B+
Genre: Horror, LGBTQIA, Science Fiction/Fantasy
I read Hell’s Heart months ago, and my opinion of the book has only risen since then because I give extra points to any book that sticks in my head over time. Every time I think about Hell’s Heart I smile, even though all I really remember of it is that everyone is queer, everyone is in thrall to capitalism, and the characters spend their time hunting giant creatures through space. In other words, it’s absolute Carrie-bait, but it won’t be everyone’s cup of tea.
Hell’s Heart is a pretty faithful retelling of Moby-Dick, so much so that it took me a while to see the point of the retelling. Also I was this many days old when I realized that the title of Moby-Dick has a hyphen but the name of the whale, Moby Dick, does not. The more you know.
Earth is mostly toast, and everyone survives on other planets thanks to habitation domes powered by spermaceti, the cerebrospinal fluid of giant space creatures known as Leviathans. The Narrator, a transgender woman raised on Pluto who never provides us with a name, quickly falls in with Q, a Terran from Old Earth who only speaks Latin, and the two of them get jobs on Pequod and sail off to hunt Leviathans around Jupiter.
The captain is referred to as A and the Narrator immediately develops an open sexual relationship with Q and a mad crush on A, who is obsessed with killing the greatest Leviathan of all, the Mobius Beast. The Narrator also develops a thing for the First Mate, Locke, who also has a thing for A. A has an artificial arm, having lost her original while hunting the Mobius Beast. A is consumed with a desire to kill the Mobius Beast, and spends all of her time in her cabin studying computer information even when it’s clear that there is a glitch in the system and that any information coming in is suspect.
Hell’s Heart is about half as long as Moby-Dick, but that’s still a lot of book, and not a lot of actual things happening. If your idea of bliss is to hang out in space with a lot of disaster queers who occupy their hours with porn, existentialism, arts and crafts, and storytelling/bullshitting, then you’ll have a great time with this book. If you want non-stop action and a protagonist who doesn’t stab themselves in the foot at every opportunity, this won’t be your jam no matter how well written it is – and it is VERY well written.
There are several aspects of the book that stand out. The first is the narrator’s voice, who speaks to the reader directly and with dry humor and a strong sense of the meta. The Narrator is openly unreliable and everyone else on the ship is too, so the truth must be filtered through tall tales and wonky electronic sources. Here’s the Narrator opening the book:
Call me…call me whatever the fuck you like. Isa. or Isobel. Io. Imogen. Iris. Ivy. If there’s a point to all this – to any of this cacophony bullshit in my head – it’s that I don’t think I’ve ever been sure what the I in I Am stands for. But it’s the only word of name or pronoun that’s always been mine. That nobody’s tried to take from me, That’s always felt right.
Another standout is the worldbuilding, which involves the language and cultures of everyone on the ship and the culture of the life on the ship itself, the experience of living under domes and behind bulkheads, the Leviathans and the feeling of chasing them through space:
Behind us, the Leviathan shook off the last of its tormentors and rose triumphant through the atmosphere to freedom. The prop-wash of its great tail and the electromagnetic fallout of its titanic thoughts swept over us and sent our little group spinning. Through the crystal visor of my voidsuit I saw debris falling like meteorites and ichor falling like rain and boats swooping around to either rescue or abandon us.
I mean, this is just gorgeous language that also tells us a lot about hunting without overt exposition. There are also chapters of exposition as in Moby-Dick, but I personally found them captivating because they are related with a mix of humor, horror, and beauty and they are so well thought out.
I can’t not mention the existence of the Prosperity Church, one of a great many churches, cults, and other spiritual paths that characters follow. The Prosperity Church justifies the dystopian misery of life when money is everything and everything is money, and any action that increases profit is considered to be morally as well as fiscally correct:
“Rich man,” she tried. “Camel?”
With a slightly embarrassing sigh of relief, I realized what she meant. “Oh yes. It is as easy for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven as it is for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle.”
She looked confused. Which was fair enough. It was a confusing verse. Not least because nobody had seen a camel since before the founding of the Commonwealth.
“Historically,” I explained, “the eye of the needle was the main road into one of the Holy Cities of Old Earth and a camel was some kind of riding animal that went up that road all the time. So although it sounds like it’s saying it’s hard for rich people to get into heaven, it’s actually the opposite.”
This book has a lot of tragedy and a lot of humor, usually at the same time. Even the Narrator struggles to define the book’s genre:
Right about now, you might be wondering what the hell kind of book you’ve picked up. And I’ll be honest with you, I’m not always sure myself. Is it an adventure? A memoir? Why the fuck should you care about which bits of the Leviathan have what uses…
It’s not a romance by any means but it has a lot to say about love, not to mention friendship, hatred, and the odd relationship people have who are close coworkers but have nothing else in common. It’s a picture of a terrible future in which planets and people are stripped to the bone for money, and a beautiful future in which ships sail through the atmosphere of Jupiter.
I adored it despite its slow pace and the knowledge that we have heard all this before. While I found the opening to be a bit too glib, I soon settled into the rhythm of the book. I expect that this will be a love it or hate it experience for most readers.
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