Title:

Station Eternity

Author:

Mur Lafferty

Category:

Science Fiction / Fantasy

Rating:

Date Reviewed:

June 19, 2023

ur Lafferty certainly has a vivid imagination; in Station Eternity, she delivers a cornucopia of original ideas that are unique and clever. For the first half of the book, I was thoroughly enjoying everything I read. But things bogged down in the second half when a shuttle full of humans shows up - and suddenly there were so many different characters (each with their own secrets) and subplots that I began to get confused about who was who, and what each character was trying to do. It became a muddled plot; a hearty stew with too many ingredients.

Mallory lives in the near future, but it is a future very different from the one we expect. Aliens have arrived on Earth - they have made their presence known, and they come and go freely, much to the aggravation of the governments on Earth. But you can't stop an alien ship from landing where-ever it may please, and humanity does not have the technology to put a stop to the visitors, even though the alien visits are mostly just sightseeing stops. The aliens will not share Faster Than Light technology with the Earthlings, in fact, they won't even allow humans to visit the rest of the galaxy.

Mallory has enough of her own problems to worry about, rather than aliens. Mallory has the bizarre ability to cause murders to happen near her - if she goes to a sporting event, someone will be murdered in the seats behind her. If she attends a party, someone will stab another guest. Mallory does not know the victims nor the killers, but for some odd reason her presence triggers lethal events. Even more astonishing, Mallory proves to be an extraordinary sleuth. She notices oddities, small clues, and seemingly meaningless facts that result in her solving the most baffling cases. No matter how careful the criminal, Mallory can quickly deduce the culprit and the method used in the attack. She cannot explain either of these two abilities - to cause murders and then to solve them - but all of the deaths have disturbed her greatly and she has retreated into a life of solitude as best she can, always trying to avoid other people because of the inadvertent fatal results that are sure to follow.

Mallory writes detective stories under a pen name, based upon actual cases she has solved. But it is a lonely life, so when a neighbor in a nearby apartment insists Mallory should join her at a party on a nearby military base, Mallory allows herself to be persuaded. And of course tragedy ensues.

All the deaths drive Mallory to despair. She applies to the aliens to allow her to live on one of their sentient space stations, Station Eternity. And her request is granted! Living on Station Eternity, surrounded by a host of alien species, the murders stop and Mallory can be at peace. There is another human on Station Eternity - Xan, a military man who was kidnapped by aliens and carried off - he was the primary suspect at the party Mallory last attended - though Mallory quickly pointed out who the real killer was. Xan and Mallory are learning how to survive surrounded by aliens who have little understanding of how humans work. They struggle with translators, and how to find edible food, and how to interact with alien customs.

There is a third human on Station Eternity, a pompous ambassador called Adrian. Adrian informs Mallory that Station Eternity has decided to allow a shuttle full of human tourists to visit. Mallory is horrified, she knows what will happen as soon as humans get close to her. Mallory warns Adrian, but of course the warnings are ignored.

At this point, the wonderful novel took a turn for the worse. The shuttle brought too many new characters into the picture. The sentient Station Eternity is itself threatened, and if it dies, that all the entities on board will perish too. Yet in the midst of the ongoing catastrophe, the humans keep digressing to their own personal agendas. The station is leaking air, threatening to have an explosive decompression - and the humans are talking about their history and events that happened back on Earth? It seemed to me that too many people got "spaced" and yet survive due a bunch of highly unlikely events.

I see that Station Eternity is called book one in the Midsolar Murders series, so perhaps Lafferty brought in so many characters because she has plans for them in later volumes, but I wish that Lafferty had waited to introduce them in those later books.

The ideas are exceptional, the main characters are interesting, but there are too many plotlines and too many characters overall. Station Eternity is an interesting read, but not something I would hand a friend and say: "You gotta read this!"