Review: Echoes of Another: A Novel of the Near Future

Echoes of Another: A Novel of the Near Future by Chandra Clarke
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Neuromancer, though not set in Canada, was written there, so it makes sense of a sort to have what is a fairly traditional cyberpunk book (if that's a phrase that makes any sense) set in a nearish-future Toronto.

At least, I thought at first that it was a fairly traditional cyberpunk/nearish future book. There's implanted tech. There's a corporation. There are a bunch of disaffected, alienated characters, all single, all with a number of friends between zero and one.

Only it manages to avoid the usual tropes, in at least some ways. The corporation isn't evil. The arc of the characters - all the characters - is towards connection, including with each other, though there are too many of them. Haroon, in particular, added very little to the main plot and wasn't much affected by it, and his background is similar enough to Ray's that I found myself having to concentrate to remember which was which. He feels like he's being set up for a sequel more than like he's a part of this story.

After a slowish start, setting up that excessive number of characters, their stories start to connect up at almost the halfway point, after which it becomes gripping. Short, brisk chapters have a lot to do with this.

The characters are not as aimless as near-future SF characters often are; they want things and strive for things. At the end, though, they don't so much achieve resolutions by protagonism as get them handed to them as rewards for suffering.

The premise didn't completely work for me. There's a big glaring plot hole right at the centre: The application Kel thinks of is incredibly obvious, and if it could be done with common, standard tech (which apparently it can), someone would have thought of it probably even before it could be done, and certainly immediately afterwards. Nor do they need Kel's design, specifically; if she could invent it, so could someone else, especially since she's a research scientist rather than a technician. So the main plot driver failed to get me to suspend my disbelief.

Also, the US is kind of falling apart; that's mentioned in passing, as something that's neither surprising nor interesting. But among the many immigrants to Canada, there appear to be no US refugees.

So: very promising, well written on the whole, but has too many characters, takes too long to get going, and doesn't completely hang together or resolve completely organically. I'd probably read a sequel, though, since the strengths outweighed the weaknesses for me.

I received a review copy via Netgalley.

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