"Icebreaker" by Lian Tanner

I said I'd probably never read the first book in this series, but behold, I was actually wrong. Now I can fix that incomplete series entry in my series collection page. I won't say that was my primary motive for reading this, but it was definitely my primary motive for reviewing it.

Had I read this before Sunker's Deep and Battlesong, I probably would have understood Sunker's Deep a lot better. If you were thinking of reading the series, I'd honestly recommend reading Icebreaker first, if only because it actually explains most of what's going on. Then, unlike me, you wouldn't have to infer the setting lore from random background material.

I think this book captures its aesthetic quite well. And what I mean by that is it does a very good job of portraying the feeling of being on an ancient, dilapidated, poorly-understood ship that's slowly evolved a society over the years.

Now that I've read this one and gotten to know the characters, I almost want to go back and reread the other two to spend more time with them.

I do have somewhat of a bone to pick with the people who hid the robot dude (as I said in the Sunker's Deep review, he's the MacGuffin of this one): why didn't they make failsafes? All it would take is one angry uber-Luddite taking a hammer to the robot dude, and boom, you're done. (Now, granted, they did make a couple of other places as well; the giant submarines from Sunker's Deep spring to mind.) But still, if I were them, I'd have hid about ten more machine-minds with built-in libraries in various places around the world. Absurdly overengineered and well-hidden bunkers in places like Siberia, Antarctica, Greenland, and Australia. A couple more ships for good measure, and an isolated island or two. One at the bottom of a nuclear isolation facility. Possibly, if we have the technology (we did make a fully functional and sapient android, after all), some sort of self-maintaining factory in some out-of-the-way place like New Guinea, that could periodically make drones to scout things out and drop explanatory leaflets.

Tangent: Has dropping leaflets in war ever worked? Does it have any effect at all on the enemy's morale, or is it just something we do because it makes us feel special?

Anyway. I also would have programmed them to wake themselves up after a certain time, rather than waiting to be woken up. And I would have armed them. I would have armed them to the proverbial teeth. The angry uber-Luddites are using medieval technology, they're not going to be able to easily kill what's essentially a walking tank by bashing its head in with a rock.

And I would program my robots to instantly remember all their tech knowledge, rather than relying on folklore to jog their memories. In case of deterioration over the centuries, I would make backups of their minds. And backups of their bodies. And backups of their facilities. I would be paranoid.

Anyway, aside from that. Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: E10+ for violence.

4 stars.

(Endnote: I thought this series was the Icebreaker Trilogy, but apparently, according to this one, it's actually the Hidden Trilogy. Note to self, rename that entry when you publish this.)