For the hundred thousandth time, she fell in love, and it wasn’t brought on by any one particular thing. It wasn’t the complexity of her wife’s notes, or the knowledge that she’d been up picking berries before the lights came on. It wasn’t her choice of outfit, or the way her salt-and-pepper bedhead perfectly complement the ensemble. It wasn’t her beautiful hips or her beautiful ass or the stripes and folds time had been generous enough to gift her with. It wasn’t her focus, her fervor, or the predictable fact that she hadn’t noticed she had company.
page 57, Cora, Cypsela
What made Cora fall was the complete tableau, the whole portrait. The whole of her. h what Cora loved—every ingredient that compromised Signy, no one piece more defining than the rest.
Table of Contents
Why As You Wake, Break the Shell?
It feels a bit absurd to write this particular section about a Becky Chambers book. Alas, I would feel worse if I deviated from my usual fiction` book review format for a single book so here we are. I read As You Wake, Break the Shell because I love Becky Chambers and her writing. I have read the Wayfarer series, the Monk & Robot duology, and one of her novellas and I liked all of them.
I consider Becky Chambers to be one of my all time favourite authors so when I found out earlier this year that she was coming out with a new novel I immediately put in a preorder at my usual local indie book store. Much to my dismay, I found out that Canada was not getting the hardcover edition of the book so my preorder was cancelled and I had to put in a preorder for the paperback edition instead.
If I wanted a hardcover edition, I would have to import it either from the UK or the US with all the additional time delay and cost that involves. If I wanted the signed edition with sprayed edges, as far as I know that is only available in the UK through Waterstones. And as much as I wanted that edition, I couldn’t justify the significant cost differential after shipping, GBP->CAD conversion and any other import costs.
So my preorder for the paperback edition (ISBN/UID – 9781529340594) came in early October and that is the one I read at the end of October. Author blurbs on this edition of the book are from – Sarah Beth Durst, Antonia Hodgson, and Rebecca Thorne.
Let’s get into it.
The Book
As You Wake, Break the Shell is a science fiction novel that tells the tale of space pilot Cora and Signy, a brilliant but reclusive botanist. The story is told in alternating timelines, one of them being the process of Cora and Signy meeting and getting to know each other and the other being where they are in a state of domestic bliss.
Premise & Setting
The two timelines take place in a solar system with very few habitable planets/and moons. The star is named Aurum, in order from that star are the planets – Char, Fortune and its two moons Big Quarry and Little Quarry, Crag, Solitaire/Solace and its two moons Lodestone and Cypsela, August, and Wisp. The timeline of Cora and Signy’s meeting takes place mostly on the barely habitable planet of Fortune and the other timeline takes place on Cypsela where the happy couple have made a home for themselves along with a brief sojourn on Lodestone.
There is also one more character worth mentioning here and that would be Colibri. Colibri is Cora’s rorqual. Rorquals are essentially sentient space whales that humans on this world have domesticated and turned into living spaceships that ferry around essential supplies like water and food around the solar system. Like with Becky Chambers’ other novels, the alien creature in As You Wake, Break the Shell also feels truly alien. I’ll let her words describe Colibri.
The thing, the creature, the animal—it was huge. Bulbous and hulking, the size of a ferry. And oh, god, it moved. Not like potted leaves waving in the breeze of an air filter, not like robots cleaning the floor. The animal pulsed, it undulated. The animal. Flesh and muscle and fluid. Orange, purple, plasma yellow. The animal. A rotting fruit, a perfect jewel, a mushroom cap, a dissected organ, a blooming flower, an abandoned petri dish, an unbaked hunk of clay that could never be shaped to fit a human hand no matter how hard you squeezed.
page 188, Signy, Fortune (Above)
Rorquals don’t perceive the world as humans do and they do not talk like humans do. The way rorqual pilots interact with their particular rorqual is through a direct psychic link between the human pilot and the rorqual by way of implants and an interface. Cora describes this as an overwhelming but ultimately freeing experience because in such a direct mind-to-mind connection there is no pretense and they can communicate in a way that is just not possible with words.
Unfortunately for Cora, such bonding comes at a cost for the human pilot. In some cases, pilots develop a condition called “mindbleed” which as the name suggests involving the mind of the rorqual bleeding into the mind of the human and causing what I can only describe as a form of psychosis. And that is where the story starts, Cora is seeking treatment for her mindbleed, a condition she can’t tell the authorities about lest she lose her job and her rorqual Colibri which she cares deeply about.
And that is where Signy comes in, she isn’t just a botanist. She uses her skills to run a very illegal black market clinic where she uses genetic engineering on plants to make medicines for people. These are people who the system on Fortune considers to be low priority and as such they are not given the medicine they require, these are people that have fallen through the cracks and need to be helped by someone who actually cares more about helping people rather than the law.
At this point I think I have set the scene just enough for you to understand what As You Wake, Break the Shell is generally about. Becky Chambers books and their descriptions are deceptive in the sense that there is a lot more under the surface and that is what I want to talk about next. I have broken the shell, let’s see what’s underneath.
Under the Broken Shell
At its core As You Wake, Break the Shell is a love story involving survival, found family, and grief. What I have always loved about Becky Chambers’ science fiction novels is that not only are they utopian, they are utopian on a small enough scale to feel achievable.. A small utopia surrounded by a hostile environment with characters who take care of each other. A combination of the utopian vision of Star Trek TNG combined with the space station community and hostile outside environment of Star Trek DS9.
That is very much the case in this particular story. Even though this story takes place across a solar system, the actual scope of the story is very small. We have our two main characters Cora and Signy who get the majority of the character development attention but in classic Becky Chambers fashion, the few side characters we get – Colibri, Otto, Twig get just the right amount of attention to make the world feel emotionally grounded and real in a way I rarely find in science fiction media.
It is worth talking about the love story at the heart of this book. The relationship development between Cora and Signy was one of my favourite aspects of the book. The initial meeting, the light flirting developing into smouldering attraction that then develops into the comfortable domestic bliss. In discussions with my friend Eli who mentioned that at points the relationship can feel like relationship porn of sorts, where everything just feels too perfect, with Cora and Signy displaying a level of emotional maturity that feels a tad unrealistic.
I generally agree with that but at the same time I was very much taken in by Cora and Signy’s character quirks and their love for each other. Yes, it may be a tad unrealistic but hey this is fiction and I am definitely very much in the mood to read about this kind of relationship and I continue to be a sucker for a good sapphic love story. It felt aspirational and left me feeling a yearning for such connection. A real, “goddess I wish that were me” situation if you will. This is very much a plant lesbian and space lesbian fall in love with each other story and I am so here for it.
As for the grief aspect of As You Wake, Break the Shell, I cannot describe it in detail without spoiling major plot points but suffice to say that Becky Chambers handles grief with the same care as she does with other heavy emotions. Whenever I read one of Becky’s novels I always expect to feel a little sad and perhaps a bit lonely but I was not quite ready for the depictions of grief intertwined with found family to hit me as hard as it did. I spent the last 25% of the book either crying or on the verge of tears.
Concluding Thoughts
I loved As You Wake, Break the Shell. This is Becky Chambers doing what she does best. Writing small scale utopias with a small cast of characters all of who get just the right amount of character development for me to connect with them on an emotional level. And then she weaves in themes of found family, survival, and grief which gives the story the emotional and narrative depth to make it feel more than yet another tale of space survival.
This is the first book in a duology and I cannot wait to read that second book. There are certain threads in this first book that do not get wrapped up and I really want to know what happens next. And, I want more Cora, Signy, and Colibri. Becky has created a very intriguing sci-fi world here and I want to see what else she can cook up in it.
This is another addition to this year’s list of books of the year. I have been blessed this year with many good books and especially books from two of my favourite authors in one year. I’ll leave y’all with another quote from this book.
I do not think you need to be able to name love or feel its shape in order to possess it. Perhaps love is merely a condition of life.
page 305, Colibri
That’s all from me, see ya’ll in the next one.
P.S – If you read As You Wake, Break the Shell., do not skip the Acknowledgements section at the end of the book. It will provide some invaluable context that will put the book in a whole new light. I don’t think I’ve ever cried reading an acknowledgements section at the end of a book but I did for this one.
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