Book Review: Orb Hunters

Title: Orb Hunters 

Author: J.D. Edwin

Date: 2023

Publisher: Story Cartel

Length: 477 pages

Quote: "The orb arrived on a bright morning. No one knew where it came from..."

That would be the terrible orb of the Headspace Game, which blasted into the planet Maeda and carried off the teen mother Nasmi in Master of the Arena, blasted into an Earth similar to ours and carried off the tougher-than-she-looks book lover Astra in Headspace. What's it going to do to the twelve-year-old twins, Kova and Rosi, on the planet Fiina?

Not what it did in the first two volumes, we quickly learn. The Headspace Game has gone on for many centuries since Nasmi left the memory jar. The game is changing. Its "gods" have grown tired of it and left. The orb's unexplained energy is running down. Its "demigods," immortals, and data-gathering robots, and their relationships, have had a long, long time to play out their dramas. Some have managed to die; some have changed the game. 

What surprised me is the way J.D. Edwin chose to end this series. The first two volumes are pretty straightforward genre fiction, fantastic technology and lots of action-adventure. This volume won't disappoint readers who are looking for action-adventure, either. There are high-risk games and battles and murders. But in the extra pages there's a new dimension of thinking beyond the usual science fiction tropes that raises the Headspace Trilogy to the level of serious literary fiction. 

In science fiction, we've seen Nasmi grow into the sadistic Master of the Arena, and we've seen Astra grow into a match for her. What could possibly come next but a Battle of the Queen Bees? Astra, Evie, and Eleven (a.k.a. Solace) against Nasmi, Sweetly, and Cheshire, recruiting the other thirty or so immortals onto their sides...

In serious literary fiction, even when two strong characters have been set up to resent each other, even when the Battle of the Titans can be made a civilized competition rather than a brawl, there are other alternatives. What if, instead of using their energy on fight-or-flight, the strong women characters really do choose to use it to tend-and-befriend? What if Astra and Solace are strong enough, emotionally, to disarm Nasmi by giving her ways to be the mother she lost her chance to be? 

What if, instead of fighting to defeat Nasmi and the "gods" and stop the Headspace Game, Astra's challenge--to which an orb powered by what's left of Evie recruits the twins, of course--is to work with her good friends, Nasmi and Cheshire and the others, to prevent the destruction of the humanoid populations that no longer amuse the gods beyond the end of the Headspace game?

What if a grim science-fiction epic can turn, before our eyes, into a just barely credible drama of the human potential?

Somewhere the ghosts of Asimov, Heinlein, and LeGuin cheered as J.D. Edwin pushed her story into top gear and cruised out among the stars.

One plot detail I just know some "conservative Christian family-type" reader Out There is going to hate, so I'll say this in advance. On Earth, now and then a human is born a "genetic chimera" with a mix of male and female chromosomes. It happens when two zygotes grow together into one fetus. It's more common than most of us think; it's not always obvious. On fictional Fiina most people are born with potentially male parts and potentially female parts, and have to decide which parts to "invigorate," by conscious choices that may involve medical intervention. Kova gets into a fight, as a child, with kids who torment Rosi about being a recognizable, natural little girl. I think it's unfortunate that the demand for more characters like kova is coming from people who aren't nearly so nice; in any case I expect all unprejudiced readers will like Kova.