Quietus

April 2, 2018
Palmgren’s intriguing but convoluted debut, a mash-up of SF and historical fiction, features an anthropologist researching the black plague in hopes of saving her home world from a baffling epidemic. Anthropologist Dr. Habidah Um’brael Thayusene Shen is able to study among many worlds, or planes, across time and space, and her current project finds her in medieval Italy as the bubonic plague sweeps through the population. She’s instructed not to interfere; she can only observe how people respond to the spread of the disease. Her masters, the amalgamates, who began as AIs, are desperate to combat a plague spreading through the multiverse. When Habidah discovers a gravely wounded Carthusian monk, the lone survivor of his cloister, she breaks protocol and recruits him to help her observe the Florentines. Soon, she discovers a vast conspiracy among the amalgamates, forcing her to question everything she believes in. Habidah is an appealing, intelligent heroine, and the intricate story effectively tackles big themes such as free will and mortality, but Palmgren’s impeccably built, immersive setting of plague-era Italy is more accessible than the complex elements of the multiverse. Readers looking for something exciting from a promising new voice will find Palmgren’s debut worth their time.

March 1, 2018
Deadly plagues are decimating two civilizations! Dr. Habidah Shen and her team of anthropologists have been assigned to a small but populous world to document the progress of a virulent epidemic. They watch and record data but never intervene. The researchers come from the Unity, a technologically advanced multiverse controlled by Amalgamants?complex, coldhearted AIs. The AIs seek answers for restraining a microbial scourge of unknown origin that is affecting almost all members of their domain. Shen breaks the no-interference protocol when she rescues a humble monk?a native who miraculously survived the pestilence?from a wolf attack. She does so to assuage her conscience?the AIs could easily cure the earthly disease if they wished. Simultaneously, another team member has deliberately become involved in local politics and the religious power structure. Is her colleague following a personal agenda or another assignment? Could the Amalgamants have an alternative goal, one detrimental to the people of this world? Palmgren's debut, a combination of speculative and historical fiction, will appeal to fans of Connie Willis' Doomsday Book (1992).(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)