I just finished reading the first book in this series, Murder by Memory, and I immediately picked up the second in the series – this one.
To summarise the premise of this series, Dorothy is a ship’s detective on board the Fairweather, a massive space ship travelling for 1000 years to a new planet with 10 000 people on board. Everyone on the ship has a body and also a book in the Library. The book is for storing their memories so when their body gets old and dies, they can get reembodied in Medical and their memories restored from the Library.
A few decades after the events of Murder by Memory, this book opens with something that should be impossible on the Fairweather: a baby appears. When all the inhabitants embarked on the ship, their fertility was paused by a mysterious process making it impossible to procreate. But one couple did and now there’s a baby.
The baby has been left on the doorstep of Dorothy’s nephew, Rutherford (nicknamed Ruthie). No note, no name, no nothing. Ruthie calls Dorothy for help. While Ruthie’s husband, John is deeply unsure, Ruthie falls instantly in love with the baby. But where did this baby come from? Dorothy gets to work unravelling this mystery.
At around 50% in, they solve the mystery of the baby’s parentage and I thought well, where to from here? Then someone does something that kicks the story into high gear.
So don’t be distressed when you hit a lull in the middle. It doesn’t last for long.
As with many crime procedurals, the full truth, including guilty parties, comes out during a hearing of the Fairweather Board (like a trial). It was immensely satisfying to read the hearing sections.
Something that I suspected in Murder by Memory but was solidified for me in Nobody’s Baby: the Earth that these people left when they travelled with Fairweather was not the current Earth that we know now – it’s an earlier version. At a guess I would say the 1940s or 1950s, but no specific dates are given. That’s just the impression that I get from the technology that they talk about back on Earth.
Similar to the first book, a lot of characters are jammed into this story. It can be a little tricky to keep track of who is who because in terms of word count, you spend comparatively little time with each one, as it is a novella.
I was in a distracted state of mind when I read this and the prior book, Murder by Memory, which likely affected my experience with the ending. One aspect of the resolution went right over my head, or, at least, it didn’t make sense to me why Dorothy would take that step, but again, it could be my fault for not paying enough attention. Even with my incomplete understanding, though, I enjoyed the novella overall.
One similarity between the two novellas that I really appreciated is the quality (as in feeling) of the writing. For example there is this little ode to the significance of knitting, as Dorothy knits a baby blanket:
After a good dinner and with a glass of port to hand, I cozied up in my bedroom window seat on the upper story, casting on the first row while the neighborhood all around me enjoyed its evening.
One stitch for the young woman playing violin on the corner, the echoes singing up and down the decks. One stitch each for the two young men strolling arm in arm out of the restaurant. Trios and groups, friends and families, I counted them all out beneath my hands as the solar lamps dimmed and the storefronts spilled gold light onto the retromatted wood planks.
One stitch each, every stitch a second, a single moment in time frozen in fiber. To give to an infant – because time was the real gift, passed from one generation to the next.
This gentle book with its lovely happy ending was a delight to read and I happily recommend this book, and the preceding one, to anyone in the Bitchery in need of some cosy sci-fi.
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