

Finished reading on Jan 9, 2022.

Genre: SFF.

Supplied blurb: A robot yearns to remember. A thief struggles to forget. A galaxy on the verge of collapse.

On the fringe of a broken civilization, a robot awakens with no memories and only one directive: find his creator. But in the village of Korthe, Beetro finds only radioactive pestilence, famine, and Miree—a tormented thief with dreams of retiring after her final score. Meanwhile, the fiefdom is plunged further into chaos when a new warlord seizes control, recasting serfs as refugees and leaving derelict robot peasants in his wake. With a shared interest in survival, Beetro and Miree team up to pull off an impossible castle heist: steal a single flake of dark matter, the world’s most valuable and mysterious ore.

But as they trek through the feudal wasteland in search of answers, they realize the true extent of the chaos surrounding them: the stars are disappearing from the sky and the entire galaxy is unraveling. As he uncovers his origin, Beetro discovers he may be the key to the salvation of the cosmos—or its destruction. Time, space, and loyalty become relative as he learns the real reason he was created.

A mind-bending science fiction epic with the bones of a fantasy traveling quest, Dark Theory unfolds through a journey of betrayal, identity, and unlikely friendships in a world of darkness set at the edge of space and time.

Thank you to NetGalley and to Wick Welker for this ARC.

Very mild spoilers follow.

It took a whole minute; but then I was completely sucked into this very strange and delightful world of really excellent characters. Beetro and The Fellowship of the Dark Matter (my words) inhabit one of the best made-up places I’ve visited in recent fiction: an egg-shaped city?! An underworld?? A psychedelic forest??? There are aliens, but the tolerable kind. There’s time travel. There’s a beautiful future human. There’s a terrible and very grumpy woman. There’s a chivalrous merchant sailor. There are mad mages/scientists. There’s Beetro, the cute robot. There is so much more, and all of it is fun.

The influences the author mentions in the acknowledgements—Jemisin, Wells, Stephenson, Tolkien, among others—are obvious in the epic arc of this story. I do wonder, though, if those influences also played a part in the decision to make this book so long, because it is very long (or the ARC is, anyway). Still, the scope of the story more than makes up for it.

My favourite part of the book is the perfect blend of science fiction (and it’s hard SF, even, my favourite!) and fantasy (because everything has an air of magic about it, the way really advanced science might). What I really hated was the body horror: Welker practises medicine, and you can tell 😩😩😩 So, definite content warnings for body horror and pretty graphic violence.

Still. I would read more fantasy if it read like this book; I loved it, and understand the GR raves (having been somewhat bewildered by them when I started to get really tired of reading, about 200 pages in).

Great read! Get it when it’s out.

Rated: 9/10