Posted by This is another book I read based off a Twitter recommendation thread asking for older female main characters. By older I specifically said characters over 65, not just middle aged. I named myself after a Granny character and I wanted to find more in the SFF genre. I also specified I did not want them as a side character, but the main character.
So, here I am with Remnant Population by Elizabeth Moon.
Ofelia has had a hard life as a colony worker. She’s pretty much owned by a company. The company calls her an “employee”, but her life is ruled by them with very little choice. Way back 40 years ago when she first arrived on the planet to develop the colony she had just one box of stuff. The company had her recycle the box she came there with as everything had to be re-used to build the colony.
Now she’s being “asked” (forced) to leave the only home she’s known for 40 years, and the company won’t even give her a box to put her stuff in. You get the feeling real quick this company don’t give a shit about their ’employees’ who sound very much so like slaves. The entire colony is being forced to leave, not just her, and so with everyone is being put on to shuttles in 30 days she cracks a plan to stay behind. “Fuck all y’all, I’m out!”
The reasons she does this are very clear. Her husband is dead, the children she loved are dead — she’s left with this one asshole son who they both know was her least favorite child. The relationship is ‘strained’ and they’ve never gotten along, not even during his childhood years, not even as a baby. She knows she is dooming herself to die alone, and she prefers it that way.
This woman’s inner dialogue is so incredibly bitter and jaded. She’s not a very easy character to like. This bitterness isn’t really tampered with sass or humor, it’s just straight bitter. I don’t think you’re supposed to like her, though, not at first..
Her plan worked.
Now she has a whole colony to herself and it’s a little overwhelming at first. Intrusive thoughts are definitely a thing as she thinks maybe it’d be fun to go waltzing through the streets naked, there’s no one there to care after all. But wait, there is someone here with her. Another colony ship starts to build another area only to be overrun by… aliens? She listens to the colonists get slaughtered about 40 kilometers away and is powerless to do anything. This of course sets her on edge as she believed this planet was uninhabited by anything large enough to kill a person, and it’s been that way for decades. Clearly, though, something is here and she’s now on-guard even when she doesn’t want to be.
I liked that we also get the perspective of these aliens who are portrayed something like owl-people. They have an interesting way of communicating that our MC has to try and learn. She and the aliens develop a bond which becomes problematic when the company comes back to figure out what happened to her and why there are still parts of the colony up and running when it should be abandoned. She feels a need to protect these aliens from being slaughtered.
This is a pretty slow book, not just because there’s a smaller cast and story. There aren’t many action scenes or moments of extreme tension. This is a more intimate story focusing on just a small number of people and so if you’re looking for an action packed science fiction with aliens v. humans, this isn’t that. If you want to read about a cranky AF old lady learn how to care about things again, maybe this will be for you.