The Eurynome Code: The Complete Series: A Space Opera Box Set, K. Gorman, 2021.
Black Dawn, 2017
Renegades, 2017
Blood Ties, 2020
World Shift, 2020
Awakening, 2020
Deus, 2020
The Eurynome Code is a space opera answer to Friedrich Nietzsche’s famous observation that if you stare into the abyss long enough, it stares back — and in this case, starts reading to you from Carl Jung from its frightening alternate plane. The adventure opens with Karin Makos and her friends and crewmates on the Nemina. They’re working hard at a deep-version of antiquing when an unexpected, crippling attack takes place on the solar system. The aftermath reveals that Karin and her sister Nomiki have a dark past that accounts for their having some...unique attributes.
Did someone call for an archetype?
This is where Nietzsche comes in (or would, anyway). Gorman shows how the ethically-challenged gene-splicers who created Karin, Nomiki and a veritable pantheon of others like them spent a little too long gazing into an abyss -- and now it’s gazing back -- and worse. Karin has to survive long enough to go from having the worst superpower ever (“basically a human flashlight”) to realizing her destiny as our last, best hope.
I read a lot of SF series, space opera in particular, so I don’t say this lightly: this is a really good series. I was a bit concerned at first that this was going to be an extended rumination on adolescent trauma -- and there’s a lot on which one could ruminate. Gorman’s written a blend of space opera flavored with touches of horror and mythology that’s got just enough sophistication to make it interesting without bogging it down, and loaded with plenty of solid action. All this made it easy to keep obsessively turning the (virtual) pages. There are a lot of layers here, and they combined to produce more nuance and depth than are typical.
Karin, Nomiki and their friends, opponents, enemies and frenemies -- make their way through a realistically-rendered world full of complex problems and challenges. They grow and adapt along the way in response to the changes surrounding them. We have a set of particularly strong and interesting female characters on both the (very relative) good and bad sides. The governments operating in human space are also pretty realistic: everyone, good or bad, is operating from a place of self-interest, narrow or self-defeating as that may be.
“So far, Mars and Earth hadn’t managed to piss her off, and weren’t being heavy-handed in their demands and interactions. It had also only been twenty minutes.”
The writing here is above-average, and serves the enjoyment of the books rather than impeding it. The one downside is that the characters speak in what sounds suspiciously like late 20th/early 21st century North American — there’s a lot of “dude" this and that, and at one point part of the star ship starts looking like a LAN party. Mostly, this is funny in an anachronistic way. On the whole, good writing, interesting characters and a really unique plot made this an easy series to power through. Engaging entertainment, with enough twists to stand out from the crowd in a good way.
Smirk factor: All clear: 2.0 pts (Zero, nada, nil smirking in more than 2000 pages. Huzzah!)
Immersion factor: Chest-high: 1.5 pts
Writing quality: Above-average: 1.5 pt
Character/plot development: Average: 1 pt
Innovative/interesting: High: 2.0 pts
Total: 8/10 (4 stars)
The next question: I liked this, would I like Gorman’s other writing in different genres as much? We’ll have to see.