Review Tuesday moved to Wednesday - Yet We Sleep, We Dream by JL Peridot #ScienceFiction #Fantasy #ReviewTuesday

Yet We Sleep, We Dream by J.L Peridot

Muscoca Media, 2023

Aboard the starship Athenia, orbiting the environmentally ravaged planet Thisbe, four Australian undergraduates work on their senior thesis research under the watchful eye of veteran captain Tracy Nielsen. Geologist Damian, botanist Helena, artist Olek and media and communications major Mia have intertwined histories, in some cases going back to high school. Only the ship’s engineer Nick is an outsider – though given the tortured relationships among the quartet of friends, this might be considered a blessing. Even the captain has her emotional cross to bear, in the form of her ex-husband Aaron Lee who has been assigned to supervise the students.

Things are complicated enough with all the human emotions in play. When the ship is contaminated with alien dust from one of Damian’s experiments, the universe tilts, shifts and morphs in strange ways none of the crew can understand. The residue from Thisbe’s surface carries the spirits of Oberon and Titania, gods once worshiped by inhabitants of the long-dead planet below. Like many gods, Titania and Oberon are willful and self-absorbed, mischievous and seductive. Taking human forms, they tease, torment and take their pleasure with the mortals among whom they find themselves. Indeed, even the AI-enabled maintenance robot Charlie is not immune to their influence.

Inexplicable crises assail the Athenia. It seems that the crew might not survive – and those experiences on the edge elicit new reactions and realizations. As one might expect after encounters with gods, the young people are changed. At the same time, Titania and Oberon find their own passions rekindled by their encounters with the frail, foolish, but somehow transcendent mortals with whom they’ve been playing.

Anyone who reads my reviews will know how much weight I give to originality. Yet We Sleep, We Dream is one of the most creative novels I’ve read in a while. The premise is outrageous – undergraduates millions of light years from home (Australia!) – even before the gods show up. The implausibility hardly matters, though, because we’re immediately sucked into the emotional storms that batter the characters. With a mastery that makes it look easy, JL Peridot delves into each of their hearts, showing us their beliefs, their insecurities and their desires. This close-up view is a reminder of how different our perceptions can be from those of the people around us. Even Charlie gets its (his?) turn as the point of view character. It takes skill and imagination to portray the mind of a machine.

JL Peridot’s prose is gorgeous and lyrical. She excels at chronicling the experience of desire – not just the visceral sensations but the mysterious way they trigger deep-seated emotional responses. There’s an early chapter that particularly struck me, in which Helena relives her intensely passionate encounters with Damian, whom she still loves despite his rejection. It is beautiful, heart-wrenching and absolutely true.

There’s quite a bit of sex in Yet We Sleep, We Dream, much of it initiated by the invading gods, including some delightfully sensual same-gender interactions. The descriptions are more poetic than graphic, firmly rooted in the truth that eroticism begins in the mind and usually touches the heart.

The author also succeeds in her lush descriptions of altered states of consciousness and the way they can open your eyes. Between their own drugs and the intoxicants offered by the gods, the crew of the Athenia step outside into new dimensions and come to see themselves and their companions in new ways.

Though definitely not hard science fiction (indeed, one might label it as surreal), the novel does a good job portraying the dangers of space. When you’re enclosed in a thin-walled bubble of air floating in the void, there’s painfully fine line between life and death. Still, one might be forgiven for thinking that the science fiction aspects of Yet We Sleep, We Dream are largely metaphor. We are all on a voyage of discovery, as insulated from one another as if we were wearing space suits. Our visions are limited, unless we break down the barriers and open ourselves to a more expansive reality – one that is grounded in the power of love.