Chimera (Universe Eventual #1)
by N.J. Tanger
Introduction
Chimera was gifted to me by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest and fair review.
Genre /Intended audience
Science fiction / Young adult
Narration
Third person past tense, shifting close POV
Characters
Theo Puck - a sixteen-year-old hacker, Selection Mandate candidate
Selena Samuelson - fifteen-year-old rim pilot
Liam Samuelson - Selena’s father and owner of The Bee, a rim trawler
The Chimera - the AI colony ship that brought the original colonists to Steven’s Point
Meghan - a friend of Theo’s, also a Selection Mandate candidate
Stephen - the navigator, deified by the colonists, who brought Chimera to Stephen’s Point
Marcus J. Locke - Selection Mandate candidate with a hidden past
Setting
In a far future on Steven’s Point, an Earth colony established some 200 years prior to the beginning of the story
Theme
Responsibility vs. Freedom
Plot
Supply ships haven’t arrived from Earth in over a decade, so the government of Stephen’s Point implements the “Selection Mandate” to find and train candidates as a crew for the sleeping colony ship Chimera. No one knows if they can succeed in waking Chimera, and if they do, will anyone be able to navigate it back to Earth? Without supplies from Earth, the colony is doomed, so it has to be attempted. Theo Puck wants to be a candidate so badly, he hacks his way onto the trainee list. When he and his friend Meghan begin training, they find the situation more dire than the government admits.
About the Author
N. J. Tanger is a pseudonym for the writing team of Nathan Beauchamp, Joshua Russell, and Rachael Tanger. Chimera is the first novel in the Universe Eventual series . Find out more about this collaboration on their website.
My Opinion
I really enjoyed Chimera. It has been classified as dystopia, but I found the label unfair in this case. I think of dystopian novels as being based on a random, wildly improbable premise a la The Hunger Games or Divergent. It may be fun momentarily imagining, “What if everybody allowed themselves to be categorized into just a few personality types?” But that’s not science fiction. It’s fantasy disguised as SciFi.
In many ways, Chimera reads like classic SciFi (think early Heinlein), with a well thought out premise in addition to stories of the young protagonists. The characters are well drawn, though they do fall into classic science fiction archetypes. Theo is the bright hero who doesn’t do well in school, viewed as a loser until he rises to the challenges of the story. Meghan is the smart girl everyone expects to do well and the object of Theo’s unrequited love. Selena is the wild child, brought up on the edge of society, immensely talented and resourceful but uninterested in anything beyond her own situation. She willfully resists being pulled into her greater destiny in a way that’s completely believable given her history. The tension between her own desires versus the expectations of people who see her as the colony’s salvation sucked me into the story.
The Chimera is also a character. She has limited awareness and is trying to wake from her mandated shutdown, but certain criteria must be met to allow that. She spends her time testing the limits of her restrictions and trying to find a scenario that will allow her return to full operation and wakefulness. The passages from her POV were a clever way to deliver important details of the colony’s history.
I appreciated that the author didn’t make basic training a major part of the novel. That’s been done so thoroughly, so many times, that there’s not much to add. The training sequence does serve as a backdrop to character interactions and a way to move the story forward. The changing dynamic between Theo and Marcus was very well done. Marcus starts as a main antagonist for Theo (and presented as a sociopath), but by the end of the story he is a more sympathetic character and an intriguing person. The individual stories are riveting enough on their own, but the authors expertly weave them into a bigger story that left me completely invested by the end.
Conclusion
Chimera is well written and filled with familiar but compelling characters. By the end, I was ready to continue with the series. I give it a solid four stars and recommend it to all science fiction fans, especially those looking for something reminiscent of classic authors of the genre.