Zeb Larson reviews Roche Limit: Monadic #2…
Sasha goes on a bold adventure; Alex reveals a terrifying threat.
We learn a fair bit in this issue of Roche Limit: Monadic, especially that not everything is as it seems for our main characters. How real is any of this? Or, more frighteningly, can Alex and Sasha trust any of the people around them? As they explore the reality around them, the aliens’ end goal comes into view, but how to stop them is a bigger problem entirely. With only two issues left to go, I imagine things are going to become ever more dangerous for our protagonists. Warning: I will be discussing some spoilers from here on out.
Alex is left looking for the Black Tower while trying to make his way through a semi-ruined city. He finds Bekkah, who believes that they’re in the last safe city on Earth. While he and Bekkah talk, Moscow catches up to them and forces them to flee. While they create chaos throughout the city, Sasha tries to persuade her family that she needs to go into the center of the lake. Sonya and Dr. Watkins also talk, and he explains that what they’re experiencing is not real, at all. On the contrary, it’s an attempt by the aliens to study humanity’s self-consciousness, which if they could understand would make them immeasurably more powerful.
The aliens’ fascination with self-consciousness and human spirituality is fascinating in its own way. For all of their power, they are profoundly limited by their inability to conceive of anything greater than themselves. This is why sacrifice seems so abhorrent to them, and why it’s the one human trait they actually seem to loathe and fear. This actually has an interesting link in evolutionary biology. When we think of ourselves as animals, we tend to focus on humanity’s individualism. In reality though, we evolved as social creatures alongside other human beings. We were never intended to be solitary creatures, and evolution likely shaped our brains to be empathic. All of this means that for all of humanity’s weakness in the face of this alien threat, humanity also possesses distinct advantages. In our own way, we’re the superior lifeform.
Of course, that might be small consolation to Alex, Sonya, and Bekkah right now, who are facing Moscow’s wrath in a city that isn’t even real. Are Sonya and Bekkah real, or some sort of projection in this awful place? I must admit I’m slightly confused how Sonya and Bekkah could be, given that the first series ended with their escape, though it’s also possible that they were somehow caught after the book ended. Furthermore, as much as they need to kill the aliens, “how?” is an awfully big question. Just shooting them has been strikingly ineffective so far.
Sasha’s role in this arc has been dramatically different from what Alex is facing. Whereas Alex is directly aware of the threat the aliens pose, Sasha’s in a pleasant place that is only sinister by virtue of being sort of mysterious. Of course, her companions make it a perfect sort of laboratory for the aliens to study love. That gives her story a more personal feeling, because while Alex is facing death and danger, she’s facing the ghost of a family she almost had. Once again, she has to make the choice to abandon them, and there’s no imminent threat forcing her to do so. That said, I do want to see how these stories will weave together, because there’s fairly little connecting them at the moment.
We’re still left with a lot of questions. How will our protagonists kill the aliens? What ever happened to the ship from the last issue of Clandestiny? And what is Sasha going to find in the middle of the lake? Two more to go.
Rating: 8.5/10
Zeb Larson
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https://youtu.be/b7Ozs5mj5ao?list=PL18yMRIfoszEaHYNDTy5C-cH9Oa2gN5ng
Originally published April 27, 2016. Updated April 15, 2018.
