A Quiet Universe

This sci-fi horror story follows CERHA on her mission aboard the starship Upon Silver Tides, where she is tasked with first finding and then rescuing her charge Annalise Fletcher. Upon first entering the ship she realizes that something is wrong. Not only have the other fabricants (synthetic, but sentient, beings created with one singular purpose) nearly all gone mad, assuring themselves and everybody in their vicinity that Everything Is Fine before attacking anybody that threatens their assertions, but CERHA soon realizes that whatever is going on aboard the starship is also affecting her, threatening to make her lose her path.

While this story may not be a perfect fit for people who are looking for the darkest possible sci fi horror or those looking for fluffy romances, for me, as a fan of horror and transgender romance I had a really, really good time with this book. I enjoyed the bleak horror and the depiction of unreality, that CERHA encountered in this story, having to cope with not only slowly losing her mind but also a ceaseless barrage of traumatic events. And throughout it all she wonders what exactly her relationship with Annalise was and who actually considers her a fully sentient being, deserving of love and having her voice heard?

CERHA is a fascinating main character and as I already stated her state of mind is not an easy one to be in. The book takes her apart and as a reader we watch her unravel as she scales the ship up and down and up again, solving mysteries along the way and slowly (hopefully) getting closer to fulfilling her mission. Along the way she considers her relationship with herself, with those around her and with her body. For parts of the book she is accompanied by another fabricant named CORA, who seems to be one of the last sane fabricants aboard the ship, who was one of my favorite characters. I really, really like her and enjoyed what the interactions between CERHA and CORA added to the story, in particular the way they disrupted the deeply unsettling, but sometimes a bit repetitive (still scary af though! The atmosphere is really, really great) acts of climbing through the ship. I also quite enjoyed the other characters and there are certainly a few that I am looking forward to getting to know more in the sequel!

Another really incredible aspect of this book was the atmosphere it created. Starting with fascinating lore about the moon and the space fleet, the fact that there are parasites, whose radiation causes you to lose your grasp on reality and the constant doubt of what is real and what isn’t, this book really delivers some great sci-fi horror atmosphere. As some people have already mentioned the SIGNALIS influences are certainly there, although I did not think they overshadowed the rest of the book and instead functioned as nice little easter eggs for me.

While I would have enjoyed some more world building (there are quite a few questions still to answer, but that’s where the sequels will hopefully come in!), the main focus of this story is CERHA and her doubts and fears. The book dives deep into questions of autonomy, questioning if a being which is created with a function, which they need to fulfill or otherwise go insane, can ever truly make their own decisions and explores transfeminine fears surrounding disposability and exploitability. Unlike sci-fi which only uses transfeminity and queerness as a metaphor, this story digs deep into what it means to exist in a world where your gender identity may be tolerated in so far as it allows you to function better, but is still treated as an aberration, which should at best be fixed and then go unnamed and ignored.

All in all, this sci-fi horror asks the important questions: What if the unreliable narrator slowly driven mad by cosmic radiation was powered by duty and lesbianism? And she was transgender? How cool would that be? How much would it break your heart to read? How hard would you root for her survival? The answer is very!

I really, truly adored this story and I cannot wait to dig into the sequels!

Absolutely wonderful sci-fi horror here, shoutouts to my homie CORA