Review: The Spare Man by Mary Robinette Koval
Hugo, Locus, and Nebula-Award winner Mary Robinette Kowal blends her no-nonsense approach to life in space with her talent for creating glittering high-society in this stylish SF mystery, The Spare Man.
A 2023 Hugo Award Finalist!
A 2022 Locus Magazine Recommended Reading List pick!Tesla Crane, a brilliant inventor and an heiress, is on her honeymoon on an interplanetary space liner, cruising between the Moon and Mars. She’s traveling incognito and is reveling in her anonymity. Then someone is murdered and the festering chowderheads who run security have the audacity to arrest her spouse. Armed with banter, martinis and her small service dog, Tesla is determined to solve the crime so that the newlyweds can get back to canoodling—and keep the real killer from striking again.
I GOT THE BOOK FROM THE LIBRARY
Review:
Dear Mary Robinette Kowal,
I have not read any of your works, even though I of course heard of them. I figured that this book may be a good place to start – a blend of science fiction and mystery with an established couple at the center of the action sounded like very much my cup of tea. Alas, more things in this book did not work for me than did. Readers, note that a lot of readers seemed to like this one and as the blurb tells you this book was a finalist for the 2023 Hugo awards, so definitely seek out other reviews, read the sample, etc.
Also, I have to note that while I have not read a single review before I started the book, I went and read a few after I finished, because I was so very confused as to some things and I have to note that references to a movie “The Thin Man” was something I completely missed since I have never watched it. Apparently the set up is similar to that movie except we are in space.
So, what did not work? First of all the writing style. I don’t think there was something wrong with it and if it was I would be incompetent to judge what exactly was wrong. I just did not enjoy it. Here is a quote from very early in the book so you can see for yourself.
“The room seemed to recede around her, darkening at the edges. Someone had nearly been murdered. Tesla put her hand on the wall to steady herself as she waited the moment out. Wall. Toilet. Mirror. Post-it with “Friendly Greeters Smile at Three Meters.” Motivational poster of sleeping kittens with “Are you ready to be your best self today?” :: What do kittens have to do with best selves?:: she pinged Shal.”
Related to the writing style is the fact that main character’s name was Tesla. This is of course not the author’s fault, but we all bring to reading our biases and experiences and I just cannot stand anything related to Mr. Musk these days, so every time I saw her name and you can imagine it was a lot of times, I cringed.
I also have to note this, this is not the first book I was reading or will be reading where characters’ pronouns are noted. Here the author makes it a habit to put pronouns as part of the representation for every single character. Okay, sure, but why can’t we have a better description of the characters if we cannot imagine them through their gender. I will be the first one to say that I often use the gender of the character as one of the short cuts for trying to see a picture of the character in my mind as I am reading. Mental pictures of the characters do not come easily to me in the first place, but the author here sure was not helping me, because the descriptions (not pronouns – other descriptions) were not memorable to me.
Let’s talk about Tesla’s actual character. In the very beginning of the story her husband was arrested as the main suspect for the murder that just happened. Lady, you know that he did not do it, could not have done it, etc. You have every right to try and protect him. I have zero issues with Tesla trying to investigate the murder which eventually become murderS. But take it down a notch with putting ship security people down, because you know, they have every possible reason to arrest your husband even if he had nothing to do with it – circumstantial evidence was all there no matter that, of course, it was all an attempt to frame them.
And yes, Tesla is rich and she can do a lot of things because she is rich. Sigh.
The actual murder investigation was interesting, I was eager to know “who done it” but when the reveal happened, my first thought was just how we were supposed to figure that out as readers? More importantly while the main character’s husband kept saying how much he loved Tesla’s brain, I just did not notice that she exercised her brain very effectively here.
I did like that Tesla had to deal with disability throughout the story and I did like her dog a lot. That’s all I liked really. Actually I also liked the cover
Grade: C-
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This book worked better for me, maybe because I am a lifelong fan of The Thin Man series. Tesla (I’m 100% with you on the name) did not seem to be as bright as we’re told, especially in the audio version where her character came across as vapid. If there’s another book with these characters, I will definitely read it, just more cautiously. Thanks for your review.
Is Tesla named after Nikolai Tesla? Yeah, I agree it’s a poor choice. I was interested in this book because of the Thin Man but other reviews convinced me to not request it to review.
@Jayne: Right, see when I put a draft of my review on GR as I often do, a book buddy reminded me about Nicola Tesla, because to my shame I completely forgot about the famous inventor and I do think it is a more likely that she was named after him than after a car :). So I decided not to change the review, because a) I forgot when I wrote so it won’t be fair to change after the fact but also – for better or for worse when I hear the word Tesla now the association that comes to my mind is with the car and Mr. Musk even if that was not the author’s intention. @Darlynne: Right, I totally expected to be the outsider about this book and I can imagine that many many people enjoyed it a lot since it was a finalist of 2023 Hugo awards. But the main character just irritated me so very much on so many levels you know?
I read it when the Hugo nominees were published last year, and kept thinking something must be wrong for such a poor novel to be nominated.
My guess at the time was either a) she has gotten so many nominations/awards that it just kept happening despite being this book objectively poor quality or b) conversely, people felt she was ‘owed’ something because of a previous snub. But I ended up going with c) the books performative gender, sex and disability, which was so poorly done.