/lit/ - Literature

>>22878295
The Surviving Sky, Rages #1 - Kritika H. Rao (2023)

All that remains of humanity reside in flying cities where plants and trees form the basis of their society. The architects design, maintain, and arguably control everything through their inborn ability to manipulate plants. Sungineers develop technology that runs on the architect power, such as computers and other modern technologies. Humanity was forced to escape to the sky over a thousand years ago due to the Earth Rages which through both tornadoes and earthquakes utterly destroy a region.

This book has a lot of Hindu influence. Most of what I recognized was because it had spread to other cultures. There's a considerable amount that was a clear reference, so I was able to look up a lot to have a general idea what it was going for. The spiritual aspects dominate the narrative for the last ~20%. I admit that much of its significance was lost on me and surely was the greatest contributor to my not comprehending the end goal of the antagonists.

There are two viewpoint characters, a husband and wife in their 30s. Irevan is a senior architect and a member of the council, while his wife, Ahilya, is the world's sole archaeologist. Their relationship is quite troubled for a lot of reasons and they're very bad at acknowledging their problems let alone resolving them. Their relationship drama is present from the beginning, though much else is more important than it. There's a considerable amount of political discussion, social commentary, and philosophizing. Later on the focus shifts to what felt like almost exclusively relationship melodrama with brief interludes of plot progression. Their cycle of remorse and apologizing then lashing out at each other becomes more aggressive, spiteful, and petty until it finally reaches a climax at around 75% through where they have a barely existent sex scene that instantly resolves all of their relationship problems and allows them to have multiple epiphanies.

As to what happens in the book, Ahilya is trying to prove her theories and Irevan is in damage control mode about everything all the time. Their sky cities aren't sustainable any longer and since they don't want them to crash they're trying to figure out what to do about that.

This has been one of the most difficult books for me to write about in a long time because of how promising it started and how disappointed I became by the end. I was greatly enjoying myself and thought I would be giving this 5 stars. For most of the first half I was already planning out how I'd write a strong defense of how and why it hadn't received the reception it deserved. Afterwards there was more and more I couldn't overlook or excuse. Overall, I still liked it for its world and ideas. If the second half and ending hadn't lost me, I would've rated this much higher. It's unlikely I'll read the sequel unless I get over my expectation of more disappointment.

Rating: 3.5/5 (3)