No Life but Immortality [Book Review]

An interesting, creative take on cosmic cyberpunk that spans planets, decades, but suffers from a rather rigid writing style. No definitive recommendation — skip to the verdict at the end, or better yet, read the whole review.

No Life but Immortality came in three distinct phases for me. Let’s call them Intro, Main plot, and Outro.

Intro was something that got me hooked instantly. The characters, story setup, premises, technologies, brands, names were being built while mercilessly jumping decades in time. It made sense. It was interesting. It was fluent.

I was actually looking forward to further reading, then one last jump into future deposited me in the Main plot stage.

That’s were everything slowed down. No more jumping, just pure, methodical progress. This is also where I started getting friction with the style of the narrative.

The author’s voice is mechanical, almost robotic (hey, I’m really not implying here anything, read here if you don’t trust me) and dialogs are lukewarm, unrealistic, peppered with page-long monologues that don’t feel like conversation but convenient explainers to the reader.

That said, the premise is quite unexpected — the author distilled Cold War era earth situation into a very exaggerated off-planet yin-yangy juxtaposition of wild west capitalism and utopian version of communism. It’s an interesting exercise, and I must admit, executed compellingly.

Curiously, author chose “commies” as the main vehicle for the story, presumably because she herself started her life on the other side of the Iron Curtain.

The story itself is innovative, sci-fiey, cyberpunky. I would even call it gripping if it only wasn’t delivered in such academic monotone.

The last part of the story is mostly a flashback. While I’m not one to nitpick about structure of someone else’s books, the decision to push an important backstory after the main plot pretty much is done was, to put it mildly, awkward. All the more that the actual flashback was quite interesting and would’ve provided helluva lot flesh for one of the main characters in the story as well as rationale for his behavior.

I’m on the fence here. On one hand, the story itself is good, but the structure and writing style introduces an unpleasant friction.

Can you enjoy a good story without letting details getting in the way? Get it.

If you’re easily annoyed by the aforementioned issues? Maybe skip it.

No Life but Immortality on Goodreads, Amazon.

Liudmila has a second book in the series out, too: The Orphaned Earth.

Will I get it? Honestly, dunno. Maybe?