Zeb Larson reviews Roche Limit: Monadic #1…
THE CRITICALLY-ACCLAIMED SCI-FI HIT RETURNS FOR ITS THIRD AND FINAL ARC Earth is in ruins after the Black Sun’s annihilation of the planet. Now, in the last remaining human city, its inhabitants fight for survival while a chosen few realize that their world may not be what it seems.
Wow. Roche Limit has never been a series to just offer up easy answers, but the first issue of Monadic throws a few killer curveballs. It does that by harkening back to the two prior series, obliquely dodging the cliffhanger we were dangling from in the last issue. Time has been compressed, or we’re in a place where time doesn’t apply in the way that we’re used to. Meanwhile, Earth’s ultimate fate is left unanswered. Whatever happens, it’s not going to be good for anybody. Warning: I will be discussing some spoilers ahead, though I will try to avoid ruining the whole book.
Alex Ford is back in the mix in this issue, along with most of the characters from the first series. Where exactly he is an entirely different question. Moscow, Sonya, Dr. Watkins and many of the others are there, and the city appears to be a sort of bastardized version of Earth. But is any of it real? Somewhere else (and possibly at a different point in time), Sasha is in a cabin by a lake. She doesn’t seem to fully know why she’s there either, but a few mysterious visitors help to jog her memories. In doing so, she might be able to help put a stop to the Anomaly.
Going back to Ford and Sasha is an interesting move by Moreci. On the one hand, it pulls the rug out from under the feet of the readers. By taking us back to two prior characters, both of whom were not only assumed to be dead, but separated in time by more than 75 years, it removes any possibility that we’re in the “real world” as we understand it. That said, the Anomaly and its denizens have always been able to break the rules about what is real, creating fake realities and doppelgangers as it needs. The monster told Sasha that their goal was to replace humanity: it stands to reason that Sasha and Alex could be in whatever the creatures decided to build for themselves.
Even armed with that knowledge (and it’s really more of a guess), how much of the world around them is real, and how much of it is fake? Alex variously encounters Moscow, Sonya, and Watkins, but are they real, or projections, or the creatures themselves? Ford seems to know that what’s going on isn’t real, or at least isn’t the colony, but he’s in the dark aside from that. Sasha isn’t doing too much better, even with what she learns at the end of the issue. Her visitor tells her that the world around her can be molded. That raises a few questions. How much control do our two protagonists have in this place? Why did Alex wind up in a city, while Sasha is in the wilderness?
That bit about molding is interesting. For the last two series, our human protagonists (and by extension, humanity), are pretty helpless in the face of cosmic forces that want to tear us down. Langford’s attempts to harness the universe ended in failure, madness, and suicide. Sasha was left with the tragedy of her family’s death. But now, our main characters are in a place where they might actually have some modicum of control. In the last two series, love was what made it possible for human beings to transcend our weakness in the universe. Is Moreci suggesting that there’s something else? I’m intrigued to dig a little deeper.
There’s not too much more that I can say in this review without completely spoiling the whole book. I want to see how these two characters are working in relation to one another. If time doesn’t matter where they are, then they might be closer than we’re initially led to believe. It’s good to have you back, Roche Limit, at least one last time.
Rating: 9/10
Zeb Larson
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Originally published March 16, 2016. Updated April 15, 2018.
