by J.S. Dewes ★★★★★
In 2021, I was blown away by J.S. Dewes's debut novel The Last Watch, and equally impressed by her sequel The Exiled Fleet. While I enjoy science fiction, it isn't generally what I find myself reading. But with Dewes, as I wrote at the time, the novels "hit the sweet spot of something grounded in actual scientific principles without being hard science," and her ability to craft compelling, unpredictable plots with memorable characters made both of those novels among my favorites that year.
So when I saw a new novel was due out this year from Dewes, I was excited. I also immediately assumed it was Book 3 in the series. Instead, I found that she had veered in a different direction (as she does so often in her novels) and had written a stand-alone novel unrelated to the previous two books.
Rubicon is set at some point in the future, with the human race (or an equivalent approximation) embroiled in a prolonged conflict with a race of sentient machines they refer to as "Mechan". With humanity's home planet of Mira on the brink of being uninhabitable, they are in search of new planets that they can colonize. As part of that colonization effort, they send teams of soldiers to scout potential spots, searching for viable habitats.
The story centers on one such scout, a soldier named Adriene Valero. Valero has the dubious distinction of being "rezoned" 96 times. What's a "rezone"? Four years prior, humans had finally perfected the technology to allow them to "rezone" into a new "husk" (body) upon their death, essentially creating immortality for these soldiers. While you might think that it would be the greatest invention in the history of humankind, in many ways it's had the opposite effect. Rezoning is a pretty horrible process that takes its toll on a person, and while it's a nice safety net, no one looks forward to it.
Against that creative setup, Dewes crafts a really interesting story. She tackles questions about immortality (after dying 96 times, Valero's greatest wish is actually to be able to live without the ability to rezone), the role of AI and whether we should place limits on it, and the meaning of humanity in general. When death doesn't actually mean dying, it changes people and their perception of a lot of things.
Those who saw the Tom Cruise movie Edge of Tomorrow will certainly see similarities in the setup here -- humans with the ability to be reborn, fighting a dominant alien race -- but Dewes crafts a story that has tons of originality as well, creating an environment that she manages to fully bring to life in under 500 pages. She also has a knack for referring to things that don't exist -- be it new technology, "historical" events, etc. -- and then gradually allowing the reader to understand what they are in the context of the story, rather than stopping to explain what such-and-such is, or just never explaining it. It's hard to thread that needle, but Dewes is a master seamstress.
The characters in Rubicon have depth and are well-realized, and while the plot has fewer misdirections than The Divide series, it still keeps the reader guessing where things are ultimately headed. Valero's arc as a main character is truly compelling, and it's an enjoyment for the reader to watch her evolve from a shell of a human, exhausted from continuous deaths and rebirths, into a place where she begins to rediscover her humanity. The moral questions are compelling, and the exploration of the role of AI is certainly topical. Like all good science fiction, it uses scenarios set in the future to force us to evaluate our present, and as tech leaders like Elon Musk and Steve Wozniak warn of the risks of continued development of AI systems without constraints, Dewes smartly handles the different directions AI could take.
While I was already a committed fan after The Last Watch and The Exiled Fleet, Rubicon further confirms for me that future books from Dewes will be on-release must-reads. I thoroughly enjoyed this one.
Next Best of 2023: #6 - Fourth Wing
Previous Best of 2023: #8 - Starling House