Weight of the Heart (Bruna Husky #2) by Rosa Montero

Weight of the Heart (Bruna Husky #2)

by Rosa Montero, Lilit Zekulin Thwaites (Translator)

Introduction

Weight of the Heart was gifted to me by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest and fair review. I accepted this sequel for review because I had already read Tears in Rain and was looking forward to the next installment in the life of Bruna Husky.

Genre /Intended audience

Science Fiction /Adult

Mature themes: graphic violence, death, drug use, and sexual situations

Narration

Third person, close POV mostly Bruna Husky’s

Characters

Bruna Husky - a technohuman created for combat, now a private detective

Yiannis - retired archivist, close friend of Bruna’s

Merlìn - Bruna’s deceased lover, she is still grieving his death

Pablo Nopal - novelist and former memorist (writer of memories for technohumans); he wrote Bruna’s artificial memories based on his own life

Inspector Paul Lizard - a police inspector and Bruna’s on-again, off-again lover

Bartolo - Bruna’s alien (Omaá) pet

Gabby Orlov - a young orphan girl from the Zero zones whom Bruna rescues and takes in

Daniel Deuil - a ‘tactile’ therapist who is treating Bruna

Setting

A future (2109) version of Madrid, Earth

Theme

Mortality and self determination

Plot

Struggling to make ends meet and keep her private detective’s license, a moment of charity changes Bruna’s life, leading to her becoming the reluctant foster mother of a wild orphan girl. She takes on a seemingly ordinary job investigating a stolen diamond, but the job turns out to be anything but ordinary as the body count grows. She must connect the dots between her ward, mysteriously sickened by radiation exposure, and murder victims whose bodies also turn out to be radioactive. Things get more and more complicated, and at one point Bruna sums things up with “A stolen diamond, a fake widow, a feigned accident, two genuine corpses, an amputated arm, a health-alert report gone missing, and radiation everywhere.”

About the Author

Rosa Montero is a Spanish journalist and author. Find out more about her on Goodreads.

My Opinion

Weight of the Heart works as a sequel to Tears in Rain, but readers should be able to jump into the second installment without confusion. Much of the information included as archive entries in Tears in Rain appear again in an appendix to Weight of the Heart. The appendix explains all the background of Bruna’s world, complete with a chronology from our time to the that of Bruna Husky. It is well worth reading, though not essential to enjoying the book.

The story opens six months after Tears in Rain, with not much changed for Bruna. She goes on a more epic quest in this installment, and we see more of the unsavory elements of the world Montero has created. The author paints a vivid picture of a world at odds as we see the contrast between Bruna’s relatively safe and civilized Madrid vs the nearly abandoned ‘outer’ war zones. Bruna also takes a tour of the strange and secretive floating world of the Labari, where there are clues to be found, but the main point is to showcase the strange Labari cult of order and caste. One of the best additions in Weight of the Heart is Bruna’s ward, Gabby Orlov, who brings out a side of Bruna we haven’t seen before.

There were a couple of flaws that bothered me. The first is how trusting Bruna was at the wrong times, particularly of Daniel Deuil. It stands out in their first meeting so much that I highlighted it at the time. It felt out of character, and the rest of the story depends on it. A second annoyance was how the author not only reset Bruna’s relationship with Paul Lizard, but had them essentially repeat the same arc as in the first book. That seemed lazy to me.

Conclusion

Overall, it was an interesting science fiction thriller and I greatly enjoyed the story, even more so than Tears in Rain.

I give Weight of the Heart a solid four stars.

#ScienceFiction #books #4Stars #Adult