Review: A Door Into Ocean

A Door Into Ocean by Joan Slonczewski
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This review is adapted from a post I made in a discussion thread about the book.

I had my doubts after the first section of the story; it was a slow start, and I just didn't like the way the Valan society was structured. But about halfway through the book, I realized I was completely sucked into the story and found myself constantly thinking about it as I went about my day.

I want to gush about the beautiful world-building on Shora. The ecology is believable and complex, and everything about the physical and social construction of the rafts is my #aesthetic. I want to live there, or at least read more books set there. It's also amazing for a book written 30 years ago; I feel like we're already worlds closer to the kind of technology she describes the Sharers as having. Given today's climate and environmental concerns, the book seems markedly prescient.

One of the things I loved about the story (and it's something I've noticed I'm fond of in SF in general) is how well Sloanczewski created a culture that's so fundamentally different, not only in behavior but in thought, and committed to it. It reminds me of Leckie's Radch trilogy in that the perspective of the character is preserved even perhaps at the expense of making things easy for the reader. Merwen (like Breq) sometimes thinks things that the reader doesn't understand, or maybe misunderstands, unless they are fully buying into this world and this perspective and trying to understand Merwen as a Sharer would. (Also like when reading Ancillary Mercy, I feel like I 'got' the perspective about halfway into the story and went from feeling meh/pretty good to loving it.)

I'm not sure exactly how we're supposed to understand the ending. There was a moment when Realgar was trying to convince Talion not to attack Shora, and Realgar walked away from that conversation thinking that he hadn't changed Talion's mind at all and that Talion was definitely going to kill everyone as soon as Realgar left anyway. But I also felt that Spinel's last few scenes (and I guess all of the Sharers' scenes at the end) felt optimistic, like they had won their victory. Did I miss something? I couldn't put it down and ended up finishing it at like 2 a.m. so it's very possible my sleepy brain skipped something important. Are we supposed to feel like the Sharers won at the end, or that their efforts weren't enough to beat the Valans' fear of death?

I think the villains (Nisi exlucded) of the story are all drawn with a surprising lack of empathy, given how thoroughly and complexly the Sharers are drawn; they remind me a bit of villains in an Ayn Rand story, where the people are primarily stand-ins for ideas or types of people (and bad ideas/people, at that). NISI THOUGH. Great character arc. I like that she deceives even the reader, in some ways; we think that because she's a viewpoint character introduced early on she'll be the most important bridge between the Sharers and the Valans, but she ends up as the biggest obstacle to peace.

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