Grimspace

I’m a fan of stories centered on strong female characters: ball busting, take no prisoners, hey-buy-me-a-drink-and-when-I-do-you-walk-away-laughing-at-what-a-chump-I-am; you know, basically the women I’ve known all my life. While these types are generally relegated to the urban-fantasy subgenre, it’s always nice to come across them in science fiction. I think the last science fiction story I read with a really strong female character was Sharon Shinn’s Archangel and I thought that was a fantastic book.

Grimspace is the story of Sirantha Jax, a Jumper that works for the corp, which is a large business corporation that controls most of the planets in the known universe (think of Dunes Empire). A Jumper is a female born with the J-gene which allows them to move through space in starships at faster-than-light speed. Think of it as opening a worm-hole, which they call beacons. Travel that may take months can now take hours with a Jumper on the crew. However, this gene being rare, all known Jumpers are highly prized and used as commodities.

These Jumpers are cursed with the addiction of seeing things only they can see when they jump: colors, lights, patterns, etc. It’s like a screen saver with the flashing beams of light and you kinda get the picture—except with more drug use. To them this is the opium that they can’t get enough of, and many “burn-out” and die after too many jumps.

As the story begins to unfold, we find Sirantha being haunted by her last jump, which she can’t remember. Evidently, her last jump consisted of her crashing a starship, killing delegates from all over the universe and her pilot/lover, Kai. Along the way she meets the roguishly good-looking yet cold starship pilot March, a pacifist doctor named Saul who may be more than he seems, the lesbian tough as nails ship mechanic Diana, and the alien-slave Loras, who has been genetically predisposed to be a slave.

Throughout the whole story I kept thinking, this really is a poor man’s Firefly (even right down to the banter of Sirantha and March a la Mal and Inara, which I love!) and that the book would read better as a television show. Still, if it can remind me of one of my favorite television shows, then that can’t be a bad thing.

Grimspace is the debut novel of Ann Aguirre who lists her inspirations as Linnea Sinclair, Sharon Shinn and Elaine Corvidae, and it’s not hard to see why. Her overly feminist world view is at times refreshing and mind-numbing odd all at the same time.

Odd tangent: Ann reminds me of my high-school history teacher. The teacher was a young lady just out of college with really strong views on “man’s domination” of world views and topics. Even though she was a history teacher, she hated the word “history” calling its “man’s” corruption of the word (get it? His-story) and made us refer to past events with the gender non-specific “our-story” or “old-story.” While I could see her point of view, I always felt that it was unnecessary, since history is not a gender specific world. What does this all mean? Well, it’s like using race for race sake, unnecessary and it draws unwanted attention to what you are doing. Ann Aguirre does this quite a bit in Grimspace ; all throughout the book, the female characters of the story say, “Sweet Mary, Mother of Mary, Mother Mary sucker, etc” whenever they want to curse (this of course instead of Jesus or god). While this may not seem important, I found this odd because Ann makes a point in her story telling us that the concept of souls and heaven have been disproved by science, and most people are not religious anymore. They don’t even remember what Mary stands for. It was like the whole story was trying to be misandric but for no real reason than just to be so. I know this isn’t really a big deal but I just thought it was odd, and it kept pulling me out of the story.

Another problem I had with the book was that it felt like it went through a writer’s camp or a serialization. Chapters were roughly five-pages long and always tried to end on a high-note. While this at times is fine, at five-pages a clip, it got a little excessive. It took away the immediacy of the story with all those high-notes. Short chapters can work for some stories. Take for instance Kite Runner . While I didn’t particularly like the story, I felt that it was a quick and nice read because of the short chapters and that added to my enjoyment of the book. However for Grimspace the short chapters make things seem rushed and too-fast paced, which leads me to wonder if this was done at a writer’s camp that need a chapter or two done every day.

As I mentioned before, I especially loved the banter between the male protagonist March and Sirantha Jax. It’s one of those beautiful, “I hate you so much and I hope you die but I can’t stop being so sexually attracted to you” stories that is at once altogether unrealistic yet entertaining. I kept catching myself saying aloud, “oh no, she didn’t” and then having to close the book, take a break and re-evaluate my masculinity.

While I had a lot of fun reading Grimspace, it felt rushed and incomplete. It reminded me of that Flight of the Conchords song, “you’re so beautiful, you could be a part-time model; but you probably still have to keep your normal job.” While this book was a fun read, it wasn’t necessarily memorable or thought provoking (and at times it was overly sappy and clichéd, like I was reading a book that belonged in the Romance book section). Still, that isn’t always bad. We as readers need a rest sometimes, and it’s always nice to just sit back and read a fun story without having to think. And for that, I say to Grimspace, thanks!! I look forward to any future efforts she puts towards her new creation.

[On a side note]: The whole jumping aspect of the book reminds me a lot of Bester’s Gully Foyles “jaunting” in Stars My Destination . This is reminiscent even right down to Sirantha possibly unique jumping quality (which I don’t want to give away) that may change the universe, just as Gully Foyles unique ability to jaunt through space changes his universe.

If you liked this book also check out: Linnea Sinclair’s Games of Command, Sharon Shinn’s Samaria Series, Catherine Asaro’s Skolian Empire Saga and Firefly.