Unexploded Remnants

by Elaine Gallagher

An A.I. wages war on a future it doesn't understand.

Alice is the last human. Street-smart and bad-ass.

After discovering what appears to be an A.I. personality in an antique data core, Alice undertakes to find its home somewhere in the stargate network, or lay him to rest. Her find is the control unit of a powerful ancient weapon system.

But releasing the ghost of a raging warrior for whom the war is still under way is as much of a mistake as the stories tell, and Alice finds herself faced with an impossible choice against an unstoppable foe.

Genres: Science Fiction, Novella, Queer, LGBT, Fiction, Aliens, Transgender

112 pages, Paperback

First published June 25, 2024

Reviews

[Bethany (Beautifully Bookish Bethany) · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars rounded up

There were some interesting ideas here, but for me the execution was a bit of a mixed bag. I wanted to like it more than I actually did. Unexploded Remnants is a sci-fi novella following a trans woman who is the last surviving human in a wider world of alien planets and transportation gates. She discovers an ancient sentient weapon in a marketplace and has to go on the run from a family trying to take it from her. The world is cool and the ideas about sentience, choice, personhood, and violence are interesting. But for a novella, it spent so much time stopping and telling us things about the world and the characters backstory, it drags down the pace and very little actually happens. I think less information and more plot would have been better, either that or turn this into a longer work. I received a copy of this book for review via NetGalley, all opinions are my own.

[Rachel (TheShadesofOrange) · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 Stars
The premise of this one was absolutely intriguing. Some aspects of this narrative were compelling while other sections were not. I found this uneven in execution which ultimately left me unsatisfied.

There were intriguing parts of this story which is reflected in my rating, but it fell short of my expectations.

Disclaimer I received a copy of this book from the publisher.

[Tammy · Rating 3 out of 5]

The nitty-gritty: A short novella full of big ideas, Exploded Remnants didn't quite live up to its potential.

Unexploded Remnants had a lot of good ideas, but overall the execution didn’t really work for me. I also struggled with the awkward writing style at times. This is a book full of big ideas in barely over a hundred pages, and it might have worked better as a full fledged novel.

Alice is wandering through a bazaar one day when she spots an interesting relic for sale. It looks like a lava lamp to her, but it’s actually an antique data core. Inside is a swirling mass of blue, and Alice is about to discover that this swirling mass is actually an AI that used to be a soldier. Trapped inside a dangerous weapon, Gunn (as she calls him) is unaware that the war he was made for is over. Alice would like to return him to his home, but an alien species called the Delosi also wants the data core, and now they’re after Alice.

With her agent Bugs and her ex partner Tegral helping her, Alice tries to outrun the Delosi and get Gunn to safety before they can steal him.

So, positives first. I really enjoyed Alice, especially her backstory. She is supposedly the last human alive, having stepped through a wormhole to another world by accident one day in the 1960s. The aliens who found her eventually sent her back to Earth to spy for them, but when war and global warming threaten the planet, they pull her out before Earth is destroyed. Now she’s been “upgraded” and has lived for over a hundred years. I enjoyed these details so much, I’m wondering why the author didn’t write that story instead, I think it would have been much more interesting!

I also love the fact that Alice is a trans woman (she used to be Andrew when she lived on Earth), and the author is trans as well. Bonus points to the publisher for releasing the book during Pride Month! 

The author has a not-so-subtle Alice in Wonderland theme going on that could have worked, but it was a little too “in your face” and ended up falling flat. And for some reason, she makes references to Bugs Bunny throughout the story as well (“Bugs” being the name of her agent companion, who talks like Elmer Fudd and says things like “What’s up, Doc?”) I can only guess that because Alice is from mid-twentieth century Earth, she has all these cultural references in her back pocket, but honestly, neither one added much to the story, at least for me.

The author brings up some thoughtful points about free will, for example can Gunn choose not to be an object of destruction, or does his programming override his ability to choose? I thought the ending was resolved a little too easily, with very little drama or conflict, so in the end this story was just OK for me.

With thanks to the publisher for a review copy.

[Jukaschar · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting premise and basic world building, but the novella still fell flat for me.

I like anti-war sci-fi, but the book feels shallow. There just isn't enough stubstance to even fill a book as short as this one. The many alien races that are name-dropped feel like a facade without much real story to back it up.

Nevertheless I think there's promise to Gallagher's work, so I want to watch out for future releases.

[Cherie • bookshelvesandtealeaves · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you Tor and Netgalley for providing me with an e-copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I am obsessed with this??? I considered giving it 4.5 stars simply because I’m frustrated it’s not longer, not part of a series, not something I can lose myself in for longer than the hour and a half it took me to read it. But it’s just too good not to give a full 5 stars.

We follow Alice, a trans woman and the last human, and her quest to save a sentient being from the weapon he was designed to be. I wanted to know so much more about Alice’s past, about how she got to where she is, about her life on Earth. She’s such a compelling character and she was so easy to love right from the start.

And gosh, this story has so much heart and soul. Alice is such a beautiful person, so full of live and love and compassion and adventure. She never once gives up on Gunn, not even when he upsets her. Because she understands it’s not his fault and she just wants to help. Her big speech to him at the end was so damn beautiful. Doctor Who level inspiring, compassionate speech-giving.

I adored her relationship with Tegral. This was another thing I wanted so much more of. Their past, their future, all of it leaves so much open to explore. But what we did see was so beautiful, so loving and understanding. It made me feel all soft and fuzzy.

I really hope we get more of this character and this world from Gallagher.

If you’re a fan of Becky Chambers, I definitely recommend giving this one a go.

[Chessa · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars, rounding up because I want to.

This was ok. I wanted to like it more, but it felt like it spent a lot of time hopping through planetary portals, building a world, but I never felt like I really clicked into the setting or to the characters. There is potential there for sure, but I think it would have played better as a full novel, with more room to breathe. The ending felt very rushed. But if you want a short jaunt around a galaxy with folks chasing the MC for reasons, a funny AI helper named Bugs, and just a little bit of getting to know all the varied alien species in the universe, check this novella out.

[Alyssa · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75

[Kat · Rating 2 out of 5]

This needed to be a full length novel. It spends way too much time trying to orient the reader to the world and not enough time on a plot or the characters. It made the book kind of tedious.

[Thomas B · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5/5.

I’m giving some benefit of the doubt / grace here to the author, but also to myself because I do not typically read novellas and other short-form fiction. I recognize these as different forms than novel writing, and I don’t have a well-developed critical eye for them.

That aside… We’re reading this for my spec-fic book club this month. A friend of mine, in her review, called it “trite.” I was surprised by her review, because when I read it I was only about halfway through the novella and had been enjoying myself. I ended up using the same word in one of my notes. That note came on page 81, where some minor mumblings came to a head.

Like many speculative fiction works, the book is interested in a post-currency economy. But… not that interested. I recognize that in a short-form work, we’re not going to get a long explanation of how the economy works. The thing is, the book tried to do a little of this and fell into a no-man’s land of too-much but not-enough. The book starts in a busy marketplace. We get a sense that information and favors are effective forms of currency. Later, we learn that our protagonist is very rich — rich enough to live several lifetimes at ease, we’re told, if not more. But what does this mean? By virtue of what? Many authors write away problems by making characters rich, but that seems really bizarre in this setting where the author is trying to put forward a favor-based economy. Has this character done so much that people owe them so many favors that they don’t have to work? Of have they sold information to such an extent that they have monetary means of survival? How do money and favors interact? I don’t know, and I’m not 100% sure the book does, either.

That’s a pretty minor complaint, and one that basically every speculative fiction bumps into at some point. Star Trek is famously inconsistent and sometimes nonsensical on this, so we can leave it aside.

The characters are a bit strange. Our protagonist began their experience in their current reality as a misplaced Oxford PhD student in the 1960’s. I am not totally sure that Bugs Bunny was the most popular thing among Oxford Students in the 1960s, but apparently he was popular enough for our lead to name her computational companion after him. This gave me a chuckle at first, but by the end (keep in mind, only 100 pages later), I was nonplussed at the Bugs Bunny dialogue. Similarly, I had written down, “Can you call a character Alice without conjuring up Alice in Wonderland?” Not 3 pages later, there is a reference to following the white rabbit — so the answer is no. I think calling a character Alice and having them leap across strange worlds is clear enough as a reference, I’m not sure we needed several textual references to the tale. It took the reference from maybe-subtle thematic shorthand to “HEY, YOU EVER SEE THAT DISNEY MOVIE?”

Remember when I said our lead was a 1960’s Oxford PhD student? I’m wondering if Oxford had lower standards in the 60s, because for an old(*) and experienced being in the Universe, our lead is remarkably dumb when it comes to how she interacts with the unexploded remnant. This thing tells her exactly what it is over and over again, and yet, she is surprised that it does exactly what everyone, including the thing itself, says what it’ll do! I don’t get it! In a longer form, maybe we’d have an explanation as to why Alice doesn’t listen to this thing and insists she knows better than it.

I think there was space to explore that, even in these 105 pages. There is a chapter where Alice visits a friend and meets their family. It is entirely without purpose and also… pretty weird. I’d have suggested cutting that whole chapter and character and giving us more space to understand and relate to Alice, something we’re never given in the novella.

The ending is a little hard to follow. It’s sort of unclear as to the sequencing of events and the consistency of things. It doesn’t really matter because the ending can be seen coming from miles away and it’s not terribly original.

It was a short read and that makes almost everything pretty forgivable. I enjoyed big parts of it, but I think with some editing this could have been something a lot more than it ended up as.

[Cathy Doyle · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an advanced copy from the publisher.

There were parts of this work I enjoyed a great deal—Alice is a really good character with an interesting backstory and is well written. The book drags a bit when the characters go through endless gates connecting worlds. I would read more about Alice.

[Will · Rating 1 out of 5]

2.5 / 10 ✪

https://arefugefromlife.wordpress.com...

Alice is the last human, but that doesn’t mean she’s alone. Taken from Earth before the collapse, she’s made a life for herself collecting things others don’t want, or do but don’t know it yet. Over time and space, she’s made a bevy of contacts and several true friends.

When she picks up an innocuous relic of a bygone age, she knows it’s powerful. The sheer amount of aliens hunting her tell Alice that much. But what she doesn’t anticipate is that the device is the last remnant of a long-dead war—still seeking revenge on those that killed its people.

For any mortal, the war ended millennia ago. But for an AI trapped in a dormant relic, the war is still very much real. And it’s ready to burn the world for their mistakes.

—

Okay, where to start with this one?

First off, from the blurb, Alice grabs an AI core from a street vendor, and immediately is accosted by alien warriors who have apparently been staking out the stall. But instead of this raising ANY red flags, she continues on like it’s her life’s goal. Instead of her saying that she just found it there and liked the look of it. And the story STARTS from there.

Reading further into the concept: Alice is the last human. No context. Yes, there’s a little bit later on, but it’s a vague reference to the collapse of Earth, with no further explanation. Then some talk of politics (specifically relating to America’s current system and transgender laws), like they are responsible for the downfall of society and the extinction of humanity. Now, I don’t talk much politics on my blog or reviews, but I will say that American ones aren’t in the best place right now, and that the author raises some good points. Unfortunately, she chose to raise them while talking about the extinction of humanity in a book very much not about this, during a meandering conversation that doesn’t ultimately add anything to the tale, all while in the midst of a maybe-100 page novella. Just, it’s not the best time, it’s not the best choice. Furthermore, the vague “collapse” of humanity is just left at that. Alice heard Earth had collapsed (somehow), and without checking any further just decided she was the last human. Then the story moves on.

Which brings us to the amount of superfluous dialogue. There’s a lot. Not confined to the “last human” bit. Honestly, I felt most of the conversations Alice were immaterial, only vaguely relevant, or could’ve been cut entirely without impacting the story. It’s mostly witty banter back and forth, though I’d probably question the whole “wittiness” of it.

I actually enjoyed the glimpses we get into other worlds—treasures that need finding, artifacts that need looting, fantastic locations that need explored. A crashed spaceship, a bustling bazaar, an abandoned alien city—the glimpses we get demonstrate just how much there is to discover in this universe, but that’s all they are: glimpses. Glimpses with fuck-all to do with the plot.

The world-building was also a letdown. After the first bit (where Alice finds the AI core in the bazaar—literally right at the beginning), the world-building boils down to: there are so many unique and interesting alien species! There are the Delosi, who have a clandestine warrior society, and the other ones, that are pretty much anthropomorphic cats. And that’s pretty much it. Some additional names are thrown out, but with zero explanation, no details, no nothing.

Alice has a lot of friends and allies. She’s built a life in the stars after leaving Earth. After being born Andrew. Under the overarching story, there’s the tale of found family, finding one’s place in the world, that I actually found quite heartwarming. It’s just a shame that it takes place in the shadow of the main story—a rogue AI waging a vague war on people who are all dead, that it makes a snap decision about after being dormant for the last 15000 years. And then there’s basically a standoff at the end, which I found ridiculous for a number of reasons—especially the suddenness of it all, and the lack of any real gravity behind the decision. But really, there’s barely a story here. The author spent too much time meandering from one topic to another (which would be fine except that the novella is barely 100 pages long) to tell any meaningful story. I honestly think I’d have liked it more if she would’ve left out the story about the AI, and we just wandered around alien bazaars and unexplored worlds with the last human.

Oh, and Alice is well over one hundred years old. Again, no explanation.

TL;DR

If you didn’t read the above rant, I’d highly suggest it. It details all the reasons you shouldn’t buy this book, regardless of there being some genuinely heartwarming content within. The problem is it’s just buried under so much broken nonsense as to be unreadable.

I came into this ready to hate the “last human” bit for one reasons (I’ve read so many “last human” science fiction where we find other humans), only to end up hating it for another. The story is a joke. The world-building is lazy. The dialogue—intending to bit witty banter—falls well short; superfluous is not something you need in a novella so short. The characters are ultimately forgettable. The inclusion of present-day politics did no favors. There’s far too much that’s stated and not explained, or just skimmed over, including: the fall of Earth; the “last human” thing; Alice being well over 100 years old; most things about the universe, society, or the non-Delosi aliens; the AI core’s worth; the start and setting and any backstory of any kind; and more. It’s made so much worse that I legitimately enjoyed the little glimpses of mystery and magic, the heartwarming tale of a family found amongst the stars. And I’d have much preferred it if we just wandered around alien bazaars and unexplored worlds with the last human.

But we didn’t.

[Shannon Miz · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5*

Unexploded Remnants is a short but interesting look into a (nearly) post-human universe. At first, I was pretty lost, I'll admit. But the backstory of how Alice got to be the last human is explained, so I felt much better about the whole thing. Anyway, she finds this... sentient soldier trapped in some kind of object? This part confuses me a little, but I went with it. And she is trying to protect it from falling into the wrong hands, so she skips... not town, let's say she goes on the run.

The story is cool- I loved the backstory we got about how Alice got to be a lone human in an intergalactic marketplace. I loved the story of the soldier, and how he'd had to make some truly terrible choices, and how he'd been through just as much as Alice had. I just wish we'd gotten more of all of these things! It posited some great questions, and certainly wasn't boring, but I think this is one of the rare cases where more pages would definitely have made this go from good to great. Still, it's a quick, fun adventure through the universe, so it's still absolutely worth it. Just know you'll probably want more when it's done. There are a few concepts that I feel would have been excellent with just a bit more fleshing out, but I still enjoyed it anyway.

Bottom Line: An action packed adventure with a very intriguing main character, I just wish it had all been a little more, in the end.



You can find the full review and all the fancy and/or randomness that accompanies it at It Starts at Midnight

[Fen'Harel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thank you Netgalley for an advance reader copy. All opinions remain my own.
I enjoyed this quick sci-fi adventure. The world was built well and really reminded me of the Mass Effect world, which made me super happy.
I think the story was a little short and could have done well with fleshing the plot out a bit more. We also left a plot twist to the epilogue.
I think we could have built on the characters a bit more. We were expected to care for a small range of characters who barely got any page time - which is why I think this story could have been better with a longer script. It also means that I would have 100% read more of this character and world!
I liked the backstory to Alice and the Alice in Wonderland phrases. It was a fun commentary, especially when people would get confused and she'd have to explain it's from a long lost country: Earth.
The adventure was quite interesting as well. I just wish we'd learned more about Gunn and who he is as a person now. I understand his backstory was extremely relevant to his story, but you can't just drop a bomb that's basically "everyone died 16 days ago to me" and then leave his trauma there!
I really enjoyed this story - it was a lot of fun and I loved Alice. She was a bit of a badass!

[Marlene · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alice is the last human in the galaxy. As far as she’s concerned, she’s definitely in Wonderland – even when it seems like the whole, entire ‘verse is out to get her.

There are two stories packed into Unexploded Remnants, and that’s a lot of packing for a novella. First, there’s Alice’s whole backstory – which must be huge and fascinating but we only get glimpses which are not NEARLY enough.

She’s literally the last of her kind and the reason she got to be that and what happened after and how she’s coped with her singularity in the big wide galaxy at large has to have been a huge story of awakening and culture shock – and I wish that was the story we had. Or I wish we’d get it someday.

Or both. Definitely both.

Instead, we get hints and dribbles, because the story we actually have is an entirely different big story. Alice is kind of an intergalactic treasure hunter. An archeologist of lost civilizations and an explorer of lost cultures – much like her own.

That she freelances for ‘The Archive’ in this vocation/avocation reminded this reader quite a lot of Genevieve Cogman’s Invisible Library series. So if you loved that you might have a hook to this.

So Alice is a bit of a bazaar and flea market aficionado who has more than enough knowledge to get more than occasionally lucky. Or unlucky, as the case might be. And certainly is here.

She barters for a trinket that looks a lot like a 20th century Earth lava lamp – although it’s certainly not that. It might have a system inside its dirty and unprepossessing carapace that she might be able to tease out and communicate with. It should be worth something – if only to the Archive.

It turns out to be a whole lot more than Alice bargained for – both literally and figuratively. As soon as she closes the deal, it seems like a whole, entire platoon of dishonorable warmongers close in on her position in an attempt to steal whatever it is out of her grasp. A platoon that doesn’t seem to care in the least about collateral damage to the marketplace, the crowd of shoppers, or Alice herself.

So she runs. And as she runs from planet to planet through a vast network of transportation gates, she has the opportunity to make friends with the system inside the ‘lava lamp’, an entity she names ‘Gunn’. The question is whether Gunn is a soldier or just a weapon. Her pursuers believe he’s merely a weapon. Alice is convinced that he’s more.

But whichever he is, the war he was made for or recruited into is over – and has been for 10,000 years. His people – and their bitter enemy – committed mutual genocide. And her pursuers seem all too eager to employ Gunn’s expertise in their own bitter conflict without thought or care about how his ended.

Escape Rating B: The reason that I picked this up – and its biggest drawback – are the same. It’s short. Unexploded Remnants is a novella. In fact, it’s the author’s debut novella. It’s supposed to be short. But the story it contains is too big for the length of the format. Or there should have been two of them. One for Alice’s backstory – which sounds absolutely fascinating if more than a bit heartbreaking. And then a second novella for this ‘adventure’ which gives readers a tantalizing glimpse of the universe that saved her and made her whole, while telling a story about the price of peace and the cost of war.

As I was reading, the SFnal elements struck a lot of familiar chords. I mentioned the Invisible Library series earlier, because that is certainly part of this story. Irene’s job in the Invisible Library series, is to acquire cultural artifacts and knowledge for the Library, while the Library’s purpose for those artifacts is to use the knowledge gained to preserve the balance between order and chaos for all the worlds it touches.

Howsomever, not only is Alice’s job very similar to Irene’s, but Alice’s Archive does the same job as Irene’s Library, using the knowledge it has gained from the artifacts and databases it has collected to preserve the balance between order and chaos, specifically by keeping the galaxy on the knife edge between outright war and an occasionally aggressive peace.

While the vastness of the galaxy – along with its system of interstellar gate travel – recalled Stargate, Babylon 5 and especially Mass Effect, there was a feel to this story that gave me a lot of the same vibes as This Is How You Lose the Time War, except that in this instance that war has already been lost and Gunn is the only survivor. I also had rather mixed feelings about Time War, so the analogy works on that level as well, although a LOT more people adored Time War than seem to have Unexploded Remnants – at least so far – so your reading mileage may vary.

Personally, I found Alice’s rapid exploration of her adopted universe fascinating if a bit of a tease. I enjoyed her sprinkling of 20th and 21st century pop culture references – which seemed to serve her as both a reminder of where she came from and a personal code that defied automated translators without seeming deliberately clandestine.

Howsomever, as much as I liked the way the story ended, that ‘Gunn’ was treated as an old soldier instead of as merely a weapon – and as much as I agreed with the overt political message – that message was very overt to the point where it breaks the fourth wall even though I believe the theories posited are more plausible than anyone likes to think about.

In the end, some mixed feelings. I loved the universe, I liked Alice, the chases were riveting, but the message was a bit heavy-handed and the whole thing should have been longer or this should have been a duology.

But this is a DEBUT novella, and it packed in a lot of good stuff – if just a bit stuffed. I’m looking forward to seeing what the author comes up with next.

Originally published at Reading Reality

[Aiyesha · Rating 2 out of 5]

** THE VERSION OF THIS BOOK THAT I READ WAS AN ARC **

[Bonnie McDaniel · Rating 2 out of 5]

This 109-page novella is stuffed full of enough ideas for a full-length novel. The author has published non-fiction reviews and articles and even wrote and produced a short film, but this is apparently their first professional fiction publication. As such, I can certainly understand the impulse to throw out nearly every idea they've ever had, as they are probably worried about whether the book will sell enough for them to be able to publish again.

I understand it, but as a reader I felt a bit cheated. There is so much going on here, and because of the novella length restraints, we have no time to sit and absorb what we're being told. The characters also have neither space or time to react to what is happening to them--they must run at breakneck speed to the next plot point. The worldbuilding particularly suffers in this: there are many questions that could be asked about the wormhole gate network that provides travel throughout the galaxy. Particularly the basic questions of who, how and why? As well as when, considering there is a secret wormhole gate hidden in a Stonehenge-like structure (which has somewhat unpleasant callbacks to that hoary old bestseller of the 70's, Chariots of the Gods?)? These wormhole gates take our protagonist Alice on a rapid-fire planet-hopping journey that shows us many different living and dead civilizations, laying down what could have been a fascinating tapestry of a galaxy that has had countless sapient beings and many star-spanning civilizations rise and fall over the years. Many interesting worlds are whisked by in rapid succession as Alice jumps from planet to planet to evade her pursuers, and several times I wished for a plot-relevant reason to slow the pace of travel down, so we the reader could have a chance to really see some of the alien weirdness Alice is passing through.

Not the least of this book's many revelations is the fact that Alice is the last surviving human: her story begins in Oxford in 1967, when Alice, a trans person then going by the name of Andrew, falls down the rabbit hole of the ancient wormhole network and is transported to the Archive, the galaxy's central repository for archaeogical and cultural artifacts. She is made an Archive agent and sent back to Earth to attempt to save humanity from their self-destructive streak. but humans succeeded in destroying themselves anyway. Alice was evacuated before the final war and has spent the hundreds of years since (this world's clone and transplant technology means she is functionally immortal) traveling the galaxy and bringing her finds to the Archive.

The "unexploded remnant" of this story is an ancient war machine, a person downloaded into a cylinder and made into a weapon. Gunn, as Alice names him, is hunted by many different parties who want to exploit him for their own purposes. Alice is looking for his home base to possibly extract him from the weapon and give him a body again. The pursuit of Alice and Gunn takes up the entire story, although the climax involves Gunn, grief-stricken by the loss of his family centuries earlier (the time dilation effects of gate travel mean it's only been sixteen days for him) and trying to restart the war he fought so long ago. At the story's climax, Alice manages to talk him into standing down.

Unfortunately, this book really needed a greater length to explore everything the author threw out there, and since it didn't get it, the story feels somewhat shallow as a result. For instance, we never know how Alice feels about being the last surviving human being in the galaxy, and what she does to cope with the loss of her planet and her entire people. She's probably deeply traumatized, and you'd think something like that would be a major plot point, wouldn't you? Like so many other things in this book, it's glossed over. The depiction of the wider galaxy with its many aliens and alien civilizations is also barely touched upon. Again, I realize you didn't have any time for that within the constraints of the novella format. Which is why this book needed to be longer.

As it is, it's more than a little frustrating to read. Hopefully, if the author gets another crack at publication, they will slow down and pick out just a few ideas to explore rather than hauling out the kitchen sink. I think we could have gotten a more interesting story as a result.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher Tor Publishing Group for an advance copy of this science fiction novella about war, forgiveness, moving on, and finding one true's self, no matter what society dictates.
My school library was for some amazing reason really well stocked with non-fiction books. I don't know how this little oasis of knowledge survived the Reagan years and kept both books and a staff, but they had numerous books, adult and child appropriate on numerous subjects. Being a quiet I was drawn to the books on war. One was a history of the London Blitz. Near the end after pages about the Battle of London there was a discussion about bomb disposal, and how years later, decades later, bombs would still be found, and still go off. I still remember this. Weapons going off after the war, it seemed mind boggling. Years later learning about landmines and unexploded ordinance in Cambodia and Afghanistan, I still couldn't wrap my hear around the idea. My parents couldn't get a refrigerator that lasted more than 3 years, and yet mines could explode decades later. I consider this a part of my awakening to this world not making a lot of sense, something that has only gotten stronger over the years. I think that is why science fiction stories dealing with ancient wars and war weapons hit my so hard. The idea of killing after the war has been forgotten, is a disturbing thought. A thought that is the plot of this novella, Unexploded Remnants, by Elaine Gallagher is a story of love, choice, surviving, thriving, and trying to do what is right, even when it might be wrong.

Alice is the last survivor of the planet Earth, and is spending a day in a vast open air market of technology when something catches Alice's eye. What she sees does not look like much, but something about it calls to Alice. The device also calls to others as Alice is followed, and soon being shot at, causing her to flee through the wormhole gates that allow people to travel world to world to world. Finding sanctuary Alice finds that the little data device is far older than it looks, and also has a quest living inside. An A.I., military A.I., from a war that ended thousands of years earlier, though to the A.I. which has been shut down for years, the pain of loss is still fresh. Fresh enough to want to kill anything remaining of its enemy. Others are looking for this device, for a variety of reasons, but not as pure as Alice's. Alice wants to bring a sense of peace to the A.I., stop the feelings of hate. Even if Alice has to bust a few heads to do it.

For a novella this story is jam packed with ideas, story, action and character development. Enough to fill a few series. Gallagher brings all this together well, the story about Alice, who she works for, her partner, and life in the grand universe. One wishes the story could have been longer to let things breathe a little, but I hope to see more of this character and this world, so I am content to wait. Gallagher makes everything seem real, and lived in. And of course one wants to know more. The story is a little standard on the war department, but everything else is so interesting, including the characters, one tends to forgive.

A really good story perfect for an evening's read, and I really can't wait to read more in this series or more by Elaine Gallagher. The author has a real gift for big stories.

[Scotoma · Rating 2 out of 5]

Debut-novella by author Elaine Gallagher about an adventure by the last human who lives in a galactic society of various alien races whose worlds are connected by an old wormhole network. Now, why Alice is the last human is explained at some point in the story and while it could be seen as just background information, to some extent it's one of the reasons why this didn't work for me.

Alice entered the wider galactic network by accident, met some of the more enlightened aliens of the wider galactic society, and with their help tried to save Earth from its worst tendencies and ultimately failed. Yup, humanity destroyed itself and the novella certainly doesn't hold back complaining about how bad things were and even goes so far as to make one alien comment on how capitalism sounds bad.

Not that it's just capitalism at fault, the novella tries to be current enough but at the same time also incredibly vague to not make any definitive statements about who and what is to blame but just hints at bad ideologies and capitalism as part of a wider self-destroying memeplex that infected too man humans to make headway in saving Earth.

That's not the problem though. The problem is that the glimpses of the galactic society we get sound not much different than just a variant of capitalism. The story is pretty vague about how all of it works but the few things we see make it clear that people to some degree still have to work for a living, commerce is still a major thing and black markets are prevalent. As are people who can subvert the protocols and rules that govern society on the various worlds when it comes to high-interest items via something that functions very much like money.

This doesn't sound very enlightened to me and makes the galactic society our main protagonist finds herself in just a different kind of bad and not much better than Earth. That the story itself doesn't acknowledge this in any shape or form is another failure.

The second and probably worse problem is the ending. The main story is about Alice the protagonist finding by accident an old piece of hardware that contains an uploaded mind that also functions as the master control system for an ancient, terribly powerful weapon system. Various parties are interested in getting their hands on it though the one party most eager to do so eventually accepts to let it destroy all the remaining ancient weapons, because, well it's not made quite clear why. They saw the light of being good I suppose.

The climax of the story is all about the main protagonist talking the ancient weapon out of killing the descendants of its enemies and then it's over. That's up there with talking an AI into self-destructing by using logical paradoxes or talking an enemy out of doing something by reminding him of the goodness in his heart. There are very few stories where something like this can be pulled off without feeling unearned. This isn't one of those.

What we are left with is an average story with some intrigue, and world-building that's less interesting than I expected from how the story started and not much else. The main character is particularly meh and feels more like a mouthpiece and Mary Sue for the author than a fully-fledged character.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

TL;DR: Alice goes down a rabbit hole of Gates to find the home planet of a long lost war machine/AI and gets chased along the way. I have no clear view of the world or how things worked but it was still pretty fun?
Source: NetGalley, Thank you to the publisher!!

Plot: Alice finds an old AI masquerading as a fancy lava lamp and ends up getting chased and attacked while she hunts down a way to release the mind inside.
Characters: We didn’t get a lot of details on many of these characters, primarily we focused on Alice and her journey throughout the novel
Setting: I truly wish I could tell you more about the setting and what was happening. Alice is the last human and jumps between worlds via ‘Gates’. She visited so many strange worlds, but nothing was solidly built. Which was very disappointing for the SF fan in me.
Science Fiction: As mentioned above this is written much more as ‘science magic’ with very little hard edges to the SF. Don’t come looking for details or explanations.

Thoughts:
Unexploded Remnants is a very short, very action packed novella about the last human in the cosmos on the run to protect the sentient mind trapped in a war machine. I’m not entirely sure what I expected going in, but it definitely wasn’t what I got - and I’m not mad at it!
Alice is a the last human, taken in by the Archive, shortly before the death of humanity due to our own folly and infighting. She lives and learns how to barter and trade information and relics with the Archive, a giant alien depository of such things, and has spent centuries of time doing just that. We’re told all of this, not shown it, but Alice utilizes these pre-existing contacts on her journey. She picks up Gunn (as she names him) at a market and is immediately targeted and the chase begins.
My biggest complaint in this novella was the setting, as we didn’t get a enough details to really feel or see the worlds and planets we travelled through. Alice jumps through ‘Gates’ which take her from planet to planet randomly or intentionally depending on what she inputs and she’s never fully lost, just wandering. It definitely felt very Alice in Wonderland in vibes but left me scratching my head and asking questions I don’t like asking. What did she eat? What about a poo? It was very fast and light on details which pulled me out.
When I was able to ignore my questions and spats of confusion, the story was good! I was very intrigued. This is the rare novella for me that I think actually suffered from not being longer. This could easily have been a novel, especially with the themes that Elaine Gallagher was attempting to explore. A full length novel with just this premise? I would eat that like candy. As a novella it was fun, but a bit lacking.

3.5 out of 5 cleaning gels (that was strange, tbh)

[Annie Yotova · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alice had developed a nose for finding curiosities while visiting different marketplaces and planets. So when she sees a container that looks familiar, she manages to convince the seller that it is worthless and get it for cheap. Another easy win, right? Until people start shooting at her anyway - apparently she is not the only one who realized what that tube really is - an ancient weapon.

Elaine Gallagher creates a universe where different species live together, interconnected with star gates and commerce, with data and knowledge being part of a viable economy in more than one way. Humanity does not get to mess up everything this time around - we had managed to annihilate ourselves and Alice is the last remaining human anywhere. That becomes important towards the end of the novella because her understanding of human wars and thinking allows her to grasp the truth and help Gunn - the man who is trapped inside of the weapon everyone is after (or who is the weapon itself if you so prefer). I wasn't very happy with where the story was going at the end - it was too sugary sweet until it wasn't and the author pulled that off without the need for a gimmick or a surprise ending.

It is a story of a chase across the stars - with Alice trying to outrace and out-think more than one group of people who really want that weapon (and are not shy about it). But that run is used to show us glimpses of a lot of different worlds (more than 10 for sure, less than 100 - if I ever reread this novella, I probably should count them), different species and even a love story and a family story tied together. What could have been run of the mill chase story ends up being a lot more about belonging and finding your place in the universe. While I was reading, I could see the influences - some of them in the places we got a glimpse at, some of them in the action itself. But somehow it never sounded cliched or worse - it managed to work together. My biggest issue was that I wanted it to last longer - but on the other hand its length was perfect for the story it really wanted to tell and left the doors open for other stories in the same universe. And thinking back, I think that was a better choice than going for a more complete novel - because usually stories have backstories and backgrounds and you are not meant to know them all (or need to) in order to enjoy a story.

Overall a very nice surprise from a newish author (she has a few stories and poems, this is the first longer work) and I plan to keep an eye on what she publishes next. It may had had some rough spots but it was very enjoyable.

[Lydia · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this book but there's just not a lot to it. It took me a few hours to read, and the whole time I was just… a little disappointed. Alice and Gunn are interesting characters but the book only has 112 pages, so there's very little depth or development. There's several things that I feel conflicted about and I think it's mostly because the book is so short a lot of things just kind of get tossed out and moved on from. Overall, the book has too much plot/action and not enough character development.

Gunn is the last remnant of a war between two cultures and views themselves as a weapon with no choice but to continue the war. Alice sees Gunn as a sentient soldier capable of making their own decisions. They get chased through a bunch of wormholes by other cultures that want to take control of Gunn's abilities for their own purposes, and Gunn shows very little indication that they want to be anything other than a weapon seeking revenge. Alice keeps believing that Gunn can make good choices despite all evidence to the contrary and keeps seeking to find a way to give Gunn a body again. That's... just about the extent of the characterization and development you get. Alice infodumps her background to Gunn and it really feels like an infodump, not an organic conversation. There's a lot of running around and action, but it all feels a little superficial. And then the book just… ends. Not quite "rocks fall, everybody dies" but also not quite not that.

The Looney Tunes references are also really weird – for a character that nominally grew up in Scotland in the 1950s/60s, it's very US-centric. Why is this the cultural reference that Alice latched onto? Did Alice love those cartoons? When did she watch them? As a kid? With her family? Does she have good memories of that? Or did she watch them as an adult, or when she returns to Earth to do work for the Archive? I'm not even sure the Looney Tunes cartoons were broadcast in the UK, so what's the point? Why not reference Doctor Who and the TARDIS? I can understand the Breakfast at Tiffany's references – wanting to look like Audrey Hepburn as a woman (trans or otherwise) is really relatable – but the ubiquity of the Looney Tunes references feels out of place.

The worldbuilding overall is interesting – I'd love to get the chance to know way more about just about everything, especially the Archive. But again, there's just no room in a book this short to capitalize on everything that gets thrown out.

[Liz (Quirky Cat) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Book Summary:

Alice fell down the rabbit hole, and now she’s the last human. No, really. She was transported to another place in the galaxy, where she was treated with respect for her knowledge of Earth.

Now, she works as a space archeologist, delving into histories and uncovering precious artifacts. This is how she found herself possessing a very dangerous artifact - an A.I. full of knowledge people would kill to have.

My Review:

Unexploded Remnants was SUCH a fun read! I wish this book was the start of a series because I would read a hundred adventures with Alice at the helm. We’ve got space, archeology, AI threats, you name it. It’s perfect.

Even though we only got to know them briefly, it’s clear the characters had rich backstories in Unexploded Remnants (again, I wish we could explore this further). Alice, her allies, and even some enemies felt real and very present.

Then there’s the politics of this universe. We have a group of (almost?) altruistic space archeologists going up against, well…pretty much everyone else? It’s hard to explain, but there’s SO MUCH potential here. I want more.

Unexploded Remnants take a lot of big swings in a short time, and most of them land. It was fun, dark at times, and full of emotion. It’s the perfect read if you’re looking for something different.

Highlights:
Artificial Intelligence
Science Fiction
History in Space
LGBTQ+

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[Philip · Rating 5 out of 5]

Alice is the last surviving human in the universe, and she’s on the run. When she was exploring the Alta Sidoie market, she found something in a scrap collector’s booth that was far more than met the eye. Unfortunately for her, she wasn’t the only one who recognized it. Now she’s being chased throughout an intergalactic portal network by a warmongering alien race that wants to use the weapon-controlling AI she found to attack anyone who has ever wronged them.

Alice fell into the portal network by chance, an accidental bit of access from a world that wasn’t supposed to be able to connect. She was observed by the Archive, one of the unifying forces for good in the universe, and sent back to report on humanity as a whole. Eventually Earth’s conflicts grew to the point where the Archive opted to quarantine the world instead of attempting to keep helping, leaving humans to their own slow self-destruction. Alice, however, was allowed to keep performing work for them. Now alongside her virtual assistant, Bugs, she’s employed as a blend of archaeologist and grave robber for the Archive, trading in favors and information as well as artifacts.

Alice has her hands on the key to one of the most powerful remaining weapons in the galaxy, and the enemy is closing in. The AI is a threat to everyone, but Alice is determined to save Gunn, the being trapped in the heart of the artifact. She doesn’t know who she can fully trust, but she’s going to do whatever it takes to free him.

Elaine Gallagher has packed a tremendous amount of detail into a very small package with Unexploded Remnants. This novella is fast-paced and a hell of a lot of fun. World hopping action and clever characters reminiscent of Indiana Jones, Lara Croft, and Evelyn O’Connor make for a quick, entertaining read that still manages to provide commentary on weapons of war and how we treat soldiers.

My utmost thanks to Tor and NetGalley for an eARC in exchange for a fair review. Unexploded Remnants is out today, 6/25/24. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

This review originally appeared here: https://swordsoftheancients.com/2024/...

[Catching Shadows · Rating 4 out of 5]

In Unexploded Remnants, the last human in the universe comes across an unexpected find at a marketplace: an ancient weapons system disguised as a lava lamp. (It is not actually disguised as a lava lamp.) Our Protagonist is a woman named Alice who accidentally ended up in the wider universe after accidentally passing through a “gate.” This gate network connects a variety of worlds, much like in the StarGate franchise. (Note: StarGate is not the first sf franchise to ever use “gate technology.” There are a number of other works that also use the concept, see C.J. Cherryh’s Morgaine novels as a second example.)

Once she ended up in the wider universe she was taken in by an organization called The Archive, which is somewhere between a museum, a library and information broker. (Knowledge is literally power in this setting, and the Archive has a lot of it.) Alice’s function as an agent for the Archive is somewhere between a archaeologist, a smuggler, and a curator of artifacts. When she finds the artifact, she discovers that weapon is a person (that is, there’s a sophont uploaded into the system–so she immediately goes off to find a way to remove the person for the weapon. Because of this she ends up on the run from agents of a militaristic civilization and a number of other organizations that want to either make use of the weapon, or destroy it.

This book has some fascinating worldbuilding and engaging characters. The book is fast paced and I appreciated the, “this is not a case of good guys and bad guys, it’s more complicated” themes inherent in the plot. On the other hand, I was slightly disappointed that there wasn’t more interaction between Alice and the “weapon.” (Alice calls him “Gunn” because she isn’t quite sure how to pronounce his real name.) I would have liked more communication between Alice and Gunn, since it seemed obvious that they were thematically linked. (Alice is the last human, Gunn is a weapon created by an extinct civilization.) Overall, this is solidly written book and I enjoyed it immensely.

This review is based on a copy received from NetGalley.

[Ashley Fetterman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you to the publisher Tor and NetGalley for this eARC. This is my honest review.

I should have picked this up much sooner. It was a quicker read that I was able to go through within an hour or two at max. There’s a lot to say and I feel like this story is one in which there is so much to unpack.

The storyline is really wonderful and I feel like the characterizations are extremely well done for such a short story. There was character growth on all fronts, which is hard to do within a regular novel let alone a novella. This has some and then more.

I felt confused at times because there’s was so much information and lore drop of things that I didn’t know what they were but it didn’t take too much away from the story in a bad way. Instead I kept reading because I wanted to know more.

I wasn’t prepared for a transgender character, but that absolutely did not detracted from the story. In fact, it added so much depth to it because there’s an entire backstory hinted at, especially with the concept that so far in the future you can change bodies.

This leads me to the reason that this is 4 stars. The potential this story has, blew me away. Every other page I was introduced to new worlds, new tech, new cultures. I felt like there’s a massive universe that could have been written around. Like I was given a pilot season of a massive trilogy movie potential. As I was reading, I felt like it has taken the potential of the equivalent of Star Wars universe (shows/books) and condensed it down into a tidbit bite. I actively crave more of this world and all the worlds that Alice goes through. I need more and I want to know more. This felt like a tease to something amazing that could be. And not having more of that leaves me feeling bereft. I want more.

[J. (JL) Lange · Rating 4 out of 5]

I kept going back and forth on this one because part of me wants to give it five stars just in the hopes of seeing more of this universe. I'd absolutely love to see this novella as a "#0.5" in a longer series. I'm all in for having a transfemme main character go on adventures through the portal network with her catgirl best friend and ex-lover. The main power broker of the portal network is an archive! These are awesome elements, and on their own would have been enough to make up for the fact that some of the other tropes felt a little tired. Unfortunately the other issues I had with this piece prevented me from just giving it a full five stars. One of the other issues I had was with the excessive Alice in Wonderland allusions. It almost felt like the author didn't trust us to connect the dots on our own. In my opinion this is probably a confidence thing that would be less of an issue as the author learns to trust her audience. My other main issue is that our main character, despite having an awesome premise, isn't developed nearly as much as I would've liked. Part of this is just because it's a novella of course, but nevertheless, I would've liked it more if Alice was more distinct, more bizarre. In fact I would've liked it if everything was weirder and more unique. One of my favorite parts was in the marketplace in the beginning when one of the random aliens we see is made up of a bunch of tiny aliens standing on top of one another. That was interesting and gives me a lot of hope! That's the kind of thing I'd like to see more of. Alice's interactions with other characters were good too. There was a lot to like here, even if there were things I didn't like as much.

[KateJoanna · Rating 2 out of 5]

I loved the idea of this and the synopsis sounded amazing, but I just don’t feel like that’s what I just read. I think the blurb gave more than the body of the book did.
Lovely writing that was immediately a very interesting and vibrant world but did not keep my interest. It very quickly lost momentum and after the introduction gave no more detail or depth to the world or characters.

It did great at getting my attention but was not easy to follow or keep it, I could not get into it at all and got bored.
It was well and consistently written, with good tone and personality to the writing but no life to the characters or story.
I had to keep checking back with the synopsis to remember what it’s even about as the book just didn’t explain or go into what it promised. I was so disappointed.

An interesting take on gender and the main character is trans, it was inclusive with normalised diversity which I loved, but again left me wanting more.
The characters are not that well developed, no depth or authenticity to them, particularly the villains very shallow.

It had so much potential and wasn’t bad at all, just lacking in quite a few areas and not for me. I would still have liked this as a teen or as an intro to a longer book or series, and I would gladly consider trying another book from this author, but this was not for me.

[Elizabeth Sanders · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book's strength lies in its interesting ideas and world building. I loved the descriptions of different cultures, especially the Archive and how Alice describes changing her communication style based on cultural context. I also thought the book's focus on helping and healing a ghost in the machine -- as opposed to questioning its sentience or writing it off as inhuman -- was well done.

However, the book lacks the space to dig deeper into its characters. Alice, endlessly curious and dealer in information, is super cool, but we barely get to know anything about her. We meet figures from her past who are the same; we get an idea of who they are and their relationship, but little depth. There's a lot of "action," but much if that translates into "running through wormholes" that frankly gets dull and repetitive. The ending may bother some people -- I liked the concept, but felt the execution was off. If the same conclusion had been done without it being the result of a multi-page monologue, I think it would have hit home better.

In short, I think this book is okay for a quick, fun romp, but I don't think it's particularly memorable or great. If there were more space to dig into the characters, the settings, and the lore, I think the book would have been much stronger.

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

A big thanks to NetGalley and Tor for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Wow this was much shorter than I was anticipating.

Unexplored Remnants is a science fiction novel about an A.I. waging war on a future it doesn't understand. Alice is the last human. Street-smart and bad-ass. After discovering what appears to be an A.I. personality in an antique data core, Alice decides to locate its home somewhere in the stargate network. At the very least, she wants to lay him to rest because, as it turns out, she’s stumbled upon the sentient control unit of a deadly ancient weapon system. Convincing the ghost of a raging warrior that the war is over is about as hard as it sounds, which is to say, it’s near-impossible. But, if Alice fails and the control unit falls into the wrong hands, the balance of power her side of the Milky Way could fall apart. As Alice ports throughout the known universe seeking answers and aid she will be faced with impossible choice after impossible choice and the growing might of an unstoppable foe.

Overall, this book was a decent. It was just a little too short for my taste. I wish it was longer.

[Shymsal · Rating 4 out of 5]

This novella had some interesting concepts surrounding information/data/thoughts. I was only able to parse them in context, so an in-depth analysis has not yet coalesced in my mind. That being said, the concept of Earth needing to be quarantined from the larger universe because of our toxically invasive concepts on personhood, gender, sexuality, and finances/commerce was interesting.

More, the idea that we'd eventually blown ourselves to kingdom come because of the inability of many people to handle personal responsibility and thought has become a saddeningly more likely scenario these days.

The most problematic thing for me was the facile way the author handled convincing Gunn to abandon his pain and accept rest if not redemption. But, I liked the novella overall and do recommend the read.

I read this last night when I couldn't get to sleep. Not necessarily something to encourage sleeping, mind you.

Thanks to the author, publisher and Netgalley for supplying me with a copy to read in exchange for my unbiased opinion.