Expendable is Canadian author James Alan Gardner's first novel, though his short fiction has appeared in Asimov's, F&SF, and Amazing, and his second novel, Commitment Hour, is already out in paperback.
The praise given the book on the cover is fulsome to the point of being extravagant, but David Feintuch's description of it as "riveting....a brilliant new voice" is fair, as is Robert J. Sawyer's "an auspicious debut," and the plot synopsis is commendably accurate as far as it goes. The narrator/protagonist, Festina Ramos, is a member of the Explorer Corps, known to insiders as the ECM-Expendable Crew Members. Festina has qualified for the ECM because of her intelligence and a birthmark that covers half of her face. High Command has ruled two centuries before that the physically unattractive make excellent explorers, as their deaths don't drag down morale in the same way that the death of a more appealling crewmate would do. Festina discovers what "expendable" means when she and her partner, Yarrun, are assigned to escort the apparently senile Admiral Chee to Melaquin, the unexplored "Planet of No Return." Chee tells them that every Explorer sent to Melaquin in the past has either died or disappeared within two hours of landing, and Yarrun suspects they're being sent on a suicide mission to prevent Chee facing a competency hearing. After the build-up that Melaquin has been given, I was almost expecting Festina to go "Oh shit" within a few pages of landing--and she very nearly does. Melaquin seems Earthlike, right down to being inhabited by rabbits, earthworms and Monarch butterflies, but Chee soon disappears, and Festina and Yarrun find themselves choking. Festina survives, but to try to quickly summarize what happens after she meets her first Melaquinite (a nude woman made of glass) would be futile, except to say that the innovation rarely flags.
Super-short chapters make the action seem to move even faster, giving it a staccato, almost breathless feel. Gardner hooks us in the first two pages: page 1 makes us wonder why we're reading about such a narcissist, but by the end of the second chapter (half way down page 2), we're completely on Festina's side, and by the end of the third (and still on page 2) we're actually outraged. Now that's style.
The book's main weakness is that some of Gardner's inventions seem to make about as much sense as the Tamagotchi or Rubik's Cube, and some of the Technocracy's rules and traditions feel like fads kept alive long past their use-by date. Exacerbating this is the sheer cynicism of most of the characters who nonetheless keep the system working as though it was all for their own good (the tone is much closer to Catch-22 than Starship Troopers, which also detracts from the gosh-wow-sense-of-wonder). The roller-coaster-ride pace of the book prevents you asking too many awkward questions until you reach the end, where many of these issues are resolved-but if your reading is interrupted at some point, hoisting your disbelief to get back into the novel can be difficult. Better save it for a long plane trip, or take the phone off the hook while you read it.
Expendable isn't the best first novel I've read this decade (pace Robert J. Sawyer); I'm not even sure it's the best I've read this year...but it is good enough to deserve a wider readership than first novels usually get.
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