Travel Documents 128: Yet You Cry When It Hurts
Genre: sci-fi, near-future, hope-punk, social change, cultural change
The Dust Cover Copy
When the world is drowning, diplomacy is more than handshakes and headlines.
Nitara Desai has spent her life negotiating international agreements, easing points of conflict, and averting disasters. Worst-case scenarios belong in her nightmares, not the IEC’s daily reports. On a calm day, being a director at the International Energy Consortium only requires fixing CarbonCon translators for flustered Brazilian delegates. A thankless job, but the world is still drowning in CO2—there’s no choice but to keep treading.
On a bad day, it’s not just the Brazilians acting up, but the Americans walking out, and now the Governor of Southern California insisting on a clandestine meeting. Then a text comes from Matti, her solid rock in the stormy seas: Guess what? We’re getting married!
Suddenly, an earthquake is slow-rolling through her personal life as well.
She waited too long: to tell Matti how she feels, to quit the unwinnable race to net zero, to grab hold of the things that make life worth living, not just trying to stay afloat. When the governor reveals an impossible technology that could save the planet, but it’s in the hands of a murderously ambitious man, it’s a catastrophe she can’t turn away from. And it’s almost enough to distract her from everything falling apart. Work first, always.
And maybe that’s been the problem all along.
Yet You Cry When It Hurts is the fourth of four tightly-connected hopepunk novels in a near-future climate-fiction series. It’s about our future, how the forces of greed are ever-present, how the fight for a just world never ends, and how it’s not strongmen who will save us but the bright cords of connection that hold the world together.
If you enjoyed the optimistic climate solutions in Kim Stanley Robinson’s Ministry for the Future or the cozy cooperative future in Becky Chambers’ Monk and Robot series, you will enjoy Nothing is Promised.
The Scene
Worldbuilding
Happy sigh
Oh, I love it when a series wraps up well.
In each book of this series, the intertwined threads of lives involved have grown the fabric of this world into a lovely tapestry. Now the fabric’s complete, and the tapestry of resolve, insistence on a better future and radical cooperation is beautiful. Quinn’s work in showing a world where we finally see unbridled ambition, racial superiority, and jingoism for what they are—poisons in our collective bloodstream that need to be counteracted—is something to see. And the fact that the author has pulled it off while telling a fun adventure story makes it that much better. In this final book of the series, all the threads are pulled together and tied off, wrapping up the plotline in a delightfully satisfying way.
The Crowd
Characterization
Though main characters from each of the other books will make their appearances in this installment, the work revolves around Nitara Desai: consummate diplomat. Devoted friend. Implacable opponent. She is the perfect character to carry the narrative thread to completion. Quinn keeps that quintessential balance of intimate and public plot points that have characterized the story, reminding us that the characters (like us) are whole people, and that a dire national event isn’t more important than a personal struggle: it’s just more public.
Arrayed against Nitara and her tight-knit team are characters who embody the devils of our human nature: the greed, the self-absorption, the arrogance and the shortsightedness that has held us back for generations. They are written well enough that, as you read the dialogue, you think ‘man, I’ve heard stuff like that on the news’. And then you shiver.
Writing Style
Smoothed out since the first book, the style canters along at a beautifully smooth clip, pulling readers along for a race for something truly incredible, and leaving you with bright eyes and a smile at the finish line.
The Moves
Plot
With incredible scientific wonders, dastardly plots designed to jumpstart techno-feudalism, political disaster and murderous weather right around the corner, this energetic plotline rolls along at a perfect clip without losing sight of its characters’ humanity.
Overall Rating
A story worth reading. A future worth working for. Check it out.