Book Review of The Language of Liars by S.L. Huang

Honestly, happenstance. Last week I realized my library card had lapsed. Something about going to the library keeps me motivated to read. If I find myself not reading its probably because I've been away from the library for over a month. Anyway I went down, renewed my card and then just grabbed a random book off their new shelf. I've never head of this author but it was small, a novella if you will and so I grabbed it.

As I walked outside I saw a few other bicycles parked, which given the time was sort of odd. Turns out there was a hearing around data centers and zoning in my town and folks were turning out to listen and also protest the idea. The city decided to impose extra limits on data centers here. It was interesting to sit and listen to, its good that our local government and people are being heard and pushing what they believe is right for us in our place. It was somewhat disheartening however to hear the city council lament the limits of our power to do much. Many of the regulations are out of local control and belong to the state.

Certainly an eventful quick ride to the library, but hey I still got this random ass book to read right?

Luckily for me this random ass book was wonderful. When I was younger I was a big series reader. I loved the trilogy from the first time I read the initial Star Wars trilogy. As of late however I've been enjoying single shot novels. Obviously many of the classics are such, but I think we neglect modern writers who do single stories. A year or two ago I read Moonbound by Robin Sloan and it was great. I don't know how the author feels, but something about having to bring the plot to a close in one book, specifically felt frenetic in that book. I read the last pages in a fever as the story closed up.

This book hit the same nerve. While I sort of surmised about 75 pages from the end that SOMETHING was wrong with the main character's understanding of the history of his world but…

The main character Ro figures it out, the reason the species called Star Eaters were in decline despite wielding what seemed like so much power was the fault of his species, well perhaps all species in their universe besides the Star Eaters. In the story, Ro is a linguist, but languages have power. Through telepathy some linguists of his species (and turns out others) can jump into the minds of others.

Sadly this seems to kill the mind of the "jumpee".

The Star Eaters are the only life form capable of finding the fuel for interstellar travel and thus Ro and others wish to jump into their minds to spy and uncover how it works. The twist we uncover at the sad ending is that no Star Eaters are actually Star Eaters any more. Other species have jumped into their minds so many times, they are all inhabited by other species. They cannot remember how to reproduce and are dying out. The book ends with this becoming public and the slavery of sorts of the Star Eaters ending. But not happily which I adore. The author dives into how this will cause deaths for billions of people as beings are vastly over stretched and live on worlds that they couldn't sustain. The Star Eaters don't magically get a pass. Ro and a few others go off to explore to see if they can figure out what truly happened. There's a teaser of hope that perhaps some Star Eaters escaped the genocide of their minds…. but its pretty doom and gloom with maybe some light in that Ro is learning to cuddle despite his newly acquired tentacles.