Rosa Montero’s Weight of the Heart is the second book in the Bruna Husky series, her first being Tears in Rain (reviewed in Tears in Rain by Rosa Montero – a thoughtful techno-detective noir novel). The gist of what I’ve written there still applies. This is a creative brilliant story that takes Blade Runner (Philip K Dick’s Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?) as its springboard. She continues to expand her gritty world building, characters, dialogue, and relationships. Indeed, this sequel improves on all of those. Our favorite replicant, Bruna, continues her penchant for being pulled into major scandals via innocent seeming projects. She’s tracking down a missing person and through her generous heart is thrown into a radioactive world when. So, all that was good from book one remains and only gets better.
Ms. Montero’s sequel matches the high hopes I had for this series. While it’s mostly moved on from its Blade Runner inspired beginnings, its dive into the characters and psyches that populate Bruna’s world only grows more intriguing. The narrative arc is never dull, the writing is ever brilliant and the space between words where we find ourselves and our own challenges taken up, broken apart, examined, and reconstituted allows fresh insight into perennial problems. Weight of the Heart does what the best of sci-fi has always done, it examines who we are and how we relate to one another all in the context of great story. Entertaining and challenging, with no need to compromise between one or the other.
Bruna unravels a conspiracy between worlds through taking a seemingly snotty girl under her wing. Ms. Montero extends her world both planet side to an artificial moon in ways that allow her to not only push the story forward, but provide this backdrop to reflect on the challenges of our own more mundane world. Not only is it challenging to know who to trust, where real problems lie, or how to respond when overwhelmed, but Bruna (and we) often must do so with so much else that is already challenging. We can’t wait for the circumstances to get right or good to do what’s right or good. So while our choices may not always be “right” (bring the results we desire), they are true. Following Polonius’ dictate to Laertes in Hamlet, “To thine own self be true.”
Amongst all these other issues, Bruna must deal with the overarching question of mortality. Because she’s a replicant, she knows the end of her days. She knows she has less than four years to live and she knows the end will not be pretty. Woven throughout all the story are elements of mortality and how we address it. Yiannis most explicitly hashes through death and dying, but it is ever present.
I may make this book sound heavy; it doesn’t feel that way. This is a quick paced, great story that keeps you on your toes and entertains, all the while mulling over these eternal questions of death, mortality, purpose, and culture. What we choose to do together as a people and our individual choices. The impetus of genetics and the judgment we exercise. All these are played out in the narrative. All of them explored through science fiction without deference to simple popular thinking of the day.
Ms. Montero brings fully-fleshed out characters, most of whom are interesting in their own right, even outside of their contribution to the narrative. They are organic, multi-dimensional people with foibles of their own; no one is perfect. Everything drives the story and there is little “waste” that doesn’t play a part. She continues to surprise but never in a contrived way. The relationships are rarely simple and always evolving. As long as she continues to write, I’ll continue to read her work.
Mary Robinette Kowal flawlessly narrates the audiobook. The introspective intimate moments seem to come from within you; the funny, odd-ball characters are portray as such, but not in a patronizing man. The rhythm of story, with her pacing and pauses, are spot on. Even as she performs passionately, she is clear and understandable. In short, her narration is all that you could desire.
I highly commend the work for your reading pleasure.
Phrasing/Dialogue | 5/5 |
World Setting | 4/5 |
Character | 5/5 |
Narrative | 4.5/5 |