A Quiet Universe

Kay F. Atkinson’s A Quiet Universe is nothing short of an absolute mindfuck. A cerebral exploration of unreality, the book revolves around Sarah, a CEHRA model fabricant (read: android) whose sole function in life is to protect her charge, and her love, Annalise Fletcher. 

This book’s themes and ideas are so closely woven with its plot, that I have to go into detail to discuss what I loved about it. So, spoilers ahead, lovelies.

The book starts with Sarah on a mission, being guided by the mysterious ‘Control,’ to rescue Annalise off a military ship that she upped and left for in the middle of the night. There’s also a parasite that has invaded the ship, which poses an existential threat to Sarah’s sanity…

As she goes, we learn more about who Annalise and Sarah were: the messiah of this society and her bodyguard. The religious elements of the universe Atkinson constructs felt a bit far-fetched: Annalise has been engineered to be the only person who can speak with Luna, a being inhabiting the moon that this society worships. But this is abstracted enough into a fictional world where, presumably, the Earth is long-destroyed, the universe is going dark at the hands of the same parasite that affects Sarah throughout the story, and everyone lives on a fleet of ships, so Annalise being the messiah just slots in seamlessly with the rest of the world building.

As Sarah progresses deeper into the bowels of the ship, she gains a travelling companion, another fabricant named CORA, and starts losing her mind. Her memories unravel, she loses time, her perception of her identity and personhood fundamentally changes. The book had me screaming “WHAT THE FUCK” over and over at the ways it broke Sarah, remade her, and spat in her face while doing it.

But, our protagonist is more resilient than the forces at play trying to tear her down. She finds her way to Annalise, but by the time she reaches her, Sarah has been corrupted to the point where she nearly kills Annalise on sight. Luckily, Annalise is able to stay the forces that are corrupting her love. Sarah’s journey is constructed brilliantly, and their reunion feels earned.

The book starts to get trippy is when Sarah starts seeing identical copies of herself throughout the ship. Sarah is explained to be somewhat unique as fabricants go, so the identical copies is extremely unusual. We then discover that Sarah has been dying, over and over – sometimes at the hands of the insane fabricants still alive on the ship, other times at the hand of Control. And every time she dies, she loses part of her self. Reborn in a new body from the ship’s fabrication facilities: whole, but not complete.

There’s a whole lot more that happens in A Quiet Universe, but this covers off the baseline of what I need to talk about the themes and ideas that I absolutely loved. This is a review and not a recap, after all.

Sarah’s cycle of death and rebirth is central to some of the things I loved most about A Quiet Universe: its explorations of identity and reality. Sarah is a machine, built for a purpose. She takes pleasure in achieving that purpose. She finds love, that many in her society don’t see as real – despite the fact that we learn that the fabrication technology is used just as widely on humans, so are they even real, too? What even is real, when your feelings and memories can be programmed?

The only reason the book isn’t a perfect 5 stars is that I felt the ending was too long-winded. For a book that is so punchy throughout, that kicks the adrenaline into gear as you’re reading, the slow, long ending – while a touching character piece – makes the story feel like it ends not with a bang, but with a whimper.

That’s not to say I didn’t absolutely love this book. From around the 40-70% mark, I was going absolutely insane. The book slowly hooked me, and wrapped its tendrils deep into my brain. This is an absolutely phenomenal scifi story, that weaves old ideas into something delightfully new, surprisingly trans, and wonderfully lesbian (despite the brief nightmare depiction of straight sex). Atkinson’s ideas are bold, her characters are gripping, and her prose will leave you on the edge of your seat.