Review: Dissonance, by Sophie Lack

[Russ Allbery]

Dissonance
by Sophie Lack

Publisher: Sophie Lack
Copyright: March 2015
ASIN:      B00UI9Y96E
Format:    Kindle
Pages:     156

Kaveena is an agent for a very militarized interstellar force of
special agents. Their role in the legal system of this universe is a
bit unclear (more on that in a moment), but they seem to focus on law
enforcement against large, organized gangs. In the opening chapter,
she's on an infiltration mission alongside her partner Seleen to
download potentially incriminating data from a well-defended base.
Everything goes horribly wrong: Kaveena is critically injured, and
Seleen has apparently gone back to her death to ensure her rescue.

I'm not quite sure how to write this review. It's a self-published
novel that I ran across on Tumblr, so reviewing it against the
standards of commercially-published fiction feels a bit unfair. In
another era, this might be a trunk novel; now, people self-publish
early work to share with friends and friends of friends and to get
their career started, and people like me stumble across those novels.
But I read it the way that I'd read any other novel, and I suspect the
readers of my reviews would as well. This is therefore rather critical,
but hopefully still constructive.

Dissonance is partly the story of Kaveena coming to terms with a
disability (including what I believe is disassociation, about which I
know almost nothing but which seems well-described here) and partly her
search to understand what happened to Seleen and what she's doing. This
involves ancient science fiction artifacts (okay, there was a lot of
Halo in this, but I still enjoyed that bit and wanted more), a lot of
fighting, and some significant atrocities. It's also about why Seleen
was so distant even before the fateful mission that started the book.
Kaveena and Seleen's relationship is the emotional heart of the book,
involving how one copes with horrible past events and how to define
heroism and justice.

This central story, read in isolation from the background world, isn't
bad. It says some interesting things about trauma counseling and the
desire to say the things that makes the counselor happy, and other
interesting things about the desire to break the rules of civilized
behavior to do something about intractable problems. None of it is
groundbreaking, but there's thoughtfulness here. But the romance angle
was hurt for me by never seeing what Kaveena saw in Seleen. Lack starts
in the middle of their relationship, so the reader doesn't see what
attracted Kaveena in the first place, and I found some of her
mannerisms grating (like calling Kaveena "dear"). This might be a
matter of personal taste; those who liked Seleen would probably like
this book more.

In contrast, the world background, specifically the political
background, against which this plays out makes very little sense. The
agency Kaveena works for seems to be essentially untethered from
meaningful oversight or political control. People in this book do
horrific things that should cause aftershocks and carry major
consequences, and yet the consequences simply disappear. I was trying
to ignore this and apply video game logic, but that got harder and
harder, culminating in an ending that I found unbelievable. The
emotional line somewhat made sense, but there's no way that any
coherent and reasonable universe would have allowed the ending this
book has.

Lack goes a very different direction here than typical abuses of
authority, but the more I thought about the implicit background of the
world that would make this plot possible, the more disturbing I found
the prospects of abuse by the agency Kaveena works for. The story has
realistic psychological implications and a type of law enforcement
burnout, so it can't appeal to magically perfect psychology like the
Lensman series, but there's no accountability. In a logical
extrapolation of this universe, the abuses of power Kaveena would be
complicit in would be the unavoidable story. The actual plot focuses
entirely on trolley-problem ethical dilemmas and seems oblivious to the
risk of straightforward abuse of power.

At the sentence level, well, this is self-published early fiction. If
you're used to the polish of commercial fiction, Dissonance is a bit
hard to read at first. I had to kick my brain into a different mode to
read past clunky sentences. None of it was awful, but, for example,
this is typical:

  Eventually the group wrapped up for the day and she left, parting
  ways with the rest of them to walk a quiet route back to her
  apartment.

There are too many words in this sentence for the work that it's doing
in the story: "parting ways with the rest of them" instead of "alone,"
or "wrapped up for the day" instead of "ended." It's trying to show,
but lapses into a bit of telling: what makes the route quiet? And
Dissonance is frequently descriptive in places that more polished
writing is immediate: the counselor could end the group instead of
saying the group wrapped up, or Kaveena could decline an invitation
from other group members instead of just parting ways.

This is just something that comes with time and practice, not any
intrinsic flaw, but it made it hard for me to stay focused on the
story.

That's a lot of negativity, and I can't say I'd recommend Dissonance,
but there is potential in the emotional through line. I felt like the
part of the story Lack was focusing on had punch; the rest of the
infrastructure just wasn't strong enough to support it.

Rating: 4 out of 10

Reviewed: 2017-12-24

-- 
Russ Allbery (eagle at eyrie.org)              <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>